Strategic value of reliability and maintainability management

Purpose – This paper aims to examine the strategic value of reliability and maintainability management in achieving competitiveness and customer satisfaction. It looks into performance metrics for organizational performance and associates reliability and maintainability with such metrics. Design/methodology/approach – The design strategy is based on using models for reliability and profitability assessment as well as total quality management models to illustrate how performance metrics for organizational performance can be enhanced. Findings – It shows there is a need to associate models of profitability assessment to reliability and maintainability management. This will help top management to see the strategic value of reliability and maintainability management and, therefore, adopt necessary organizational transformations to support reliability and maintainability goals. Research limitations/implications – It is important that the role of reliability and maintainability as important strategic variables be recognized and considered in future research that evaluates organizational performance and successes. Practical implications – The importance of organizational cultural transformation is noted and a transformation of organizational information system to link reliability management to a central information system such as in an enterprise resource planning (ERP) framework is suggested as a process of improving system availability and reliability. Originality/value – The aim is to have top management perceive reliability and maintainability issues as part of their strategic initiatives. While the value of total quality management in achieving organizational success is well accepted, reliability and maintainability issues are often viewed at the operational level. Yet, they are critical to achieving quality and organizational success.