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The purpose of this paper is to increase productivity through smart maintenance planning by including productivity as one of the objectives of the maintenance organization. Therefore, the goals of the paper are to investigate existing machine criticality assessment and identify components of the criticality assessment tool to increase productivity.

An embedded multiple case study research design was adopted in this paper. Six different cases were chosen from six different production sites operated by three multi-national manufacturing companies. Data collection was carried out in the form of interviews, focus groups and archival records. More than one source of data was collected in each of the cases. The cases included different production layouts such as machining, assembly and foundry, which ensured data variety.

The main finding of the paper is a deeper understanding of how manufacturing companies assess machine criticality and plan maintenance activities. The empirical findings showed that there is a lack of trust regarding existing criticality assessment tools. As a result, necessary changes within the maintenance organizations in order to increase productivity were identified. These are technological advancements, i.e. a dynamic and data-driven approach and organizational changes, i.e. approaching with a systems perspective when performing maintenance prioritization.

Machine criticality assessment studies are rare, especially empirical research. The originality of this paper lies in the empirical research conducted on smart maintenance planning for productivity improvement. In addition, identifying the components for machine criticality assessment is equally important for research and industries to efficient planning of maintenance activities.

The purpose of this paper is to identify maintenance improvement potentials using an overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) assessment within the manufacturing industry.

The paper assesses empirical OEE data gathered from 98 Swedish companies between 2006 and 2012. Further analysis using Monte-Carlo simulations were performed in order to study how each OEE component impacts the overall OEE.

The paper quantifies the various equipment losses in OEE, as well as the factors availability, utilization, speed, quality, and planned stop time. From the empirical findings, operational efficiency losses are found to have the largest impact on OEE followed by availability losses. Based on the results, improvement potentials and future trends for maintenance are identified, including a systems view and an extended scope of maintenance.

The paper provides detailed insights about the state of equipment effectiveness in terms of OEE in the manufacturing industry. Further, the results show how individual OEE components impact overall productivity and efficiency of the production system. This paper contributes with the identification of improvement potentials that are necessary for both practitioners and academics to understand the new direction in which maintenance needs to move. The authors argue for a service-oriented organization.

The purpose of this study was to assess the readiness of the Swedish manufacturing industry to implement dynamic, data-driven preventive maintenance (PM) by identifying the gap between the state of the art and the state of practice.

An embedded multiple case study was performed in which some of the largest companies in the discrete manufacturing industry, that is, mechanical engineering, were surveyed regarding the design of their PM programmes.

The studied manufacturing companies make limited use of the existing scientific state of the art when designing their PM programmes. They seem to be aware of the possibilities for improvement, but they also see obstacles to changing their practices according to future requirements.

The results of this study will benefit both industry professionals and academicians, setting the initial stage for the development of data-driven, diversified and dynamic PM programmes.

First and foremost, this study maps the current state and practice in PM planning among some of the larger automotive manufacturing industries in Sweden. This work reveals a gap between the state of the art and the state of practice in the design of PM programmes. Insights regarding this gap show large improvement potentials which may prove important for academics as well as practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the productivity improvement potentials from maintenance planning practices in manufacturing companies. In particular, the paper aims at understanding the connection between machine criticality assessment and maintenance prioritization in industrial practice, as well as providing the improvement potentials.

An explanatory mixed method research design was used in this study. Data from literature analysis, a web-based questionnaire survey, and semi-structured interviews were gathered and triangulated. Additionally, simulation experimentation was used to evaluate the productivity potential.

The connection between machine criticality and maintenance prioritization is assessed in an industrial set-up. The empirical findings show that maintenance prioritization is not based on machine criticality, as criticality assessment is non-factual, static, and lacks system view. It is with respect to these finding that the ways to increase system productivity and future directions are charted.

In addition to the empirical results showing productivity improvement potentials, the paper emphasizes on the need for a systems view for solving maintenance problems, i.e. solving maintenance problems for the whole factory. This contribution is equally important for both industry and academics, as the maintenance organization needs to solve this problem with the help of the right decision support.