Interaction between customer satisfaction and server satisfaction within industrial maintenance

In the capital intensive industries today, the productivity of capital is more important than before. The importance of the well-functioning maintenance function is one of the critical success factors of the production systems. Because the maintenance crews are largely self-directed, the conception of individual crew members concerning the working environment directs remarkably priorities and actions taken. At the same time in the above mentioned industries outsourcing of maintenance activities is increasing which means that the consistent perception of the prevailing state of affairs is an important precondition to the higher customer satisfaction. In this paper we introduce the results of the several empirical studies concerning factors influencing the customer satisfaction of the maintenance function and the perception of maintenance crews concerning the same factors. In this paper we map the conscious and unconscious factors influencing customer satisfaction using e.g. factor- and correlation analyses. We also identify the relative importance of various factors using e.g. multivariate regression analyses. The same method is applied to the maintenance crews in order to identify their conscious and unconscious conception concerning the factors determining customer satisfaction and conception of the state of affairs, that is, how well the crews in question are working towards those factors. In the same token the operational culture of the maintenance crews has been identified.