Maintenance decision making is an important part of managing the costs, effectiveness and risk of maintenance. One way to improve maintenance efficiency without affecting the risk picture is to group maintenance jobs. Literature includes many examples of algorithms for the grouping of maintenance activities. However, the data is not always available, and with increasing plant complexity comes increasingly complex decision requirements, making it difficult to leave the decision making up to algorithms.This paper suggests a framework for the standardisation of maintenance data as an aid for maintenance experts to make decisions on maintenance grouping. The standardisation improves the basis for decisions, giving an overview of true variance within the available data. The goal of the framework is to make it simpler to apply tacit knowledge and make right decisions.Applying the framework in a case study showed that groups can be identified and reconfigured and potential savings easily estimated when maintenance jobs are standardised. The case study enabled an estimated 7%-9% saved on the number of hours spent on the investigated jobs.

It is important to be able to compare and evaluate different solutions early in development. This paper proposes a method for structuring historical data into a data model that can support the evaluation of new design concepts. The data is contextualized by linking it to a hierarchical decomposition of existing products. Two case studies were conducted to evaluate the value of using historical data when evaluating new concepts. The cases confirm that the proposed method is useful for evaluation of new concepts.

Maintenance is an essential aspect to keeping production facilities running and safe. However, without an overview of the maintenance impact on production, gaining clarification of the impact of maintenance is difficult. This paper introduces modularization of maintenance based on the dimensions of maintenance: physical, action, and process. The approach is applied in a case study where maintenance decisions are improved and faster than prior to the introduction of the modularized maintenance.

Maintenance is coming more and more into focus and in many areas maintenance costs are becoming increasingly important to running a profitable business. Performing the right maintenance is therefore important to many companies. The right maintenance is a balance of costs, impact on production, reduction of downtime, ensuring high safety and reducing environmental impact. The foundation of performing the right maintenance is an effective maintenance process. A maintenance process, as described in literature, includes identification of required maintenance; planning of the maintenance tasks; scheduling of the planned tasks; execution of the maintenance; and close-out of the maintenance job. Descriptions of the maintenance process in literature mainly follow a sequential process similar to that of sequential engineering. The sequential process is typically slow and inefficient and therefore does not support the need for running an efficient maintenance program. This paper presents a literature review that looks into how product development have met similar problems with a sequential development process and how this problem is solved through concurrent engineering. The maintenance process is analyzed through a literature review looking at different maintenance processes. The literature shows that the maintenance process is subject to large variation depending on the source, but that all the sources base their process on a sequential structure. It is also observed that maintenance is facing similar problems to the sequential product development. Based on the literature review, four initiatives for improving the maintenance process is suggested. The initiatives are based on the identified methodology from concurrent engineering. A case study is used to further understand the sequential issues in maintenance and to highlight how the initiatives can influence the maintenance process. The case study shows that implementing the initiatives gives a potential 12% cost reduction. This indicates a clear need for a more concurrent maintenance process, but to fully conclude the need and benefits of a concurrent maintenance process, more studies need to be conducted.

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