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Organisations have introduced reliability‐centred maintenance (RCM) with a view to changing their overall way of performing maintenance. Many times, however, these organisations have experienced cumbersome or even failed RCM introduction. This is usually because of managerial and organisational obstacles, which more or less unexpectedly turn up during introduction. This paper focuses on managing the introduction of RCM. By applying process and requirement management principles, obstacles that turn up during introduction can be identified early on. As an example of this, we cite the results of a case study of the introduction of RCM in a Swedish hydropower company.

For several branches of industry, an increasingly competitive environment has raised important questions concerning maintenance in plant systems. For example, the 1996 deregulation in Sweden’s electricity sector has resulted in increased competition among the country’s power producers. To survive the competition, suppliers have to reduce maintenance costs, i.e. handle maintenance more efficiently. Risk analysis is one tool decision makers can use to help them prioritise as they plan maintenance actions. There are a number of different approaches to risk analysis. As the results of an analysis must form a reliable basis for decision making, it is important to consider whether the quality of the results will vary significantly with the risk analysis approach chosen. This paper presents a comparative study based on three independent risk analyses performed on a specific hydro‐power plant. The comparison and evaluation of the analyses reveal major differences in performance and results, along with various factors that affect the quality of the analyses. The study establishes the importance of a well‐planned requirement specification and the need to analyse and interpret risk analysis results, before making maintenance decisions.

There are limited studies of continuous improvement (CI) from the perspective of a project-based organization (PBO). Hence, the purpose of this paper is to explore challenges that PBOs may encounter when applying CI.

An exploratory and qualitative approach has been used, involving six management teams in six different PBOs, using focus groups interviews as data collecting method.

A high degree of autonomy among project managers seems to limit a collective approach to project management in PBOs. As a consequence the overall PBO performance becomes subordinate to the individual project performance—an approach opposite to that of CI. Further, the management teams themselves seem to uphold a project focus, also complicating improvement initiatives from a PBO-perspective.

The management teams have been the unit of analysis, where the PBOs mainly conduct projects in an engineering and construction context, and are located in the same country and region. This approach enables the thorough study of a phenomenon, while preconditions for generalization are limited. However, the findings could be used by researchers as a basis for more in-depth studies of specific challenges, and for making surveys to obtain generalization of results.

The results can induce awareness and understanding of different challenges if applying CI in a PBO, hence a starting point for finding ways to overcome these challenges.

The article contributes to an increased understanding of challenges that PBOs may encounter when applying CI, confirming and presenting additional findings compared to previous studies.

In present context of globalization, maintenance of production systems is very important. Many of the organizations are facing a lot of problems in maintenance management. Therefore the purpose of this paper is to identify the main barriers in maintenance management and to rank them for effective maintenance strategies.

To rank the main barriers in maintenance management, technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution is used. For giving score to different factors a team of three experts was made. All experts were having more than ten years of experience in area of maintenance management.

Lack of top management support, lack of measurement of overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) and lack of strategic planning and implementation have emerged as top three barriers in implementation of maintenance systems in industries.

Findings imply that for successful maintenance, top management should be very supportive for taking different initiatives, training programmes, etc. Organizations should try to improve overall performance of machines known as OEE rather than only machines productivity.

These findings will be highly useful for professionals from manufacturing sector in implementing effective maintenance management system.

In the present context of globalization, maintenance of production systems is very important. A lot of organizations are facing many problems in maintenance management. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to identify the main problems in maintenance operations and compare these problems with those in manufacturing operations as found in the literature for effective maintenance.

To identify the main problems in maintenance operations and to compare them with those in manufacturing operations, a large amount of published literature was studied. The paper systematically categorizes the published literature and then analyzes and reviews it theoretically.

Lack of top management support, lack of measurement of overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), lack of strategic planning and implementation and many more problems are biggest problems in the maintenance operations as well as manufacturing operations. These have emerged as top problems in the implementation of effective maintenance strategies in industries.

From the findings, the authors can conclude that for good maintenance, top management is supposed to be supportive in taking different initiatives. Industrial organizations should focus on improving overall performance of machines identified as OEE rather than only productivity of machines. This paper will be extremely useful for the researchers, maintenance professionals and others concerned with maintenance to understand the significance of maintenance problems in industries.

These findings will be highly useful for professionals from the manufacturing sector in implementing effective maintenance strategy in the maintenance management system.

This paper aims to study the Gramian solutions and solitonic interactions of a (2 + 1)-dimensional Broer–Kaup–Kupershmidt (BKK) system, which models the nonlinear and dispersive long gravity waves traveling along two horizontal directions in the shallow water of uniform depth.

Pfaffian technique is used to construct the Gramian solutions of the (2 + 1)-dimensional BKK system. Asymptotic analysis is applied on the two-soliton solutions to study the interaction properties.

N-soliton solutions in the Gramian with a real function ζ(y) of the (2 + 1)-dimensional BKK system are constructed and proved, where N is a positive integer and y is the scaled space variable. Conditions of elastic and inelastic interactions between the two solitons are revealed asymptotically. For the three and four solitons, elastic, inelastic interactions and soliton resonances are discussed graphically. Effect of the wave numbers, initial phases and ζ(y) on the solitonic interactions is also studied.

Shallow water waves are studied for the applications in environmental engineering and hydraulic engineering. This paper studies the shallow water waves through the Gramian solutions of a (2 + 1)-dimensional BKK system and provides some phenomena that have not been studied.