**7. Maintenance control system**

A maintenance system of medical equipment should be considered as a simple system with inputs/outputs. Inputs to the system are data of defective equipment, materials and spare parts, consumables, data and information on its use, local and global policies and procedures. The result is reliable and well-configured medical equipment that can be achieved only by efficient planning of maintenance and service. The system to be functional has a set of rules that must be implemented. These activities include planning, scheduling, executing and controlling.

The control is performed having as objective the organization and functioning of the maintenance system. The objectives coincide with the organization's objectives and include equipment availability, costs and quality. An important role is played by the feedback that is used to improve the performance of the medical system/equipment [21].

The existence of an effective maintenance control system improves the reliability of the equipment and increases its service life without having unscheduled shutdowns. Maintenance control contains a set of activities, tools and procedures used to coordinate and allocate maintenance resources, including those for specialized personnel, to achieve the objectives of the system, including the following:

**245**

*A Modern Approach for Maintenance Prioritization of Medical Equipment*

An essential element of maintenance control is the work order system used for planning, executing and controlling maintenance work. The work order system consists of the necessary documents and the well-defined workflow process. The documents provide means for planning and collecting the information needed to

Currently, the process of controlling the maintenance of medical equipment

1.Concrete and coherent setting of objectives and standards: the control process begins with planning; the objectives and performance standards to be pursued are established. Performance objectives must be clear results that must be

2.Methods of measuring effective performance: the purpose is to accurately determine the results of performance (output standards) and/or performance efforts (input standards). Quantification must be accurate to identify significant differences between what was actually achieved and what was originally

3.An important role is played by the comparison of the results obtained following the measurements with imposed objectives and standards. This stage is expressed by the control equation: Need for action = Desired performance − Actual performance. Sometimes, a comparison with data from the history of equipment use, data collected from the medical device file, can be taken into account for an evaluation of current performance. Or you can use a relative comparison that tracks the performance of other equipment in the same model, meeting the same standard, used by people with similar training. In comparison, maintenance standards are scientifically established by methods such as time and motion studies. Preventive maintenance routines, for example, are measured in terms of expected time in each routine performed, depending on

4.Carrying out corrective actions: the last step in the control process is to take all necessary measures to correct problems, nonconformities or improvements. Effective management is one that pays attention to situations that show the greatest need for correction. It saves time, energy and other valuable resources, focusing on critical and priority areas. Maintenance managers must pay special attention to two types of situations: a problematic situation in which the real performance is below the imposed standard and a second situation, of oppor-

The oldest and most common maintenance and repair strategy is "fix it when it breaks." The appeal of this approach is that no analysis or planning is required. The problems with this approach include the occurrence of unscheduled downtime at times that may be inconvenient, perhaps preventing accomplishment of committed production schedules. These problems provide motivation to perform maintenance and repair before the problem arises. The simplest approach is to perform maintenance and repair at preestablished intervals, defined in terms of elapsed or

tunity, in which the real performance is above the standard.

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.92706*

monitor and report maintenance work.

involves four stages:

achieved.

**8. An efficient reporting and feedback system**

planned at the beginning of the process [22, 23].

operating hours or time intervals.

**9. Maintenance strategies**

