Maintenance: An Evolutionary Perspective

Manoeuvring physical assets into the future

“…A third characteristic of Asset Management is the pursuit of corporate objectives throughout the entirety of the organization. At Liander, the asset managers observed a gap between the operational and tactical aspects of Asset Management, and the strategic level, similar to the 'threatening gap' described by Pintelon and Parodi-Herz (2008). This was felt in the communication with higher management: the strategic questions asked by higher management could not easily be answered by the asset managers, who rather had an tactical and technical focus than the desired 'businesswise' perspective.…”

“…Therefore, it is important that in the management of the assets, the corporate objectives are both known and pursued. However, Pintelon and Parodi-Herz (2008) stated that one of the most important challenges for maintenance is to close the "threatening gap between the top management level and the overall maintenance strategy determination and the tactical level on which the maintenance concepts are designed, detailed and implemented" (2008, p. 45). In other words: "alignment is needed between organizational goals and technical norms and standards, but this is lacking in many organization[s]" (Wijnia and Herder, 2010, p. 271).…”

“…These follow roughly the same logic, even though some add additional aspects, such as failure rate modelling, cost-benefit analysis of preventive maintenance or uncertainty analysis (Gupta and Mishra, 2016). Additionally, RCM can generally be executed in two different ways: traditional and streamlined (Smith and Hinchcliffe, 2003;Pintelon and Parodi-Herz, 2008).…”

“…Once, maintenance was a 'necessary evil' (Pintelon and Parodi-Herz, 2008), as equipment that broke down needed to be repaired. The unavoidable costs of these repairs meant that maintenance was perceived as a 'cost centre' (Takata et al, 2004).…”

“…Additionally, the organization itself may change, for example by focusing on new markets or changing its manufacturing strategy from cost leadership to differentiation. Moreover, a company may have changed its perception of maintenance, from a necessary evil to a profit centre (Pintelon and Parodi-Herz, 2008). In the Asset Management literature, many authors recognize the impact of change in Asset…”