Using Lean Principles in Water Maintenance Operations with Application to Water Treatment Plant

Abstract

Water maintenance operations and management are so expensive, and costs too much money, Lean principles can serve maintenance sector and any sector like manufacturing and services, since it will reduce costs and efforts of workers. Lean principles first used in Toyota and then distributed in all over the world, it aims to minimize costs and eliminate all wastes in any operation or processes. Costs of water treatment plants water maintenance operations are so high and contains a lot of wastes. This paper aims to apply Lean principles in water maintenance operations in all sectors and then apply them in a water treatment plant as a case study. Also the paper discussing the capability of applying Lean tools like 5S which can be applied on maintenance operation to measure Lean applicability. MTBF, MTTR, 5S audit scores, Availability and reliability are calculated here. The methodology followed in this study depending of reviewing related studies and collecting some data from water filtration station maintenance department, then analyze them and deriving some conclusions to prove the presented claims. Availability and reliability are calculated for some given data from literature and collecting data from special water treatment plant in Kuwait. It is found that applying lean principles and tools like 5’S and others will enhance both availability and reliability of the maintenance system. Applying 5S audit scores shows the statues of the maintenance department and its availability and then reliability to be in good case. The costs and wastes of water maintenance operations in like stations after applying lean are reduced. Applying lean principles like 5’S tool on maintenance management system and water maintenance operations will improve the maintenance quality, MTTR, MTBF, availability and reliability and 5S audit scores of the systems are improved and so number of failures and downtime of the maintained component will be decreased