The general lack of senior management concern about maintenance activity in industry over the last 20 years, revealed in government surveys. is reflected in the limited literature and virtual absence of research into the principles of organisation theory applied to maintenance organisation structures. This thesis seeks to aleviate this situation by following a systems - contingency approach in a research and comparative analysis of maintenance organisations in the aluminium industry. The key design elements involved in the structure of these maintenance organisations are identified. They are found to be departmentation. size/shape. role of senior maintenance manager. roles of maintenance engineers. roles of maintenance foremen. intra-departmental co-ordination. and inter-departmental co-ordination with production and engineering groups. Those factors. primarily human factors. upon which these design elements may be contingent are proposed and the significance of their impact predicted. Their inter-dependence and influencing mechanisms are described with the aid of a set of systems models. The relationship between changes in the maintenance organisation structure and improvement in maintenance and business performance is demonstrated. together with proposed methods for identifying and measuring that improvement. On the basis of this research. the analysis and design of each key element is possible. and a rational approach to the design of a whole maintenance organisation structure in an aluminium smelting firm can be proposed. It is demonstrated that much of this approach 1s equally relevant to the design of maintenance organisation structures in other process industries.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:630462 |
| Date | January 1991 |
| Creators | Riddell, Henry S. |
| Publisher | University of Manchester |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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