تاثیر فرهنگ سازمانی در نگهداری ماشین الات در صنعت برق قدرت نیجریه

Comparisons have been made of modern maintenance-practices, i.e. in the more developed economies, with what occurs in Nigeria. Significant differences arise due to variations in corporate culture, pertinent learning opportunities and effectiveness of strategic planning. The managerial implications of these divergences are discussed. A systematic, total productive-maintenance (TPM) approach needs to be adopted to allow corporate changes to be implemented at a rate commensurate with each organization’s evolving culture. This paper advocates that maintenance should be managed better, in each organization, so as to cultivate a sense of ownership in the operators. Also autonomous maintenance-teams, consisting of operators, engineers and managers, should be set up with the aims of improving personnel competence and equipment performance.

Maintenance should renovate each physical system so that it is able to fulfil the function or functions for which it was designed: otherwise effort, time and hence energy may be wasted. Maintenance of equipment depends not just on those who undertake the maintenance function, but also on designers, purchasers and operators of the equipment. Thus, to achieve the optimal performance of the system, all of these should possess a detailed understanding of what needs to be done, and be able to and willing to do whatever is needed when required. The development and execution of a maintenance strategy involves three processes: • Formulate an effective maintenance-procedure for each component (i.e. via purpose and fault identification). • Acquire the resources (i.e. appropriately trained people, spares and tools) needed to execute the strategy effectively. • Execute the strategy (i.e. acquire and deploy the means needed to manage and maintain the resources efficiently) [1]. The need to increase equipment “uptime” (i.e. the periods when it is functioning normally) at least cost has necessitated a radical change in the tactics of maintenance. The organization should implement a proactive profit-focused approach to narrow the gap between actual and ideal costs for maintenance. Excessive “downtime” has always adversely affected the productive capability of the Nigerian electric-power industry, thereby increasing operating costs and leading to a deterioration of customer service and satisfaction. The effect of downtime has become more apparent by the worldwide movements towards just-in-time (JIT), lean operations and total-quality management (TQM) processes. Maintenance, being a significant occupation for personnel, can account for up to 40% of the total cost of Nigerian electric-power generation. According to the annual International Competitiveness Report, there are major differences in maintenance effectivenesses and individual outputs between individual countries. Consultants frequently quote 15% as being the maintenance cost gap between those of field leaders and the world-class average performance. In addition, the average potential for improving production, by implementing a proper maintenance scheme, has been estimated to be 6 → 8% [2]. For Nigeria, the corresponding figure is far greater. Two strategies, which offer a path for achieving long-term continual improvement, rather than the promise of a quick fix, have attracted increasing interest within modern industries. These are reliability-centred maintenance (RCM) and total productive-maintenance (TPM). RCM is a process which helps determine what must be done to ensure that any physical asset continues to do whatever its designers, and subsequently its users, want it to do [1]. In essence, two objectives are met: (i) determination of the maintenance requirements of the physical system and (ii) then ensuring that these requirements are met as cheaply and effectively as feasible. TPM is a process that has operators and maintainers working together, as a team, to improve product-quality, enhance the effectiveness of use of the equipment, minimise downtime and reduce waste. This is accomplished by focusing on those aspects that prevent a plant from running at its optimal condition and by empowering the team with the authority and responsibility for the equipment’s long-term upkeep. TPM reduces significantly the operational and maintenance costs by focusing on the causes of failure through the creation of a sense of ownership (by the plant’s operators, maintainers and support staff) that encourages the development of a “prevention at source” attitude. In essence, TPM seeks to reshape the organization in order to liberate its own potential and talent for achieving improvements. TPM is concerned with the fundamental rethink of business processes in order to reap the benefits of reductions in cost, enhanced quality of service and/or end-product and increased speed of production. Complications encountered when studying maintenance arise not only from the national culture, but also from organizational/corporate culture: this is readily apparent at the Afam, Ogorode and Kainji Dam electric-power stations. These gas, steam and hydropower stations respectively are situated in the southern (Afam and Ogorode) and northern (Kainji Dam) districts of Nigeria. This paper will discuss the impact of culture in the maintenance procedures of Nigerian organizations, compared with what occurs in the advanced countries that use business-excellence models and adhere to ISO 9000:2000 standards.

Unplanned downtime reduces profitability through both lost production and the requirement of resources to get the plant up and running again. The Nigerian electric-power industry, at present, lacks the desirable corporate and organizational cultures that have been adopted elsewhere in world-leading plants. Managers in the Nigerian electric-power industry should be more proactive in their approach to maintenance functions and so develop a maintenance culture, which embraces the following elements:
Knowledge sharing and learning.
Clear objectives for TPM and RCM processes.
High levels of benchmarking and standardization.
Development of easily accessible, comprehensive databases to help in achieving the analysis and evaluation of each considered process. 308 M.C. Eti et al. / Applied Energy 83 (2006) 299–310 A ‘‘bottom-up’’ approach to problem solving is believed to be a more effective way for sustaining continual improvement: it is often the workforce that first recognises the need to generate and introduce improvements [28]. The task for the Nigerian electric-power industry
s maintenance managers is to adopt the best from the highly industrialized nations
maintenance-management strategies and absorb them into Nigerian corporate culture, which, too often, is parochial and outdated. Traditional cultural moulds need to be broken in order for these industries to become greater contributors to Nigerian society and the world.