Strategic maintenance management: Formulating maintenance strategy

In recent decades, by introducing lean manufacturing the vulnerability to system disturbances has increased and so, the demand for dependable production equipment. The need for having high production equipment availability causes companies to need a more effective and efficient maintenance strategy in order to stay competitive. Despite the increasing demand on reliable production equipment, few manufacturing companies work with strategic maintenance development and a large part of the manufacturing industry lack clear maintenance strategies. It is therefore difficult to develop the maintenance work in accordance with the strategic goals of the manufacturing companies. The main objective of this paper is to define a process for formulating maintenance strategy in order to facilitate further development in a strategic way. The problem has been studied by literature review and through case study at one major manufacturing site in Sweden to investigate the company’s view on strategic maintenance development. Hence, a formulated maintenance strategy has been provided and presented. The company’s overall goals considered and translated to the strategic objective of maintenance. Moreover, balanced score card is used as a tool to make a framework of the maintenance strategy. As a result of this study, the company could easily formulate a maintenance strategy by using a simple process based on the tools that they have already used. In addition to this, the result indicated how maintenance strategy can contribute to the company’s business goals.