This article evaluates 186 papers, published between 1978 and 2013 in 16 representative scientific journals, related to maintenance and reliability problems that were tackled from a multi-criteria (MC) perspective. An overview and insights are presented. This study may be useful to researchers and others concerned with maintenance and reliability who seek not only to understand the potential of MC and multi-objective models but also to develop and apply an MC decision model to help solve a real problem in these areas. There are some discussions on some principles for the application of MC in maintenance and reliability and some guidance on how to choose a suitable MC method is given, based on previous applications.