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Lean thinking for a maintenance process

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 Production & Manufacturing Research
An Open Access Journal

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Lean thinking for a maintenance process

Sherif Mostafa, Sang-Heon Lee, Jantanee Dumrak, Nicholas Chileshe &

Hassan Soltan

To cite this article: Sherif Mostafa, Sang-Heon Lee, Jantanee Dumrak, Nicholas Chileshe &
Hassan Soltan (2015) Lean thinking for a maintenance process, Production & Manufacturing
Research, 3:1, 236-272, DOI: 10.1080/21693277.2015.1074124

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 Production & Manufacturing Research: An Open Access Journal, 2015
Vol. 3, No. 1, 236–272, [Link]

Lean thinking for a maintenance process

Sherif Mostafaa* , Sang-Heon Leeb, Jantanee Dumrakc , Nicholas Chileshea
and Hassan Soltand
a
School of Natural and Built Environments, University of South Australia, Adelaide 5000,
Australia; bSchool of Engineering, University of South Australia, Mawson Lakes 5095, Australia;
Downloaded by [University Of South Australia Library] at 20:23 02 October 2015

c
Global Management Program, Torrens University Australia, Adelaide, SA 5000, Australia;
d
Production Engineering and Mechanical Design Department, Faculty of Engineering Mansoura
University, Mansoura 35516, Egypt
(Received 26 January 2015; accepted 15 July 2015)

The maintenance process shares significant operating costs in an organisation. Lean

thinking can be incorporated into maintenance activities through applying its princi-
ples and practices/tools. Lean maintenance (LM) is a prerequisite for lean manufac-
turing systems. This research proposes a new structure for LM process based on a
systematic literature review of a significant number of related articles that were pub-
lished on LM. The process structure is designed based on the five lean principles to
guide and support organisations to pursue maintenance excellence. This study estab-
lishes a scheme for LM tools that are structured into 2 level 4 bundles and 26 lean
practices/tools and develops a House of Waste (HoW) to demonstrate the association
between maintenance wastes and the LM tools. With a successful accomplishment of
the proposed scheme, the performance of a maintenance department can create more
improvement opportunities over time to reach the maintenance excellence status.
Keywords: total productive maintenance (TPM); lean maintenance; maintenance
wastes and value stream mapping; lean maintenance tools; House of Waste (HoW)

1. Introduction
Maintenance function becomes a significant contributor towards to achieve strategic
objectives of an organisation in today’s competitive markets (Fraser, 2014). The mainte-
nance process is to serve the production facilities of high productivity. It comprises
planned and unplanned actions carried out to retain a physical asset to the acceptable
operating conditions (Faccio, Persona, Sgarbossa, & Zanin, 2014). Maintenance aims at
increasing the value of the reliability, safety, availability, and quality of an asset (e.g.
production plant, equipment, or building) with acceptable economical costs (Márquez,
2007). Over the last decades, the maintenance has been considered as a necessary evil
from the organisational management as the maintenance operation is limited to correc-
tive functions that are usually executed under the emergency situations such as machine
breakdown. However, this practice is no longer acceptable since the role of maintenance
has been recognised as a strategic element of revenue generation for organisations. The
maintenance with role creates a significant impact on some critical elements in produc-
tion plants such as product quality, safety requirements, and operating budget levels
(Khazraei & Deuse, 2011).

*Corresponding author. Email: [Link]@[Link]

© 2015 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis.

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ([Link]
[Link]/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original
work is properly cited.
 Production & Manufacturing Research: An Open Access Journal 237

