Search

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify what is currently valued in maintenance services. The study first conceptualizes the value construct through an examination of its elements, including both financial and non-financial elements, and second provides insight into its actors’ (i.e. customer companies, service providers, equipment providers) attitudes toward value creation. Design/methodology/approach The study uses data collected from maintenance service professionals by an online survey. First an explorative factor analysis is conducted to examine the value construct. After this cluster analysis is conducted to define the actors. Findings The empirical findings suggest seven main elements that capture maintenance service value: relationship synergies, reliability of the service partner, development, availability, service solutions and problem solving ability, environment, health, safety and quality, and adaptability to suit different situations. Further analysis reveals that the actors can be divided into three main strategy types: basic, quality- and collaboration-oriented partners. Originality/value In previous studies the comprehensive nature of maintenance service value has received less attention, and the literature has focused on the technical and financial aspects. This paper provides a new conceptualization of the value creating elements, including also non-financial elements, and offers an integrated measure for the actors to identify the comprehensive value construct around maintenance services. In addition, the findings show that the actors in the field still have varying strategies when considering value creation. Communication and mutual understanding of the value creating elements are important so that right services are carried out and developed with the right partners.

Augmented Reality (AR) is an emerging technology that can provide support to the provision of maintenance and technical assistance services by dispersed technicians, who are not convenient skilled to deal with the increasing complexity of modern products. This paper, through a case study in an industrial context, presents the main technical and organizational challenges that have to be faced in order to introduce AR in the delivery process of maintenance services.

Emerging industrial service process development combined with managing complexity in service supply networks is an area where literature is still scarce. This paper seeks to critically analyse traditional maintenance business practices and to present a model to support the new production paradigm based on collaborative, value-adding networks. This paper is based on interviews and structured discussions with experts in different fields, and analysis of the results of industrial case studies. Our constructive research approach includes formulation of an advanced model to support a collaborative and networked maintenance business based on the identification of the current key challenges. Value networks are still lacking methods, models and practical business scenarios that support the collaborative provision of maintenance services. Adoption of the model presented in this paper is assumed to support service suppliers in coping with the challenges in dynamic maintenance service supply networks. The originality of our work lies in providing an integrated depiction of our model from several perspectives.

This work presents an economic and environmental impact assessment of maintenance services in order to evaluate how they contribute to sustainable value creation through field service delivery supported by advanced technologies. To this end, systems dynamics is used to assist the prediction of economic and environmental impacts of maintenance services supported by the use of an e-maintenance platform implementing prognosis and health management. A special concern is given to the energy use and related carbon footprint as environmental impacts.

The aims of this paper are (1) to identify the characteristics of maintenance service providers that directly impact maintenance service quality, using 18 independent covariables; (2) to quantify the change in risk these covariables present to service quality, measured in terms of equipment turnaround time (TAT). A survey was applied to every maintenance service provider (n = 19) for characterization purposes. The equipment inventory was characterized, and the TAT variable recorded and monitored for every work order of each service provider (N = 1,025). Finally, the research team conducted a statistical analysis to accomplish the research objectives. The results of this study offer strong empirical evidence that the most influential variables affecting the quality of maintenance service performance are the following: type of maintenance, availability of spare parts in the country, user training, technological complexity of the equipment, distance between the company and the hospital, and the number of maintenance visits performed by the company. The strength of the results obtained by the Cox model built are supported by the measure of the R2p,e = 0.57 with a value of R p,e= 0.75. Thus, the model explained 57% of the variation in equipment TAT, with moderate high positive correlation between the dependent variable (TAT) and independent variables. © Copyright AAMI 2013.

In this paper, we examine the large body of existing research on outsourcing, and assess the status of research on outsourcing the maintenance of medical devices. Because so little research in this area currently exists, the study was broadened to include other fields that outsource maintenance services, and considers possible applications to the field of medical device maintenance. In all, this paper examines 55 articles spanning various dimensions, including: mathematical models, empirical studies, and conceptual papers. We conclude that research into the outsourcing of medical device maintenance services in hospitals is still in its infancy stages, and that further progress in this field would benefit from additional empirical study grounded in management theory. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Today, many companies struggle with maintenance work established by pre-requisites during purchasing, installation and start-up of plants, systems and machines. In search for improvements in existing maintenance organizations, it´s easy to conclude that they look like and is a direct consequence of previous engineering decisions and activities. Maintenance is, however, performed in the operation phase with weak coupling to what created it. Using an empirical knowledge base, several examples of this narrow view on maintenance is given along with the consequences it results in today. It is argued, that the increasing need to create and preserve knowledge will be the driver for change and the main contribution to an enlarged and more efficient maintenance function. Improvements are pointed out using references to the leading actors creating the frontier today where most companies could be tomorrow. The paper hopefully will contribute to how maintenance processes and activities are being designed, set-up and carried out.

Creating a successful service offering for a physical product and implementing the services require extensive information exchange across the boundaries of the service provider and client organisations. A change from a transaction-to-relationship-based service model calls for new capabilities from the product manufacturer. This change, however, also offers new possibilities for the utilisation of lifetime information in a more effective way. Product lifetime information has several purposes of use including the development, management and implementation of services. Additionally, the manufacturer providing services has the advantage of efficiently utilising the accumulated information in the product development. The basic idea for the service provider is to create added value by processing, analysing and converting the gathered data into knowledge that can be utilised in providing better services. Thus, the asset owner will benefit from sharing the information by receiving better managed and implemented services resulting in improved equipment efficiency. Sharing relevant lifetime information calls for transparency from all parties involved. Building the kind of framework presented in this paper for the shared information content and procedures for the utilisation of the information will help in clarifying the common objectives in the relationship between the customer and service provider.

This study addresses information sharing in service context through supply chain management and technological perspectives. The aim is to illustrate challenges in service supply chain information sharing and highlight the role of semantic technologies in dealing with them. Through a qualitative case study looking at a maintenance service supply chain, problem areas in information sharing are identified and semantic integration model to address them is presented. The effects of the developed model on supply chain performance are discussed. Maintenance services are a novel application area for semantic technologies. The research also addresses the research gap concerning service supply chains and information sharing in them.

Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference in Through-life Engineering Services; International audience; Ecology and industry, which have been many times considered as antagonists, are now associated together in the sustainability concept to support the three social / economic / environment pillars. In that way, industrial enterprises and more precisely manufacturing ones seek to integrate environment into their strategy by conducting an innovative rationalization of the production as promoted by industrial ecology and circular economy paradigms. This rationalization is favoring the evolution from product to a Product-Service Systems approach (PSS). The continuity of these services is mainly carried out by the maintenance which is no longer an aftermarket service needed for product (system) functionality but rather an inherent service function of the product (system). Thus this paper aims to investigate the role of maintenance to contribute to the development of these paradigms. It is based first on describing the main features of industrial ecology/circular economy transposing the nature concepts to industrial system. It leads to define key principles and levers to be addressed for the development of industrial ecosystems. Then maintenance activity is globally presented allowing, in a second step, to place maintenance services already existing in line with some of these principles and levers (ex. green maintenance), but also to explore advanced maintenance services more able to support promotion of industrial ecosystem by covering others principles and levers. These advanced services can be built from conventional maintenance processes but integrating sustainability goal (ex. prognostics of energy efficiency) or from innovative processes (ex. regenerative management). Finally scientific issues related to these advanced maintenance services are underlining and should concretize future research directions for researchers/practitioners working on maintenance field.