Despite many significant contributions and advances of lean thinking recorded in articles, books, and industrial case studies, its impact upon the maintenance function has not been fully investigated. From a maintenance perspective, excluding TPM, little or no insight into the use of lean thinking concepts in maintenance can be found in the literature, despite prominent contributors advocating greater management and business integration. An objective of the research described in this thesis was to satisfy the need for industry to understand the contribution of lean thinking to the maintenance of manufacturing systems. A research hypothesis (lean thinking improves the effectiveness of the maintenance function) was therefore devised that aimed to bridge this gap in knowledge in which the researcher developed two new tools alongside existing methodologies for further investigation. The first novel research tool, a lean concept reference framework, was used to comprehensibly represent fe--antfiffikifig concepts possible within a company, and maintenance in particular. Ihe sec n oyýý _411 measure of maintenance performance comprised a number of indicators that sign ough ify c maintenance activity. This was used to reflect the impact of lean concept use by maintenance through change in activity performance. The research investigates the current views of lean thinking and maintenance within the UK, and particularly in the automotive industry. It exposes the diversity of maintenance as a function within this industry, and highlights the scope of lean concept use and understanding. As an outcome of the research, it was found that each company investigated had different reasons for adopting and using lean concepts within their maintenance function. Similarly, each company differed in the management and use of their performance data. Nonetheless, all those investigated accepted the role of lean concept use within maintenance, and considered certain elements useful. These elements were used as an aggregation of tools to assist maintenance in their activities rather than using them to develop an alternative maintenance strategy. However, perception of lean concept use, and the perceived benefits gained differed according to different viewpoints. Although it was generally accepted that lean use bought about or improved overall skills, and helped provide the basis of a more robust and standardised maintenance department, concern was expressed concerning the difficulty in translating essentially lean manufacturing techniques to suit maintenance.

This thesis have the intention of to create a deeper understanding around IT-supports role in Lean concepts, and has been done with a hermeneutic approach and a theory creating approach as a case study with qualitative method, semi-structured interviews has been used as data collecting technique. The interview respondents were one IT-manager and one department manager from 4 municipalities. The data has then been analyzed by part- and comprehensive analysis with a hermeneutic approach and presented in the 4 different cases, that the municipalities used represent, and in one where all is combined. The results show massive use of computers but not any use of IT-support for Lean according to the respondents. Conclusions that where made was that programs like the business system in use in the organization and Microsoft Office package not is seen as a IT-support for Lean despite that several of the respondents use it to do Lean things like processes and that this is more or less considered as an obvious package to have. They have a tendency to think it has to be a separate IT-system or program especially made for Lean for it to be important and be interpreted as an IT-support for Lean.

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