Planning of Maintenance Activities – A Current State Mapping in Industry

Journal article, 2015

Industrial Product Service System (PSS) thinking can be applied to production system by considering it as a product. Prior studies show that strategic planning of the maintenance activities in manufacturing industries holds great potential to increase productivity. Planning of maintenance activities is therefore an integral decision making aspect for maintenance engineers and it is important to analyze how industries are currently working with planning of maintenance activities and what additional support is needed. This paper aims at mapping the current state of the work procedures for maintenance engineers and planners in the industry and analyzes the gap from current practices to the strategic planning which could increase productivity. The study specifically focuses on how industries work today with finding critical resource, performing criticality analysis, and planning maintenance. A descriptive research approach is followed, where empirical data is collected in Swedish industry through three different data collection methods. The results show the state-of-art industrial practices and the gaps in maintenance planning.