Investigation into Industrial Generator Maintenance Culture in Agro-Based Industries in South-West Nigeria

Abstract

  ABSTRACTAn investigation into the maintenance culture of industrial generators in the agro-based industries in South-West Nigeria has been carried out. The instruments used for this survey includes: interview, market survey direct observation and questionnaires. Investigation revealed that over 75% of the agro-based industries in the South-West town of Ibadan are predominantly medium scale in status with a carrying capacity of less than 550KVA electricity generating equipment. There is high level compliance (92.5%) tokeeping of daily maintenance record,negligence onlong time fuel keeping (up to 5 weeks at times), a greater degree of negligence inmean time to repairs (MTTR) on malfunctioned components and poor response time to servicing the generator at the recommended hours of use. This is an indication of high mean time to failure (MTTF) consequent on frequent component breakdown. From the foregoing, the industries should greatly improve on their attitude to wake-up calls onequipment servicing if recurrent failure and excessive spending on generator is to be kept low. The continuous use of generator with malfunctioned part should be stopped. A stop and check approach is recommended immediately abnormality is noticed in operation; there should be immediate stoppage, confirmation and correction of the fault just developed.