Managing maintenance resources for efficient asset utilization

Asset productivity is concerned with how an asset is efficiently and effectively deployed and utilized. It is related to maintenance resource management. The purpose of this paper is to discuss development of policies for managing integrated maintenance resources. These resources include human resource and supporting material required to perform maintenance activities for a complex maintenance system. Here, human resource management encompasses policy for recruitment, training, and outsourcing. Meanwhile, supporting material management includes policy for parts purchasing and inventory. Good asset productivity can be achieved by attaining a better performance of the asset using the same amount of maintenance resources or by reducing the amount of maintenance resources used for the same asset performance. A maintenance department may manage each kind of resources and have its own policy to achieve better asset productivity. In this way, an integrated policy with all related departments is required. In this research, a model to determine an integrated optimum policy with associated departments is developed. It consists of three sub models representing three different departments in an organisation including Maintenance, Human Resource, and Inventory and Purchasing department. Through the model, some combinations of the policies can be made and tested to find the best combined policy that, in turn, can help to generate better asset productivity.