Assessment of Maintenance Activities of Some Sawmills in Ekiti and Osun States of Nigeria

• M. K. Adeyeri

  Department of Industrial and Production Engineering, The Federal University of Technology, Akure, Ondo State

Maintenance practices play great role in industrial facilities management and its productivity index. This research work therefore presents the assessment of maintenance activities being observed in some selected wood and log processing industries (sawmills) in Ekiti and Osun states in Nigeria so as to rate their practices and proffer solutions as deem fit. The appraisal metric used hinges on maintenance practice factor (MPF) and maintenance practice contributions (MPC). The study made use of oral interviews and structured questionnaire administered to fifty (50) sawmills in which twenty (20) respondents wholeheartedly cooperated in responding to the questionnaires. Statistical detailed analysis of the data carried out showed that only 30% of the respondents in the maintenance department rated the maintenance practices carried out in the maintenance of the equipment and machineries as satisfactory while 70% rated it good. 63.3 % of the maintenance strategy used in the sawmill industries was breakdown maintenance and there is 16.67 % attributed to predictive maintenance practice. The classified medium scale sawmill wood industry has mean MPC of 90 as compared with the small scale. However, challenges encountered in this research include non-availability of sawmill policy and technological resources. Also, no sawmill was able to give an account of the date of expiration of the equipment tools and machineries being used by them. Most of the equipment in the sawmill industries were old and this contributed to high rates of breakdowns. Hence, a flowchart decision model was developed as a recommendation note to add importance to the maintenance system and its services delivery in the sawmill industries.

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