According to WHO, at any one time, around 50 per cent of medical equipment in lowand middle-income countries cannot be used because of lack of maintenance or spare parts.1 We have found that unwillingness or inability to repair equipment and put it back in use is also a major cause. New equipment is made available by different international non-government organisations (INGOs) competing with on...

Article history: Received 27 September 2007 Received in revised form 4 October 2008 Accepted 15 June 2009 With the rapid advancement of technology, product life cycle is shortening continuously. In order to compete against other firms in fiercely competitive global markets, a firm has to keep developing new technology to differentiate itself from others. The acquisition of new coretechnology eq...

Industrial equipment requires maintenance to remain operational. The level of maintenance that is required, and how easily it can be executed, is affected by the characteristics of the equipment. Therefore, design decisions have a strong influence on the effectiveness and efficiency of the maintenance process. Ideally, the design of the equipment should be aligned with the design of the mainten...