https://www.mdu.se/

In industry, there is a constant demand for increased productivity in order to stay competitive. Still, Swedish industry has an average utilization of about 60% in its production systems. One important factor for increasing the equipment utilization is effective maintenance of production assets.

Within process industry a strategic view on maintenance activities is common and most companies regard maintenance as a profit centre. Meanwhile, the discrete units manufacturing industry still in many cases view maintenance as a cost driver. However, with the spread of Toyota-inspired production concepts, the manufacturing industry is beginning to view maintenance as a strategic asset. Still, though, many companies have no formulated maintenance strategy.

The main purpose of the research, presented in this thesis, has been to develop a work-process for formulation of effective maintenance strategies for enterprises in the manufacturing industry.

Through one descriptive and two prescriptive case studies a work-process for formulation of maintenance strategies has been developed. The descriptive study revealed some of the differences between companies with and without maintenance strategies. It also showed how some companies view the strategic contributions of maintenance. The first prescriptive study showed how stakeholder involvement may contribute to the identification of relevant performance measures for the maintenance activities. Stakeholder involvement also contributes to the organizational acceptance of the maintenance strategy. Last, the second prescriptive case study led to the development of a work-process for formulation of maintenance strategies. The work-process was tested and verified in three companies, handling different challenges for their maintenance activities. All three companies intend to use the formulated maintenance strategy as a road map for the development of their production maintenance.

Industrial maintenance is a substantial financial post. The total value of maintenance budgets in Europe has been estimated to be approximately 1500 billion € per year. At the same time, there are indications that about a third of these costs are wasted due to poor planning, overtime costs, inferior use of preventive maintenance and so forth. However, the diversity between different types of industry is substantial.

While the process industry, which is rather vulnerable to disturbances, has a tradition of viewing its maintenance as a strategic resource, the picture is quite different in discrete item manufacturing industry. Historically, manufacturing industry has had a surplus of finished goods and Work-In-Progress buffers between machinery. Therefore, the manufacturing industry has been able to fulfil its production demand despite unreliable production equipment. In the last few decades, the concept of lean production has started to spread within the manufacturing industry as a means to improve competitiveness. Manufacturing companies apply lean tools such as flow oriented production layout, Just-In-Time production and Demand-Flow-Technology. As a consequence, the vulnerability to system disturbances increases and hence, the demand for dependable production equipment increases. Despite this increasing demand on reliable production equipment, few manufacturing companies work with strategic maintenance development. One reason for this may be that the existing methods and concepts for maintenance development are quite resource demanding.

The main objective with this research is to develop a simple and cost effective approach aimed to formulate, implement, and evaluate maintenance strategies for the manufacturing industry. In five case studies the following has been studied: (1) The industry’s view on strategic maintenance development, (2) Formulation of maintenance strategies, (3) Implementation of maintenance strategies, (4) Cost of Poor Maintenance, and (5) Results from strategic maintenance development.

As a result from this research, a process for the formulation of maintenance strategies has been developed. Further, a number of driving forces and obstacles, that influence the implementation of maintenance strategies, have been identified. The concept of Cost of Poor Maintenance has been introduced as a means for evaluating the financial contribution of maintenance. Finally, three years of studies in three companies has shown substantial benefits from strategic maintenance development.