The Maintenance Wheel

Abstract

In a world where companies rely increasingly on machines and automated production lines to deliver customer value, asset availability is a becoming a larger driver of companies’ productivity and thus performance. In effect, where maintenance was historically perceived as a cost-centre, it is generally treated as a value-adding business element that must be effectively managed today. However, the increased use of machines and automation has also resulted in an increasing portfolio of assets, often with a highly complex nature. Coupling the growing portfolio of complex assets with factors such as maintenance being a cross-functional activity, stricter HSE requirements, a stochastic maintenance demand, maintenance management complexity has also increased drastically. The result is a reality where maintenance is, on the one hand, becoming more critical to companies’ performance. Simultaneously, it is also a large and growing source of operational issues and costs that is highly challenging to improve.

This thesis project is conducted for a consulting firm specialised in helping customers realise benefits. Prior to this thesis, they had access to a highly successful way of managing maintenance developed and applied in the industry by a second company. This maintenance management approach is called The Maintenance Wheel. It has realised benefits in the magnitude of roughly 10 M EUR per year in combined savings from two large-scale facilities. Moreover, it contributed to a significant increase in maintenance quality. In effect, this maintenance management approach provides a way to cope with the increased maintenance complexity, with massive empirical benefits.

Seeing this, the consulting firm has attempted to help customers with ineffective and inefficient maintenance operations realise benefits through The Maintenance Wheel. However, they have struggled to convince their customers to implement it, seeing that the customers struggle to understand the management approach. As senior managers considering The Maintenance Wheel will perceive it as an innovation, Karabin is struggling with an innovation diffusion barrier, caused by a failure to transfer knowledge on how The Maintenance Wheel works effectively.

The management approach was developed internally by the second company, without considering diffusion. Consequently, there existed no conceptual description of the management approach prior to this thesis. Seeing this, the thesis project research objective was to design an MMF aimed communicating how The Maintenance Wheel works to help cope with the knowledge-based diffusion barrier. Note that an MMF is a theoretical framework explaining an approach to managing maintenance. This MMF effectively provides knowledge on how The Maintenance Wheel work, and was constructed with a design science research methodology.

The evaluation indicated that the constructed MMF sufficiently communicates how The Maintenance Wheel works. After a brief presentation for senior managers with no prior knowledge of how The Maintenance Wheel worked, it was possible to have in-depth discussions. Thus, the knowledge-based diffusion barrier caused by customers’ senior managers not understanding the management approach should be solved.

Nevertheless, the evaluation also showed that one particular area of future development is required. The senior managers interviewed requested examples of how the framework work in practice. In effect, to help more effectively transfer knowledge on how The Maintenance Wheel works, the consulting firm should provide practical examples of the different elements of the framework.