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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.

Maintenance services are created increasingly in business networks, but value management is still too often supported by separate tools used by single companies. The aim of this study is to find out how the value of industrial maintenance services can be identified and modelled considering the views of each business network member (e.g. the customer, maintenance service provider and equipment provider) and how the multiple views can be used in collaborative decision making. The paper presents a three-stage process that supports the maintenance service network member companies’ way towards more collaborative and value-driven decisions with the help of the tools created in a project called MaiSeMa. By increasing the collaboration level of the different parties, the value potential of the created tools and also the network increases.

Industrial maintenance services are outsourced more and more as manufacturers’ own maintenance units are nowadays rare. However, instead of outsourcing the maintenance as a whole, many companies are acquiring the needed resources from several actors. Thus, maintenance practices on a site can be performed by the customer itself, an equipment provider, or an independent maintenance company. How should this be orchestrated? We begin our study with explaining the current state of industrial maintenance business. Next, we offer insights from the services networks literature. Then we move on exploring maintenance through seven case companies, which brings us to our suggestions for two optional future maintenance models: (1) capacity-based maintenance and (2) locally networked maintenance framework.

A person’s mental structures are found to be the root of a person’s actions, and are thus linked to the higher performance outcomes of the organisation. This paper focuses on increasing the understanding of the person’s perceived power in the early phases of the project sales process, examining persons’ perceived power in a single case in which a large international company is selling a project. The study contributes to the research on project business by illustrating a person’s perceived power within industrial project sales. We suggest that during the early phases of the project sales process, the persons involved in the sales process perceive their own power to be lesser than that of others, although their interest in the project is equal to that of the others. In addition, we claim that the exiguity of perceived power during project sales impacts the person’s decision making and communication.

Many industrial manufacturers are transforming their business models towards long-term customer solutions. An extensive option to implement solution business is a build-own-operate-transfer (BOOT) business model, where a company is given the responsibility to design, finance, build, own, operate and maintain an entity, such as an industrial process. Usually, the arrangement is made for a specific time period of up to 30 years and between public and private actors. The purpose of the present study is to provide knowledge on utilising the BOOT business model in an industrial context. The methodologies used in the study were a literature review and a single case study. This paper introduces an industrial BOOT business model and determines the advantages, disadvantages and risks of an industrial BOOT solution. Furthermore, this paper proposes a description of the BOOT consortium. Based on the results, we suggest that the BOOT business model can be adapted for an industrial context