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In order to keep production in Sweden the industry has to stay competitive on a global market. This fact increases the demand of high utilisation of automated production equipment. However, research has indicated that the average utilisation of production equipment in Sweden is about 60%. One key factor for increasing the utilisation is effective maintenance of the production equipment. Still, within the manufacturing industry, maintenance is often regarded as a cost driving necessity rather than a competitive resource. In a survey, published 2004, about 70 % of the respondents consider maintenance a pure cost centre. The same survey also revealed that 28 % of the respondents have no maintenance strategy or policy at all. The aim of this paper is to discuss the role of maintenance strategies as a means of making maintenance contribute to competitiveness. The paper is based on a theoretical overview and a case study in which six companies have been studied regarding the perceived quality of their maintenance, the challenges they face, and their view on the strategic impact of production maintenance. In the case study, four companies, which are dissatisfied with their current maintenance, are compared with two reference companies, well reputed for their maintenance excellence. The findings indicate that a strategic view of maintenance is essential for achieving the desired level of maintenance performance. This strategic view has to be held, not only by the production and maintenance management, but by the company management group. While the two reference companies have well formulated maintenance strategies, including aligned measures, acting as roadmaps for their continuous improvement of their maintenance, the four studied companies lack both strategic goals and relevant measures for their maintenance activities. The reasons for this are individual for each company but they share an insight that they need to develop their maintenance in order to stay competitive in their business areas.

There is large financial potential in optimum production maintenance. Research has indicated that as much as one third of the maintenance cost is unnecessarily spent due to bad planning, overtime costs, bad use of preventive maintenance etc. However, studies have shown that few manufacturing companies consider maintenance to be a strategic area. Even among those firms that do have a maintenance strategy it is not evident that their strategies are clearly linked to the business strategies. Many companies in the manufacturing industry seem to find formulation of maintenance strategies to be difficult. To some extent this is due to lack of formal competence in maintenance management. Also companies often find the formulation process too resource demanding. Therefore, maintenance strategies are not widely used in manufacturing industry today. In addition, there seems to be no clear picture of what components a maintenance strategy could or should include. With this in mind, this paper aims at presenting a process for the formulation of maintenance strategies in discrete item manufacturing organizations. Important criteria for the formulation process are that it is easy to follow and that it does not require vast amount of resources.

The results show that the formulation process, developed and tested in this study, has been easy to use and understand. The three case companies have found that their new maintenance strategies have given them a good picture of the present situation, as well as good guidance in their necessary improvement work.

Global trade, increased levels of automation and ambitions to apply lean production increases the demand for effective maintenance of production equipment. Still, the maintenance function is often regarded as having mainly a tactical role for the assets. The fact that many companies have no clear goals for their maintenance activities is serious since goals and strategies are driving forces for increasing the maintenance effectiveness. Several studies have recognized that the absence of clear strategies obstruct maintenance development initiatives. Also, maintenance strategies should support the corporate strategy and business drivers considered critical success factors of the company. Maintenance development is the discipline of development of strategies, methods, and tools to be applied in any organization. However, well defined maintenance strategies have to be well implemented in order to contribute to the competitiveness of the company.

The aim of this paper is to identify some of the driving forces and obstacles that have to be dealt with when implementing maintenance strategies. In the paper, three industrial cases are presented to exemplify which implications to be dealt with when implementing maintenance strategies.

The paper is based on interviews and direct observations in three manufacturing companies in Sweden. All three companies have used the same method, within the same time frame to formulate maintenance strategies, fully aligned with their overall strategic goals. All three companies have their own specific challenges, but share the ambition to improve their maintenance programs.

The case studies show that implementation of maintenance strategies to a large amount resembles a typical change project with all its challenges. However some of the obstacles, and also some of the driving forces are more likely to appear in the maintenance context such as the organizational and cultural barriers between the maintenance and production departments.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to exemplify and discuss the potential in strategic maintenance development.

Design/methodology/approach – This paper is based on a three year industrial case study, conducted in three different companies within manufacturing industry.

Findings – All three companies have showed substantial improvements in the chosen KPIs. Further, the management has increased the insight on maintenance as a contributor to company competitiveness.

Research limitations/implications – None of the companies has used any financial KPI for their strategic maintenance development. It would be of future interest to study the concept Cost of Poor Maintenance as an evaluation tool for strategic maintenance development.

Practical implications – This study exemplifies the potential of strategic maintenance development in manufacturing industry.

Originality/value – This paper show the results from three years of formulation, implementation, and evaluation of maintenance strategies.

Key words Strategic maintenance development, maintenance key performance indicators

Paper type Research paper

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose and discuss cost of poor maintenance (CoPM), as a concept for managing the improvement of maintenance performance within manufacturing industry.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on literature studies and two workshops

with representatives from industry and academia.

Findings – CoPM is proposed as a new concept for maintenance performance improvement. The concept is derived from established practices in quality costing and hence it should be easily accepted in industry.

Practical implications – By using CoPM as a concept for maintenance performance development, manufacturing companies may identify the potential financial impact of the development work. The CoPM concept should provide a good viewpoint for identification of deficiencies in the maintenance performance within a given manufacturing system.

Originality/value – By adopting a well-known measure from the research area of quality development, a financial measure for maintenance is proposed in this paper. The measure shows which parts of the maintenance costs are justified and which costs relate to poorly performed maintenance. In this way a more balanced view of the financial contribution of maintenance activities may be achieved, even at board level of the company.

Keywords Maintenance, Direct costs, Performance levels, Production improvement

Paper type Conceptual paper