The use of IT within maintenance management for continuous improvement

For long maintenance has been treated as a separate working area, isolated from other areas such as production and quality. However, the awareness of maintenance importance and complex nature has increased. To be able to take full advantage of maintenance, systems that assist in the task of planning and follow up on a continuous improvement basis are required. This paper describes the use of maintenance practices and how IT is used for maintenance management by using data from a survey about maintenance management in Swedish industry. The paper finds out that maintenance activities connected to the Plan and Check phases of the PDCA-cycle are emphasised to a low extent while the Do phase is more emphasised and that companies tend to intentionally select CMMS functionality that supports the Plan phase of the PDCA-cycle, if they put high emphasise on these kind of activities.