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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.

The purpose of this paper is to describe maintenance in a generic process model, in order to support an alignment of maintenance with other company internal processes aimed at fulfilling external stakeholder requirements.

The proposed maintenance process model is based on existing theories and is illustrated by examples from a paper‐mill case study related to the maintenance of DC‐motors.

The proposed model supports a holistic view of maintenance and the alignment of the maintenance process with other company internal processes, in order to fulfil external stakeholder requirements.

Further research could include an application of the proposed maintenance model to test its usefulness to identify stakeholders and also hazard diagnosis.

The importance of vertical and horizontal alignment between the maintenance process and other processes in order to achieve effectiveness and efficiency is illustrated. The model can be used to increase the understanding of the role of maintenance within a company. Thereby, the proposed process model provides valuable support for effective, efficient, and continuous risk reduction.

The proposed process view highlights that maintenance can contribute to the fulfilment of external stakeholders' requirements, which strengthens the proposition that maintenance should be seen as a business‐process that creates value and not as something that is a “necessary evil”.

The purpose of this study is to identify maintenance related losses, and their causes, in order to describe different deviations in the maintenance process that contributes to incidents and accidents at the Swedish Railway.

In this paper incident and accident reports from 666 derailments and collisions at the Swedish Railway during 1988‐2000, stored in a national database, are studied with respect to possible maintenance related causes.

The railway is a complex technical system used for both freight and passenger transportation. Maintenance is one way to achieve safety and dependability of the railway. However, at the same time badly performed maintenance may also cause accidents. The study shows that maintenance related causes represent 30 percent of all rail and track related incidents and accidents represented in the database. About 80 percent of the maintenance related accidents happen during the execution phase. The most common cause of maintenance related accidents is imperfect communication and information between the maintenance personnel and the operators. Rule violations, especially lack of permission to perform maintenance work on the track, are the second most frequent causes.

Identifies maintenance related losses, and their causes, on Swedish railways but is of value to all concerned with transport maintenance and safety.

There is widespread and long-lasting worry related to the condition of public purpose buildings and public investments. Public buildings make up a huge capital stock and proper maintenance and investments are important for public policy. Notwithstanding, the relevant research literature is fragmented and spread across several fields. The authors take stock of earlier and more recent research and suggest some ideas for future research.

The authors summarize the relevant literature and discuss implications of various theoretical assumptions and empirical findings for maintenance and investment strategies.

A better understanding of the role of public facilities in public service provision is important. Relevant topics for further research are the impact of technological changes, both in buildings and service provision, economic issues including macroeconomic shocks and trends that influence public funding and demand for public services, and advancing maintenance scheduling models to consider a portfolio of facilities. Further, the empirical literature suffers from a lack of relevant data to gauge both the condition of public facilities and their impact on public services.

There is widespread worry that poor facilities adversely impact public services, but the size and significance of this impact are an open question. This paper contributes by taking stock of the existing research on public facilities, maintenance, and investments, and suggest ideas for further work.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the challenges before Indian manufacturing organizations for adapting to proactive total productive maintenance (TPM) initiatives. The aim of this research is to critically examine the factors influencing the implementation of TPM practices in the Indian manufacturing industry, and to devise an overall maintenance strategy for overcoming obstacles to successful TPM implementation.

The study focuses on systematic identification of obstacles in TPM implementation and working out success factors towards improving manufacturing performance in Indian industry through strategic TPM initiatives.

The study highlights the strong potential of TPM implementation initiatives in affecting organizational performance improvements. The paper reveals that implementing TPM is by no means an easy task, which is heavily burdened by organizational, cultural, behavioral, technological, operational, financial, and departmental barriers.

The study has been conducted in Indian manufacturing organizations to formulate the critical success factors and enablers for overcoming obstacles to successful TPM implementation with regard to its preparedness to face global challenges.

The study stresses the need for improving the synergy between the maintenance function and other organizational quality improvement initiatives in the organizations, to establish maintenance as a competitive strategy for meeting the challenges of a highly competitive environment.

The study highlights the difficulties faced by Indian manufacturing organizations in their attempt to implement TPM initiatives in order to improve organizational efficiency.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a literature review of the performance measurement (PM) in maintenance. The authors aim to discuss the background and development of the PM for maintenance, besides defining the concept of performance measures for maintenance and the frameworks developed.

A detailed and extensive literature search and study was undertaken by the authors on the concept and definition of PM, performance indicators (PIs), maintenance performance indicators and various performance frameworks. The history and theory of PM over different phases of business and technological developments have been critically examined and analysed in this review paper.

