Maintenance is one of the most important functional areas in a power plant. On its effectiveness depends to a large extent, the availability of the plant. To control and manage maintenance performance, appropriate measurement of maintenance effectiveness is the basic requirement. The scope of maintenance is quite broad. It includes not only the repairing the machinery but also various supporting activities like arrangement for spares, manpower etc. Thus maintenance effectiveness depends on many factors, which are not taken into account by the existing measures for maintenance performance.

In this project study, a methodology has been developed for determining power plant maintenance effectiveness as a single quantitative measure using multi-criteria analysis (MCA) techniques. Based on a systems approach, the main system ‘maintenance’ has been sub-divided into interacting sub-systems and further levels of components; taking into account the various factors and multiple interactions. Some of these factors have conflicts and so MCA techniques such as Multi Attribute Utility Technique (MAUT) and Goal Programming (GP) have been used. Performance of each factor is determined by comparing it against a target performance. Then these performances are aggregated using an additive composition model to determine the overall maintenance effectiveness.

The methodology developed has been applied on a power plant for determining maintenance effectiveness. In addition, the areas where improvement possibilities exist have been identified and remedial measures suggested.

Key-words: Maintenance effectiveness, Systems approach, MAUT, Goal Programming, Power plant