Development of performance monitoring framework to facilitate decision making during fast attack craft maintenance planning

Abstract

Effective maintenance planning is essential for the Sri Lanka Navy as there are responsible entities for procuring and managing maintenance-related requirements in order to meet significant operational availability of ships and craft. Moreover, improper planning can reduce the ship’s availability, which may in turn be reflected in the security perspective in the country. Another issue that requires attention in this field is the cost of maintenance, since improper or inadequate planning could result in breakdowns that could increase the cost of maintenance. Thus, possible key factors that affect ship maintenance planning were identified to provide a framework which can help the decision maker to identify and improve decisions regarding Fast Attack Craft (FAC) maintenance. At the first stage of the study, a review of the literature was conducted to identify the need for maintenance and to select the key factors that affect maintenance planning. Secondly, maintenance performance measurements of the other navies were evaluated by conducting case studies and interviews with professionals involved in the marine craft maintenance sector. In the third stage, a novel framework was developed to measure the maintenance performance of FAC in the Sri Lanka Navy, which was named as the Fast Attack Craft Maintenance Performance Measurement (FACMPM) framework. For the future research works, these criteria to be examined one by one in order to ascertain and optimize maintenance planning for FAC maintenance. Once it is proved, the framework to be adopted to SLN and same framework to be introduced to Major Ships’ maintenance process of SLN.