Lean thinking for a maintenance process

Abstract

The maintenance process shares significant operating costs in an organisation. Lean thinking can be incorporated into maintenance activities through applying its principles and practices/tools. Lean maintenance (LM) is a prerequisite for lean manufacturing systems. This research proposes a new structure for LM process based on a systematic literature review of a significant number of related articles that were published on LM. The process structure is designed based on the five lean principles to guide and support organisations to pursue maintenance excellence. This study establishes a scheme for LM tools that are structured into 2 level 4 bundles and 26 lean practices/tools and develops a House of Waste (HoW) to demonstrate the association between maintenance wastes and the LM tools. With a successful accomplishment of the proposed scheme, the performance of a maintenance department can create more improvement opportunities over time to reach the maintenance excellence status.