The cost of maintenance activities could be ranged from 15 to 70% of the total pro-
duction costs (Fraser, 2014; Pinjala, Pintelon, & Vereecke, 2006). This is the second lar-
gest part, after energy costs, of the operational budget. In the United States, the
estimated cost of maintenance increased from $200 billion in 1979 to $600 billion in
1989 (Bevilacqua & Braglia, 2000). Maintenance activities account for an average 28
per cent of the total cost of finished goods (Blanchard, 1997). One of the reasons for
such significant portion of maintenance of the total operation cost is that the machinery
has become highly automated and technologically very complex. For example, usually,
the modern operation systems depend on sensor-driven management systems that pro-
vide alerts, alarms, and indicators. Consequently, maintenance costs are expected to be
even higher in future. Generally, the maintenance costs are proportional to the downtime
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(DT). The DT is the time interval when equipment/system is down for maintenance
until it is back to the normal working conditions (Tinga, 2013). The increased DT is
caused by the non-value added (NVA) activities or wastes within the entire maintenance
process. One of waste elimination strategies is the application of lean thinking in all
activities between suppliers and customers (value stream). Integrating lean thinking in
maintenance is known as lean maintenance (LM). Baluch, Abdullah, and Mohtar (2012)
emphasised that LM is prerequisite for success of a lean manufacturer as it provides a
holistic approach to the function of maintenance. In general, the lean integration in any
process is carried through adopting lean principles which begins with specifying the
customer value (Bhasin, 2015). In the maintenance environment, any maintenance ser-
vice could be considered as a final intangible product. The service is provided to a cus-
tomer which, in this case, could be assumed as an asset (e.g. production line).
Therefore, it is essential to identify the value from the asset perspective which can be
improving its availability and reliability through efficient maintenance. Then, mapping
the maintenance value stream which fundamentally consists of all the collective activi-
ties to deliver the maintenance service. Later, improving the maintenance value stream
by abolishing the waste which assist in minimising the lead time (in this case is DT).
Investigation into the applicability of lean principles in maintenance in the existing
research is still at a marginal level. Davies and Greenough (2010) emphasis on the
necessity for more researches to apply lean principles to maintenance operations.
Ghayebloo and Shahanaghi (2010) formulate a multi-objective decision-making
(MODM) model that can determine the minimal level of maintenance requirements (i.e.
labour and spare parts) which satisfies expected reliability level with the use of the lean
concept. Tendayi and Fourie (2013) use a combined approach of quality function
deployment (QFD) and analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to evaluate the importance of
a set of maintenance excellence criteria and prioritise the lean tools against these cri-
teria. Soltan and Mostafa (2014) introduce a framework for measuring maintenance
strategies based on lean and agile components, i.e. waste removal and responsiveness.
The study of McCarthy and Rich (2004) discussed lean total productive maintenance
system (or lean TPM) which conceptualises the application of lean-specific techniques
in TPM. The system is focused on maintaining equipment in its optimal operational
state and continually improving its productivity. However, an integrative structure of
lean thinking or lean TPM (e.g. principles, practices/tools, waste identification, and
value stream mapping (VSM)) within the maintenance activities has not been fully
established. This provides an opportunity for this study to develop and propose a pro-
cess for lean thinking to be integrated to the maintenance operation. The process is
formulated according to the hypothesis of Womack and Jones (2003) stating that lean
principles can be applied to any sector.
 238 S. Mostafa et al.

This study carried out a systematic literature review following Denyer and Tranfield
(2009) approach. The review was conducted to identify and understand the existing
literature on LM and evaluate contributions and summarise knowledge, thereby,
identifying potential directions of future research. The grand electronic databases were
explored to gather the literature on LM. A total of 43 related articles published between
2000 and 2014 have been included in this study.
This study is organised as follows. Section 2 provides an overview on maintenance
and lean manufacturing concepts. Sections 3 and 4 demonstrate the aim, objectives, and
methodology of the proposed research. Section 5 discusses the LM and LM prac-
tices/tools. In Section 6, a LM process is proposed with the discussion of the five stages
of the lean process in maintenance and introduction of the LM scheme including four
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bundles and 26 lean tools. The section also demonstrates the relationships between
maintenance wastes and lean tools using House of Waste (HoW). Section 7 highlights
benefits of the proposed LM process and Section 8 concludes the study with some
directions of future research.

2. Maintenance and lean manufacturing

2.1. Lean manufacturing
The word lean in manufacturing means the efficient use of the available resources by
cutting the NVA activities or wastes (Carrasqueira & Machado, 2008). Lean manufactur-
ing represents a collection of tools that work together synergistically to create a stream-
lined, high-quality system that produces finished products at the same pace of the
customer demand (Shah & Ward, 2007). Waste in lean manufacturing is defined as any
activities that add cost to a product/service without adding values from a customer’s
perspective. It may be classified to three major types: unobvious waste, less obvious
waste, and obvious waste (Hopp & Spearman, 2004). De Treville and Antonakis (2006)
list examples of obvious waste as unnecessary inventory, unneeded processes, excessive
set-up times, unreliable machines, and rework. They also argue that the less obvious
waste occurs due to the various reasons such as process times, delivery times, yield
rates, staffing levels, and demand rates.
In recent decades, lean system is gaining a momentum across different industrial
sectors. It has been originally started as Toyota production system which describes the
manufacturing philosophy of Toyota Motor Corporation (Dombrowski & Malorny,
2014; Holweg, 2007; Womack & Jones, 2003). This lean system has been successfully
extended to service industries, such as maintenance service, retail banking, airlines,
restaurants, public sector, education, food, and hospitals (Burgess & Radnor, 2013;
George, 2003; Pedersen & Huniche, 2011; Resta, Powell, Gaiardelli, & Dotti, 2015;
Smith & Hawkins, 2004; Thirkell & Ashman, 2014; Zarei, Fakhrzad, & Jamali Paghaleh,
2011). As an example, in the health care sector, hospitals achieved high-quality health care
outcomes (e.g. recorded lower 30-day mortality rates) by applying lean management
practices (McConnell, Lindrooth, Wholey, Maddox, & Bloom, 2013). Clearly, the
implementation of lean concept in diverse sectors proves to be true Womack and Jones
(2003) hypothesis stating that lean principles can be transferred to any organisation.
They coined this process as lean thinking which refers to the thinking process of lean
inside an organisation and its extended supply chain. This means that within the
same organisation, lean thinking should be extended from the shop floor or production
level to other areas such as maintenance department. The key behind this lean thinking
 Production & Manufacturing Research: An Open Access Journal 239

