History of Maintenance Management

During World War Two, the Office of Special Services (OSS), the forerunner of today’s Central Intelligence Agency, compiled a manual on how to ruin a factory’s output without explosives.  Their main weapon was bad maintenance. 

The manual described ways that transportation and industrial workers could do their jobs but intentionally damage their plant and organization.  The main idea was to do their jobs poorly, in a way where bad workmanship was plausibly accidental.  Some of the targets were boilers, housekeeping, turbines, fusing, motors, tools, building heat, fuel storage, and lubricating oil systems.

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Efficiency of 99.995% … in 1915

The Street Railway Journal, later renamed the Electric Railway Journal was published from 1884 until 1931.  The first 1884 volume described the reason for the journal’s existence, to serve the streetcar industry better than journals focusing on heavy rail. In 1884 it was most common for horses to pull street cars on fixed rails.  The importance of animal power was reflected in the articles about managing animals and many advertisements for grooming machines, traces, harnesses, and cures for horse colic.  A rarer method of motive power was a steam engine that drove an underground tow cable.  The second 1884 volume reported several experiments in using electric motors to power the cable instead of steam. 

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