Chapter 3

Maintenance standard

There are a variety of definitions and explanations of the concept of maintenance. Often, the explanation varies with factors such as industry and the level of the organisation. For a maintenance technician carrying out a practical maintenance action, the term maintenance may mean changing a coupling between a motor and a pump. For someone in management, the concept of maintenance may rather be associated with a tool to increase competitiveness, productivity and profitability.

The following maintenance standards specify general terms and definitions for technical, administrative and management areas of maintenance.

What is maintenance?

The Maintenance standard states that:

"Maintenance is the combination of all technical, administrative and managerial actions during the lifetime of a device in order to maintain it in, or restore it to, a condition to perform the required function."

A maintenance engineer should know and understand maintenance terminology and standards, and have the ability to use them in practice.

In order to make proper analyses, it is necessary that everyone talks and reports in the same way, and that we understand what the different concepts mean in maintenance terminology. This allows us to measure and make correct and fact-based analyses, which in turn form the basis for the maintenance organisation’s decision-making.

Accoring to standard SS-EN 13306

Maintenance categories

All maintenance work that aims to maintain or improve the reliability of a machine or equipment is divided according to standard EN 13306 into three types of work, corrective, preventive and improvement maintenance. In addition to maintenance activities, the maintenance organisation handles many other projects and other types of support activities for the production organisation. Projects that do not aim to improve reliability are by default a Modification, other support activities are registered in MaintMaster in the category Case management.