Equipment is one of the major contributors to the performance and profitability of manufacturing systems and its importance is rather increasing in the growing advanced manufacturing technology application stages (Kutucuoglu et al., 2001). The equipment is subject to deteriorations and failures as the consequence of usage, aging, fatigue, environmental conditions or other extreme events. Such system deterioration may lead to higher production cost, lower product quality and increase probability of breakdown (Mobley, 2002).
Unexpected breakdowns not only increase the operating cost of the productive machines but in fact, the cost of lost production is inevitable for operation interruptions. Scheduled downtime is to control when the system will be down in favour of production. According to Ali et al. (2008), downtime will be more predictable if preventive maintenance is employed. The area of asset maintenance is becoming increasingly important as greater asset availability is demanded. Effective maintenance management is essential and critical as a way to reduce the adverse effect of equipment failures and to maximize equipment availability (Muhammad et al., 2010). The ultimate goal of maintenance is to provide optimal reliability and availability of production equipment, and maintain its operability to meet the business needs of the company
