Perspectives in Industrial Maintenance Business

Dr. Jorma Järviö

Industrial maintenance is undergoing major
changes today. By giving up in-house
maintenance and starting to buy it, industry has
created new business where outside service
business professionals are setting new standards
for performance. It is not exaggerated to say that
the maintenance industry is in transformation.
Two major causes explain the present
turbulence. First, maintenance has been
traditionally viewed from the engineering
perspective (technologies, machines) only. By
ignoring or not giving enough weight to the other
perspectives (marketing, economical and
organizational perspective) maintenance industry
has been more or less defenseless against
service providers that sell industrial service.
The second major cause is the rapid changes in
environment. Technology assimilation gap is
obvious, in-house maintenance crews? capability to
maintain competency is difficult and expensive.
Industry must either train the people, or buy the
needed knowledge (subcontracting). Maintenance
organizations need university degree personnel to
perform demanding tasks like processor
programming and network troubleshooting.
Modern business schools have developed
efficient management methods that are widely
applied in manufacturing industries, but not in
maintenance ?industries?. By applying these
methods, maintenance organizations can
increase their efficiencies by 10% - 35%. This
development is a must if in-house organizations
want to keep their jobs. If this development is not
possible or it is too slow, companies very often
sell their maintenance department to outside
experts, who bring the lacking skills and
competence. After this the company starts to buy
maintenance from this new company.
To successful service providers, doing service
is business. This means that the company must
aim at three goals. It must keep its customers satisfied by providing services that the customers
want. Secondly, operations must be profitable so
that the owners feel secure with their investment
and want to develop it. Thirdly, the company must
have personnel that are committed, capable and
willing to meet agreed goals.

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The Authors

Mr. Jorma Järviö Doctor Service Management Solutions Oy Dr Järviö is an internationally known specialist in development and implementation of plant maintenance and maintenance business concepts, as well as performance measuring metrics. He writes actively ... Read more