This paper reviews and presents the different PIs and PM frameworks like; balanced scorecard (BSC), performance prism, performance pyramid and performance matrix, etc., and identifies their characteristics and shortcomings. After considering related issues and challenges, frameworks and approaches for the maintenance performance measurement (MPM) are also presented, where the emerging techniques like; emaintenance have also been discussed amongst others. More and more industries are applying the balanced and integrated MPM frameworks for their competitive survivability and sustainability.

The concept, issues and approaches considered for the MPM frameworks can be adapted by the practicing managers, while trying to define and develop an MPM framework for the operation and maintenance activities. The considerations of the advantages and limitations of different frameworks can provide insights to the managers for implementation.

Some literature reviews on MPM and MPM frameworks are available today. This paper makes an attempt to provide a detailed and relevant literature review, besides adding value in this new and emerging area.

This research is focused on the application of reliability‐centred maintenance (RCM) in a chipping and sawmill company. The aim of the study was to illustrate the application of RCM in a chipping and sawing mill.

RCM is a structured process, which develops or optimises maintenance requirements of a physical resource in its operating context in order to realise its inherent reliability by logically incorporating an optimal combination of reactive, preventive, condition‐based and proactive maintenance practices. A detailed analysis of the RCM approach is presented as a step towards improving preventive maintenance (PM) within a sawmill.

The study shows that the way that PM tasks are specified is a good indicator of the effectiveness of the PM program and could be a major source of maintenance‐related downtime. It is also revealed that most maintenance programs, which purport to be proactive, are in fact reactive. The paper also shows that RCM can be successfully applied to industries anywhere; even in less industrialized countries.

The paper focuses on a pilot study of a section of a chipping and sawmill. The development and implementation of the RCM approach is elaborated based on a pilot program in the edging unit of a sawmill company. Further application to the entire plant, albeit time‐consuming, is recommended.

Application of RCM in sawmill industries, within developing countries, has had limited application. The paper demonstrates that regardless of technological challenges in less developed economies, maintenance approaches such as RCM can still be fruitfully applied in order to achieve maintenance excellence. The paper should be useful for maintenance practitioners and researchers, particularly in less industrialized countries.

Quality management, by means of total quality management (TQM), is considered to foster organisational performance characterised by competitiveness and long‐term profitability. Since the benefits of quality management cannot be achieved without the sustained performance of equipment affecting product quality, maintenance management has become important. This has led to the development of maintenance methodologies, such as total productive maintenance (TPM) and reliability centred maintenance (RCM). TQM, TPM and RCM implementation have, however, often failed or been poorly executed. This has affected organisations' performance and ultimately survival in a competitive environment. This paper includes a comparative study of literature on TQM, TPM and RCM implementation, focusing on organisational change. The study found several common categories of activities when implementing TQM and the maintenance methodologies. These categories can be considered crucial to obtain management and employee commitment. Case studies on TQM, TPM and RCM implementation are used to validate the categories identified, and to yield recommendations on the handling of activities within these.

A major role of facilities management is ensuring the useability, reliability, and safety of the asset being managed. To achieve this management must use a system to control the maintenance function. The purpose of the paper is to identify and describe the various maintenance management models and systems available for facilities managers to consider.

Two comprehensive reviews of the literature were undertaken to categorise the various maintenance management models and identify popular models in practice.

The review identified 37 maintenance management models. From these, four were found to be popular: total productive maintenance (TPM), condition-based maintenance (CBM), reliability-centred maintenance (RCM), and condition monitoring (CM). While many thousands of papers can be found of these four models, the support in the literature for the remaining 33 models is very limited.

While providing a sound foundation for future research, the papers findings are based solely on reviewing literature.

For facilities managers seeking to expand their knowledge of a particular model or maintenance management systems in general, the paper provides a practical understanding.

Papers focused solely on identifying and describing maintenance management models are scarce and this paper makes a concerted attempt to link academic research with management practitioners.

The purpose of this article is to critically evaluate maintenance strategies and determine to what extent models from other sectors can be applied to building maintenance.

The paper is a theoretical paper based on a number of Swedish studies, both case studies and questionnaires. From these a number of stylized facts have been identified and the purpose is to explain and draw conclusions from these.

The main finding is that there are a number of specific uncertainties that affect building maintenance planning making more detailed long‐term plans less meaningful. A new structure for maintenance is proposed focusing on long‐term strategies goals for various buildings/components and then short run adjustments when new information comes up.

The case for the new model needs to be strengthened by further studies, including studies from other countries.

Maintenance activities will be more important as the large building stock from the 1950s and 1960s needs to be renovated or demolished. A rational structure and realistic expectations concerning maintenance planning is then important.

The most important contribution of the article is to underline the importance of different types of uncertainty for the structure of maintenance planning for building.