Collaborative development of Maintenance investment management: A case study in pulp and paper industry

The interest in purchasing external maintenance services increases as a strategic choice, as manufacturing companies increasingly focus on their core business. In the case presented in this paper, an external service provider has taken the responsibility of the maintenance functions as a strategic partner. A development project was started to support the creation of profound and functional partnership. Focus of the project was to support the practical collaboration between the partners. The development focused on two activities, in which the both organisations clearly have important roles. These two activities are: management of maintenance investments and operator involvement in maintenance activities. The idea was to improve the collaboration practices by practical collaborative development of these two key activities. Maintenance investment decision making requires functional collaboration between the organisations. The maintenance organisation is responsible for making investment proposals and production organisation makes the final decisions. Originally not much collaboration was planned in this process. Furthermore there was a demand for improving and clarifying the reasoning for proposals. To meet this demand, a working group comprising representatives of both organisations and researchers developed proper commonly agreed criteria, a tool and a process for preparation of maintenance investment proposals. In the developed investment process, the collaboration aspect was taken into account. In this paper, we present the collaborative development process, resulting maintenance investment management development and key findings regarding the importance of practical development efforts done together in building trust and collaboration in a business partnership.