ABSTRACT
Maintenance is a combination of all technical, administrative, and managerial actions during the life cycle of an item intended to keep it in or restore it to a state in which it can perform the required function (Komonen, 2002) (see Figure 26.1). Traditionally, maintenance has been perceived as an expense account with performance measures developed to track direct costs or surrogates such as the headcount of tradesmen and the total duration of forced outages during a specified period. Fortunately, this perception is changing (Tsang, 1998; Kumar and Liyanage, 2001, 2002a; Kutucuoglu et al., 2001b). In the 21st century, plant maintenance has evolved as a major area in the business environment and is viewed as a valueadding function instead of a “bottomless pit of expenses” (Kaplan and Norton, 1992). The role of plant maintenance in the success of business is crucial in view of the increased international competition, market globalization, and the demand for profitability and performance by the stakeholders in business (Labib et al., 1998; Liyanage and Kumar, 2001b; Al-Najjar and Alsyouf, 2004). Today, maintenance is acknowledged as a major contributor to the performance and profitability of business organizations (Arts et al., 1998; Tsang et al., 1999; Oke, 2005). Maintenance managers therefore explore every opportunity to
improve on profitability and performance and achieve cost savings for the organization (Al-Najjar and Alsyouf, 2004). A major concern has been the issue of what organizational structure ought to be adopted for the maintenance system: should it be centralized or decentralized? Such a policy should offer significant savings as well (HajShirmohammadi and Wedley, 2004).
