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Reducing the Cost of Tea Production through Employing Usage Based Preventive Maintenance (Case Study in Kenya Tea Development Agency Factory KTDA Chebut)

In a continuous production line, most of the machinery requires maintenance to ensure that they are working properly since the breakdown in one machine stops the whole production line. Therefore, preventive maintenance is always scheduled to ensure that machine parts are replaced and maintained. During replacement, production is at halt and thus the production output is decreased. An effective scheduling of maintenance can help to reduce downtime and reduce the number of schedule maintenance. This case study investigated how the use of usage-based preventive maintenance in place of periodic preventive maintenance can help to optimize maintenance further by; reducing maintenance cost, extending lifetime of an equipment and reducing the overall production cost. To perform the optimization, the t-test hypothesis was formulated upon the reception of the actual production data. The hypothesis was used to investigate if the actual production is same or different from the design potential production capacity. The results and findings showed that the actual production was different from the expected design potential thus the alternative hypothesis is not rejected. The efficiency test was found to be 79% showing that the maintenance set for the system is under-utilized which caused over-maintenance of equipment. Under-utilization attributed majorly to the periodic maintenance applied even at low input of tea leaves to the factory. The results showed that optimized usage-based preventive maintenance can be used to save up to 10 scheduled maintenance per year. Reduction in numbers of maintenance directly reduce maintenance cost, hence, minimization in overall production cost. From the results, this study lays a basis to optimize production in any organization by optimization through minimization of input resources and maximization of outputs. The optimization strategy of maintenance applies to both product and service organizations.