The assessment of maintenance process vulnerabilities in small and medium enterprises

Abstract

Recently, business/production systems have become much less tolerant to production equipment failures. This brings intense pressure and expectations to maintenance function and a necessity to include an advanced maintenance program with a clear trend setting concept of zero failure as a realistic and achievable goal. Therefore, organizations worldwide strive towards techniques that will achieve business goals such as improved efficiency, decreased level of risk, increased safety, and sustainable development that separate successful from unsuccessful companies. One approach that can improve the realization of the maintenance process is detecting process vulnerabilities from the management aspect. This is a very important issue in an SME and it can have a big influence in the matter of its overall resilience. In this paper, a methodology for quantification of vulnerabilities of the maintenance process which represent significant input for decision makers in an organization is presented. The model is tested through an illustrative example in one enterprise from the production sector in Central Serbia. The obtained data can be a powerful input for defining an appropriate business strategy and future steps. Copyright © 2013, AIDIC Servizi S.r.l.