COMPUTERISED SOFTWARE SYSTEMS IN REPLACEMENT MAINTENANCE INFORMATION MANAGEMENT: A SOUTH AFRICAN CASE STUDY

Abstract

Computerised software systems have undeniably continued to gain recognition in the implementation of reliable maintenance policies in today’s Industries. While significant investigations corroborating the importance of management technology in developed economies abound, this study examines the level of the technology’s success in a typical manufacturing firm in South Africa. Using an analytical research approach, useful maintenance indices were established from the dataset stored in the maintenance information management system of a case example manufacturing firm, designated ‘X-Company’ in this research for the sake of confidentiality. The result shows that, as applied currently to the replacement maintenance of the case example system, the technology requires optimisation. Maintenance policies that can improve the poor correlation between the current status on the one hand, and the established trends in the maintenance engineering literature and practice on the other, are recommended.