Towards an holistic understanding of disruptions in Operations Management

The paper reviews the literature on maintenance management, integrates key dimensions of maintenance within a taxonomy of maintenance configurations, and explores the impact of differing configurations on contextual factors a nd operational performance. "Prevention", "hard maintenance integration" an d "soft maintenance integration" were identified as key maintenance variabl es. Data were collected from 253 Swedish manufacturing companies, and three distinct clusters were identified. "Proactive Maintainers" emphasized prev entive maintenance policies. "IT Maintainers" relied on computerized and co mpany-wide integrated information systems for maintenance. "Maintenance Lag gers" emphasized all maintenance dimensions to lesser extent than the other s. The importance of maintenance prevention and integration differ between contexts. There were subtle performance differences across identified confi gurations, but preventive and integrated maintenance were more important fo r companies seeking competitive process control and flexibility. There exis ted no group with any great emphasis on all three maintenance dimensions, b ut attaining truly high performance may require a rare mix of the three dim ensions. This mix of variables could constitute a hypothesized "World Class Maintenance" group. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.