[Themaintainers] Maintenance engineering coursework?

Mon Apr 5 15:01:17 EDT 2021

I have several relatives who were accountants, one even a professor of
accounting. I am all in favor of getting everybody to understand some
accounting concepts.

But the example below I find problematical. A $1M road with a 20-year life
SHOULD not require zero maintenance for 20 years, then a sudden $1M (plus
whatever inflation has done) to replace. Instead, IF it is maintained, it
should last not 20 years, but decades beyond that. In the process, the road
"owner" might well spend roughly $1M each 20 years, but it should be spread
over maintenance all during each 20-year period.

I do agree, however, that many, many (far too many!) cities defer
maintenance year after year until replacement is the only option.
Accounting is a way to track how bad a practice that is, but does not
itself cure the bad practice. It is perhaps necessary, but never sufficient.

On Mon, Apr 5, 2021 at 5:59 AM David Albrecht <albrecht.dr at gmail.com> wrote:

> Rental property operator and software engineer here.
>
> I don't think a course like this is complete without some discussion of
> accounting. At the risk of stating the obvious, accounting is the
> accumulated body of knowledge on how to quantify economic activity.
> Probably half if not more maintenance problems are ultimately rooted in
> poor accounting, specifically focusing too much on cashflow and not enough
> on the balance sheet.
>
> Simple but obvious example to illustrate the point. A municipality spends
> $1 million on a new road with an estimated lifetime of 20 years. Next year,
> they collect $500k in tax revenue and spend $475k. Yay, a surplus! Cut
> taxes! Except the simple math of $1 million/20 years for our road shows you
> need to be tracking the $50k annual wear and tear...somewhere. Most
> organizations -- many municipalities and unsophisticated rental property
> operators -- don't do this well, and are caught short when a major capital
> item hits end-of-life, causing them to scramble to get a loan and fall
> farther and farther into debt they have no way to service.
>
> I think the solution is to emphasize a culture of continuous, incremental
> capital replacement in an organization. I haven't seen too many
> organizations (especially in the public sector) with the discipline to
> accumulate huge piles of cash for lumpy capital spending, without
> shenanigans taking place that cause the money to get redirected for other
> short-term uses. I'd love to know if I'm wrong about this.
>
> On Sat, Apr 3, 2021 at 5:02 PM Melinda Hodkiewicz <
> melinda.hodkiewicz at uwa.edu.au> wrote:
>
>> Hi Jonathan,
>>
>> I am a maintenance engineer and for many years have taught university and
>> executive education courses on maintenance, asset management, reliability,
>> risk and safety. I was Australia’s representative on the development of the
>> ISO55000/1/2 set of Asset Management Standards. Maintenance is one of the
>> major elements of asset management. A good reference to all things AM is
>> the GFMAM sute (Global Forum on Maintenance and Asset Management)
>> https://gfmam.org/global-collaboration. Their publications page is a
>> useful source of teaching materials.
>> Can I suggest, all found (for free) on this page.
>>
>> ·       The AM Landscape,
>>
>> ·       The Maintenance Framework, and
>>
>> ·       The Value of Asset Management.
>>
>> The Maintenance Framework book will be particularly helpful for
>> engineers-in-training as it covers the maintenance management process
>> (identify work (maintenance strategy)-schedule-planning-execution) that
>> they are most likely to be exposed to when they graduate if they work for
>> an asset operating organisation.
>>
>>
>>
>> About 7 years ago I was asked to develop a one semester class for final
>> year engineers of all disciplines (process, mech, civil, elec, software,
>> chemical, mining) on risk, reliability and safety. Maintenance is covered
>> in detail as it is one of the main ways we manage risk. Attached is an
>> overview of the unit if you are interested. Below is a brief overview:
>>
>>
>>
>> “*The unit aims to provide a holistic an integrated overview of the
>> theory and practice in the fields of risk, reliability and safety, to
>> prepare our engineers for professional practice. The unit develops
>> students' technical and statistical skills and covers the social and
>> organisational contexts, extending the students’ field of view beyond the
>> technical to consider the customer and the organisation’s needs. The unit
>> is taught to all engineering disciplines in one class to reinforce the need
>> for cross-discipline collaboration and accommodation of different
>> stakeholders and perspectives in risk and safety management*.”
>>
>>
>>
>> The class is huge >300 students and taught twice a year. It is co-taught
>> with a statistician and my part (the engineering part) in taught using
>> flipped learning and case study based interactive workshops.
>>
>>
>>
>> Very happy to share what we have learned over the last 7 years, ideas and
>> materials. We have taught this unit to over 4000 students.
>>
>> Regards Melinda
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Professor Melinda Hodkiewicz
>>
>> BA Hons (Oxon), PhD, CEng, FTSE
>>
>> BHP Fellow for Engineering for Remote Operations
>>
>> Faculty of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences
>>
>> University of Western Australia
>>
>> M050, UWA, Crawley, Perth, WA 6009
>>
>> Melinda.hodkiewicz at uwa.edu.au
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* themaintainers-bounces at lists.stevens.edu <
>> themaintainers-bounces at lists.stevens.edu> *On Behalf Of *Jonathan Krones
>> *Sent:* Saturday, 3 April 2021 3:39 AM
>> *To:* themaintainers at lists.stevens.edu
>> *Subject:* [Themaintainers] Maintenance engineering coursework?
>>
>>
>>
>> Hi Maintainers,
>>
>>
>>
>> First time caller, long time lurker. I'm starting work on a new syllabus
>> for an upper-level undergraduate general engineering elective tentatively
>> called "Maintenance Engineering" (although I'll probably need to snazz it
>> up to get any enrollment). The idea is to cover concepts from a variety of
>> engineering fields (e.g., civil, software systems, materials,
>> manufacturing, product design) that relate to issues of maintenance,
>> repair, and other types of life extension of engineered systems. I'm still
>> in early stages and am interested in learning about any similar courses
>> that folks in this community might know. I'm also open to suggestions on
>> topics or concepts that you think should go into a course like this. It
>> will likely be a combination of probability/statistical models, systems
>> engineering concepts, and the engineering science bases of inspection,
>> preventative maintenance, repair and remanufacturing, etc.
>>
>>
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Jonathan
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> *Jonathan S Krones, PhD*
>>
>> Core Fellow / Visiting Assistant Professor | Boston College
>>
>> Research Affiliate | MIT Olivetti Research Group
>>
>> jonathan.krones at bc.edu | 301.788.4206
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>
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> http://davidralbrecht.com/
>
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