2011

The Effect of
Maintenance Planning
in Operational
Spending
Supply Support and Facilities
The effect of the poor planning to operational spending is critical and should be
monitored by concerned managements to avoid any catastrophic failure

Royal Navy
5/22/2011

Contents
Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 3
Aim ................................................................................................................................................................ 3
Definition of Maintenance ............................................................................................................................ 3
Maintenance Planning .................................................................................................................................. 3
The Delay in Maintenance Plan ................................................................................................................ 4
A Solution to Overcome the Delay in Maintenance ................................................................................. 4
Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................................... 4
References .................................................................................................................................................... 5

Introduction
Integrated Logistic Support (ILS) plays a vital role in Royal Navy of Oman (RNO) by maintaining its
elements. It has been practiced ever since and applied in most of the logistic and engineering
departments. The ten elements of ILS practiced evermore nowadays, for instance the reliability
Engineering, Maintainability Engineering and Maintenance planning which is one of the key issues in this
assignment.
While the nine elements should also be implemented for any ILS these elements are; Supply (Spare Parts
and Support), Support of Test Equipment, Manpower and Personal required, Training and the training
Support, Technical Data, Computer Resources Support, Facilities, Packing and Handing Storage and
Transportations and Design Interface . This assignment will highlight only one element out of the ten
and it will cover the obstacles in maintenance and the reflection of that in operational spending in RNO.

Aim
The aim of this assignment is to highlight how Maintenance Planning affects operational spending in
RNO.

Definition of Maintenance
We cannot discuss the maintenance planning to any establishments without first consider overall the
perspective of the maintenance itself. In other words the plant capacity must be reliable for any
company/establishments to produce a product to stay in business. Hence poor maintenance equals poor
revenue streams and proper maintenance makes a company cost competitive.
The definition of maintenance includes all actions necessary for retaining, or restoring an item to a
specified serviceable condition. This includes inspections, testing classifications of serviceability
conditions, servicing reduces overall establishment, because production capacity is available when
needed.

Maintenance Planning
The maintenance planning involves in provisioning of parts, tools necessary for jobs and reserving others
or even staging them as appropriate when the maintenance takes place. So in RNO when the plan for
maintenance takes place the planner in Fleet Maintenance Section should be able to plan how to carry
out the job and should be able to determine parts and spares required for the ship before going to its
maintenance period according to the maintenance program. In RNO, the Technical Support Section
(TSS) should identify the plan required for each ship and it should produce Master shopping list for all
items required for each ship in advance to save time and avoid labors waiting for spares if they dont
arrive on time. The TSS should also order non stock items and even staged others if necessary, they
should be able to provide illustrated parts and break down list or vendor list would be a good idea and
help the men to identify the required maintenance. Thus the planner will save parts by placing them on
3

their location the technician should not waste his time waiting the spares to arrive. So the planner in TSS
should ensure good source of material supplied maintaining the quality source and quality control.
If our maintenance program is poor this will reflect automatically to our operational cost. That means
the maintenance planning should be adequate in all aspects and covers the supply support. In other
words, items should reach the working area in advance to avoid any critical delay. A good supply support
should be given to the fleet to ensure that the logistic system is conductive in high speed and law mass
and distribution in facilities (Warehousing) must be outsourced or in sourced if it negatively impact on
operational effectiveness.

The Delay in Maintenance Plan

The impact of delaying the maintenance plan might lead to a catastrophic failure. Sometimes waiting for
the equipment to break down reflects badly in the performance of the equipment itself onboard the
ship, and in fact we are shortening the life of the equipment resulting more frequent replacement. Also
the labor cost will be higher because the failure most likely requires more repairs than would had been
required.

A Solution to Overcome the Delay in Maintenance

Having said, that RNO could not maintain the planning programs for some of the ships due to
unforeseen urgent requirements. In order to avoid any emergent needs, the planners at TSS should
educate the ship staff and train them to maintain their emergent parts onboard and enhance them if
required with expert personal while the ship at any task and leave less requirement when the ship goes
for the next maintenance period.

Conclusion
There is no doubt that the poor maintenance planning effect operational spending for any
establishments. RNO tries to set a good planning team to allow its ships to proceed on their
maintenance program as it planned. The knowledge base, Job investigation on site, identifying the work,
Development of a good repair plan and preparing tools and facilities required obtaining the time
required are vital steps and should be monitored all the time. The success in anything is how to plan and
to know what activities to be made in ample time.

References
Palmer, Richard D. Mantic Planning and Scheduling Handbook. Mcgraw, Hill Professional Publishing New York. Dec
2005.
Production and Operations Managements
Author: Kumar, S, Anil 284
Publisher: new Age International Delhi India
Date:2008
Language: English
Logistic Support Doctrine
Author: Rear Admiral H Eccles, USN