Improvement of maintenance management system for enhancing plant availability performance: A case study of Tanzania Biotech Product Limited (TBPL)

Abstract

The purpose of undertaking this research on improvement of maintenance management system for enhancing plant availability performance at Tanzania Biotech Products Limited (TBPL) was to identify and assess the factors, develop maintenance management model, and develop maintenance management system for improvement of plant machineries availability performance. The study adopted: qualitative approach for data collection and quantitative for quantifying the problem, questionnaires were used to collect data from Tanzania Biotech Products Limited (TBPL) and other data were identified through literature review. Data were analyzed using multiple regression analysis and Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software, version 25. The case study identified twenty-seven- factors affecting maintenance management system at Tanzania Biotech Products Limited (TBPL). The factors were clustered into six groups which are; maintenance strategies, human resources, functional quality, spare parts, equipment and machinery and management. The strength effect of these factors were ranked high and very high i.e., mean score above 3.5 and their p-value is less than 0.05 showing that significant. Durbin – Watson’s test values for Equation developed was 1.745 implying that correlation among factor s were positive. These explanatory variables integrated by the developed model were explained by 41.2% of the variance in MMS. Validation of the model confirmed that it is reliable and valid, since the maintenance management improvement value ranges from 0.284 for low maintenance management improvement to 0.972 for perfect maintenance management improvement. The findings suggest that if Tanzania Biotech Products Limited (TBPL) implement these measures, can improve maintenance management system and finally enhance availability of the plant machineries. The model was developed for Tanzania Biotech Products Limited (TBPL) for predicting and exploring opportunities towards improving maintenance management system for enhancing plant availability performance. Also, the findings can be used be applicable to other similar industries. And finally, the maintenance management system was developed so as to enhance plant availability performance by including condition monitoring of equipment, inventory management and maintenance planning and scheduling.