Call for papers: "Maintenance-based Process Management as a Part of Business Competitiveness"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Process Management and Benchmarking.

During the previous two to three decades maintenance has transformed from a mere cost centre into a range of tasks which create value in industrial companies. Decision makers are starting to realise the extent to which maintenance impacts the productivity, sustainability and quality of manufacturing processes. There are a small but growing number of modern maintenance methods, tools and strategies available which enable process optimisation on several levels within an organisation.

Despite the advanced results of scientific research in this area there are still major challenges for decision makers. The impact of maintenance on achieving the company’s strategic goals is often misunderstood and not known by senior management. There is a need to communicate the technical results of maintenance management research to a wider audience using simple economic arguments that clearly indicate the effect of process-level decisions on business competitiveness.

Maintenance management is not risk averse and suffers from a number of challenges including risk management, forecasting based upon long life cycles, and large datasets which need to be analysed to provide accurate information. In practice, process optimisation and maintenance often occurs in collaboration between several parties. The decision making views of different departments, various outside service providers and original equipment manufacturers, together with the owner of the process, must be taken into account. The outsourcings of maintenance have created a need to link maintenance-based process management to the competitiveness of both single companies and large complicated business networks.

This special issue calls for submissions that contribute to process management on the basis of maintenance, translating technical maintenance norms into business information on the level of individual companies or company networks. Both theoretical and empirical research papers are invited. However, theoretical papers should introduce empirically validated models and approaches. The results must be based on well-grounded theory and rigorous research methods, and managerial implications must be included.

Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Maintenance models and tools to support decision making
• Measuring and improving the quality, productivity and sustainability of processes through maintenance
• Process management from a life-cycle perspective
• Maintenance strategies and methods
• Link between process management and strategic management in companies
• Maintenance outsourcing
• Maintenance and process management in business networks

Important Dates

Manuscript submission: 20 February, 2015
Notification to authors: 29 May, 2015
Final versions due: 4 September, 2015