An empirical investigation on the relationship between business and maintenance strategies

All manufacturing companies choose to compete in the market based on some competitive priorities like cost, quality, flexibility and other priorities, depending upon their manufacturing capabilities. Equipment maintenance being an integral part of manufacturing, can influence these competitive priorities and hence the business strategy directly in a negative or positive way. Over a period of time, there had been significant developments in the field of manufacturing and maintenance. These are in the areas of technology, concepts, methodologies, and philosophies. Examples are Advanced Manufacturing Technologies (AMT), JIT, Total Productive Maintenance (TPM), and Outsourcing. Maintenance, directly influenced by these developments, has risen from a mere tactical to a more strategic level. Hence, there is a growing need to study the relationship between business and maintenance strategies. The paper is supported by a survey conducted in a sample of about 150 companies within Belgium and to some extent in the Netherlands. In this paper, our empirical study investigates whether companies with different competitive priorities pursue different maintenance strategies. The results indicate that quality competitors have more pro-active maintenance policies, better planning and control systems, decentralized maintenance organization structures when compared to others. They manage maintenance much more effectively when compared to others. There is also a difference in the distribution of AMT usage, automation, maintenance personnel (management/supervision and technicians), expenses and budget figures. Quality competitors have more AMT usage, automation, maintenance personnel and spend more on budget, followed by cost and flexibility competitors.