Suburban Streetlight Maintenance: a Best Cost Approach

摘要

Suburban street-light maintenance is a highly visible service, rendered in a very dispersed environment. Supervision and control to ensure the quality of service in a 'factory' measured in square kilometers becomes virtually impossible. To complicate matters even more, work loads vary from day to day (Figure 1). To be able to meet the reasonable service level expectations of Pretoria's rate-payers, existing maintenance practices were re-examined. Proposals on how many of the inherent difficulties in these maintenance operations could be overcome, are shared in this paper. It includes an optimized strategy to reduce cost for specific service levels. The suggested approach advocates the management of street-light maintenance by focusing on outputs rather than input effort. The research shows that considerable cost savings can be realized by diverting from traditional practices. These alternatives are substantiated by comparing costs and objectively measurable outputs. Many service providers have considered and implemented alternatives, such as alternative light sources and bulk lamp replacement. In this paper a decision-making model is presented, in order to quantify both the cost element and the resulting quality of service. In South Africa, the rest of Africa and around, the world, ratepayers are demanding more for less. By considering and evaluating suggested practices for specific environments, every street-light maintenance service provider can contribute to more effective maintenance practices.