This thesis reviews and analyses the potential impact of maintenance on the fulfilment of Green Production Systems. Overall aim is to highlight how maintenance may contribute to decreasing the environmental impact of production. The thesis is based on the combination of literature studies and set of qualitative interviews conducted in selected companies. Three Swedish manufacturers were interviewed about their way of working, as well as their views on sustainability within operation management including maintenance. The results of the research explains why some organisations fail to recognize maintenance’s role to achieve sustainability, and how maintenance has been characterized in these organisations, namely by: short term pressures, reactive approach, neglecting hidden costs, lack of teamworking between production and maintenance departments, and low focus (hierarchical low status) on maintenance importance, resulting in lack of skilled labor available in organizations. In contrast, practices and strategies to succeed found to be based on the following: long term thinking, structured way of working, a proactive approach to maintenance, aiming to integrate core values into operational work, and establishing an environment which fosters continuous improvement and employee development. Same study identifies areas and "effects of poor maintenance" to be dealt with in the journey toward sustainable production, these are: economic, quality, processes wastes, emissions, resource consumption, safety and work environment related. It is therefore suggested that organizations may choose a proactive approach to maintenance that is best suited to their needs, which allows efficient production and long-term profitability, while considering safety and environmental aspects. Various concepts are available, but the organisation has to optimise on the combination of various practices. Following to the findings, a proposal is made that proactive culture should be integrated into daily work in a practical way such as Safety-Quality-Environment becomes everyone's responsibility. Sustainable perspective and sticking to best course of proactive measures are prioritized against short term pressures. To support this proposal a toolkit is developed that can be used at team/level continuous improvement programs, based on the PDCA model. Finally, the thesis emphasizes what benefits the optimum maintenance can provide on the fulfilment of competitive and resource-efficient production systems.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:mdh-26184 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Önder, Metin |
| Publisher | Mälardalens högskola, Akademin för innovation, design och teknik |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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