Value

Pillai Anita Ravi

6.3- 1/6

SCOPE OF MAINTENANCE IN CURRENT ECONOMIC MELTDOWN

Capt Pillai Anita Ravi

MAINTENANCE PRACTICES RELEVANCE IN THE BACKDROP OF PRESENT ECONOMIC RECESSION

Introduction

1. In November 2001, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a private, non-profit tracking group composed of academic economists from Harvard, Stanford and other universities, made official that the global economic giant, United States of America, was officially reeling under the effects of economic recession. 2. According to the International Monetary Fund, a recession occurs when economic growth, as measured by the GDP (Gross Domestic Product), falls below 2.5%.

Signs of the Recession

3. Standard & Poor’s Industry Surveys indicates that the recession in manufacturing may have begun in early 2000. According to David Huether, Chief Economist for the Washington, D.C. based National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), the factors that caused the recession that began in March 2001 were manufacturing-related. Signs of this recession included order slowdown, inventory build-up and reeling inflation. The results: a record number of bankruptcies, disappointing earnings and layoffs. 4. As early as 1999, according to Zimmerman, manufacturers were seeing an imbalance between orders received and outgoing shipments. After ramping up to handle the peak times, demand slowed, and manufacturers got stuck. They found themselves left with added capacity and stockpiles of inventory. They had no choice but to cut production and sell off inventory. 5. Another sign of recession was rising inflation. In 1999, the inflation rate was only 2.2%. But as energy prices rose into 2000, so did the inflation rate, by more than a percentage point. 6. And downsize the manufacturers did. The sector lost 8% of its workforce in 2001. There were more than 2.6 million reported job cuts overall, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor, which was three times the...