Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present issues and challenges of scheduled maintenance task development within the maintenance review board (MRB) process, and to find potential areas of improvement in the application of the MSG‐3 methodology for aircraft systems.Design/methodology/approach: The issues and challenges as well as potential areas of improvement have been identified through a constructive review that consists of two parts. The first part is a benchmarking between the Maintenance Steering Group (MSG‐3) methodology and other established and documented versions of reliability‐centred maintenance (RCM). This benchmarking focuses on the MSG‐3 methodology and compares it with some RCM standards to identify differences and thereby find ways to facilitate the application of MSG‐3. The second part includes a discussion about methodologies and tools that can support different steps of the MSG‐3 methodology within the framework of the MRB process.Findings: The MSG‐3 methodology is closely related to the RCM methodology, in which the anticipated consequences of failure are considered for risk evaluation. However, MSG‐3 considers neither environmental effects of failures nor operational consequences of hidden failures. Furthermore, in MSG‐3, the operational check (failure‐finding inspection) is given priority before all other tasks, whereas in RCM it is considered as a default action, where there is no other applicable and effective option. While RCM allows cost‐effectiveness analysis for all failures that have no safety consequences, MSG‐3 just allows it for failures with economic consequences. A maintenance program that is established through the MRB process fulfils the requirements of continuous airworthiness, but there is no foundation to claim that it is the optimal or the most effective program from an operator's point‐of‐view. The major challenge when striving to achieve a more effective maintenance program within the MRB process is to acquire supporting methodologies and tools for adequate risk analysis, for optimal interval assignments, and for selection of the most effective maintenance task.Originality/value: The paper presents a critical review of existing aircraft scheduled maintenance program development methodologies, and demonstrates the differences between MSG‐3 and other RCM methodologies.

Life-cycle cost (LCC) is used as a cost-effective decision support for maintenance of railway track infrastructure. However, a fair degree of uncertainty associated with the estimation of LCC is due to the statistical characteristics of reliability and maintainability parameters. This paper presents a methodology for estimation of uncertainty linked with LCC, by a combination of design of experiment and Monte Carlo simulation. The proposed methodology is illustrated by a case study of Banverket (Swedish National Rail Administration). The paper also includes developed maintenance cost models for track.

Condition assessment is crucial to optimize condition-based maintenance actions of assets such as railway infrastructure, where a faulty state might have severe consequences. Hence, railways are regularly inspected to detect failure events and prevent the inspected item (e.g. rail) to reach a faulty state with potentially safety critical consequences (e.g. derailment). However, the preventive measures (e.g. condition-based maintenance) initiated by the inspection results may cause traffic disturbances, especially if the expected time to a faulty state is short. The alarm limits are traditionally safety related and often based on geometrical properties of the inspected item. Maintenance limits would reduce the level of emergency, producing earlier alarms and increasing possibilities of planned preventive rather than acute maintenance. However, selecting these earlier maintenance limits in a systematic way while balancing the risk of undetected safety-critical faults and false alarms is challenging. Here, we propose a statistically based approach using condition data of linear railway infrastructure assets. The data were obtained from regular inspections done by a railway track measurement wagon. The condition data were analysed by a control chart approach to evaluate the possibility for earlier detection of derailment hazardous faults using both temporal and spatial information. The study indicates that that the proposed approach could be used for condition assessment of tracks. Control charts led to earlier fault warnings compared to the traditional approach, facilitating planned condition-based maintenance actions and thereby a reduction of track downtime. Copyright © 2014 The Authors. Quality and Reliability Engineering International published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe maintenance in a generic process model, in order to support an alignment of maintenance with other company internal processes aimed at fulfilling external stakeholder requirements. Design/methodology/approach – The proposed maintenance process model is based on existing theories and is illustrated by examples from a paper-mill case study related to the maintenance of DC-motors. Findings – The proposed model supports a holistic view of maintenance and the alignment of the maintenance process with other company internal processes, in order to fulfil external stakeholder requirements. Research limitations/implications – Further research could include an application of the proposed maintenance model to test its usefulness to identify stakeholders and also hazard diagnosis. Practical implications – The importance of vertical and horizontal alignment between the maintenance process and other processes in order to achieve effectiveness and efficiency is illustrated. The model can be used to increase the understanding of the role of maintenance within a company. Thereby, the proposed process model provides valuable support for effective, efficient, and continuous risk reduction. Originality/value – The proposed process view highlights that maintenance can contribute to the fulfilment of external stakeholders' requirements, which strengthens the proposition that maintenance should be seen as a business-process that creates value and not as something that is a “necessary evil”.