After the course, the student should be able to:

In this course, we cover the complete process of developing a maintenance and support plan for an asset. This process starts with aligning the operation and maintenance of the asset with the strategic goals of the organization (Asset Management) and making a plan to improve the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) of an asset by making use of Total Productive Maintenance practices.
 
This is followed by reliability predictions based on the analysis of the failure behavior. To this end, failure modes, effects, and criticality analysis (FMECA) and fault tree analysis (FTA) are used during the development phase of the asset. When new predictions are required during the exploitation phase of the asset, these analyses may be performed again, and in addition root cause analysis (RCA) can be performed.
 
Using the available knowledge on failure behavior, reliability centered maintenance (RCM) is used to decide on how to maintain the asset: should components simply be run-to-failure, or should they be maintained preventively? And should preventive maintenance be performed annually or only when the monitored condition of the component asks for this?
 
When these questions have been answered, the maintenance tasks are detailed by performing a maintenance task analysis (MTA) and the line replaceable unit (LRU) definition.
 
Finally, the support organization can be developed: the, possibly worldwide, support network structure has to be designed. Using level of repair analysis (LORA) and sparing analysis it should be decided where to perform each type of repair, which components to discard upon failure and which to repair, and how many spare parts to stock in the network.
 
During the course, we refer to other specialized courses in which some of the analyses and problems are discussed in more detail (e.g., sparing analysis is treated briefly only in the current course). Therefore, this course can be regarded as an introduction to the broad field of maintenance. Using many examples from practice, including those given during guest lectures by practitioners, we show how the analyses from theory are implemented in industry. The assignments also focus on applying the analyses.

This course is a compulsory course for all PDEng Maintenance trainees. Part of the course is an additional assignment for upgrading the course to a Post-Master level. The trainee must discuss the content of this additional assignment together with the lecturer of the course. Afterwards, the trainee needs a covering letter (see PDEng study guide) stating that he/she has rounded the course at post-master level. This form must be signed by both the lecturer of the course and the PDEng programme director, and a scan must be uploaded in ProDoc.