Identifying Organisational Requirements for the Implementation of an Advanced Maintenance Strategy in Small to Medium Enterprises (SME)
In many organisations the production equipment represents the majori ty of invested capital, and deterioration of these facilities and equipment increases production costs, reduces product quality and has a significant impact on energy consumption. Over recent years the importance of maintenance, and therefore maintenance management within manufacturing organisations has grown. The maintenance function has become an increasingly important and complex, activity particularly as automation increases. The opportunity exists for many organisa tions to benefit substantially through improvements to their competitiveness and profitability by adopting a new approach to maintenance management. Several tools and technologies including Condition Based Maintenance, Reliability Cen tred Maintenance and more recently E Maintenance have developed under the heading of Advanced Maintenance Strategies. However, the adoption of advanced maintenance strategies and their potential benefits are usually demonstrated in large organisations. Unfortunately, the majority of organisations, classified as Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) are constrained by the lack of knowledge and understanding on the requirements which need to be in place be fore adopting an advanced maintenance strategy. This paper will present the find ings from an extensive literature review and an ex amination of multiple case studies. The results show that there is a set of key requirements which strongly in fluence the implementation of an Advanced Maintenance Strategy (AMS) within SMEs.