is that service/maintenance departments and production processes are inseparable and

complement each other to sustain the competitive edge of an organisation.

2.2. Maintenance strategies

Maintenance includes all activities required to keep an asset at maximum operating
condition. The activities are usually carried out according to a certain maintenance strat-
egy. The maintenance strategies may have developed accordingly with the development
of manufacturing systems (Shahin, Shirouyehzad, & Pourjavad, 2012). In the early days,
maintenance had been mainly concentrated around corrective maintenance, for example,
repairs and replacements were conducted when needed with no optimisation strategy
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and there was no or little consideration of the DT. More recently, maintenance became a
full-scale function, instead of a sub-function of the whole production operation. Today,
maintenance management becomes a complex function, encompassing technical and
management skills, while still requiring flexibility to cope with the dynamic business
environment (Lee & Wang, 2008). Maintenance strategies have gradually changed from
preventive maintenance (PM) (including condition-based maintenance (CBM) and time-
based maintenance (TBM) to design-out maintenance (DOM) and total productive
maintenance (TPM) as demonstrated in Figure 1.
The classification of the maintenance strategies shown in Figure 1 is based on the
time of maintenance activities and failure that requires maintenance (Potes Ruiz, Kamsu
Foguem, & Grabot, 2014). The maintenance activities are only performed after the
failure occurrence in the corrective maintenance strategy. Whereas, in the PM, the
intervention of maintenance activities is conducted before the failure occurrence.
Maintenance strategies have been diversely used in the existing literature using similar
terms such as preventive, predictive, planned, corrective, and TPM. The most common
three maintenance strategies are discussed below.

2.2.1. Corrective maintenance

Corrective maintenance is known as failure-based maintenance, emergency maintenance,
fire-fighting maintenance, or breakdown maintenance as the concept of corrective

Before detecting the failure Maintenance After detecting the failure

Strategies

Design-Out Preventive Corrective

Maintenance Maintenance Maintenance

Condition-Based Maintenance Run-To-Failure

(Predictive Maintenance) (Reactive
Maintenance)
Time-Based Maintenance
(Scheduled Maintenance) Immediate

Deferred

Figure 1. Types of maintenance strategies.

 240 S. Mostafa et al.

maintenance strategy is based on fix-it when broke (Márquez, 2007). Corrective mainte-
nance is a conventional maintenance strategy appeared early in the industry. It has been
employed in maintenance operations due to knowledge shortage on the equipment fail-
ure behaviours (Waeyenbergh & Pintelon, 2002). Corrective maintenance can be carried
out immediately or deferred by appropriate maintenance technicians whom are con-
tracted to assess the situation and fix the repairs. In situations where the failure is not
critical (i.e. plenty of DT is available) and the values of the assets are not of a great
concern, the corrective mode of maintenance may prove to be an acceptable option.
However, the market competition, environmental and safety issues force the
maintenance managers to search for more efficient maintenance strategies besides the
corrective maintenance (Shahin et al., 2012).
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2.2.2. Preventive maintenance

PM is carried out according to prescribed criteria. It intends to reduce the probability of
failure or the degradation of the functioning of an item (Fouladgar, Yazdani-Chamzini,
Lashgari, Zavadskas, & Turskis, 2012). PM can be divided into TBM and CBM. In
TBM, the maintenance activities are performed based on fixed operating time interval or
number of output units without considering the current condition state of the item. On
the other hand, CBM is based on performance and/or parameter monitoring (e.g. corro-
sion and electric current monitoring, lubricant and vibration analysis, leak and crack
detection, and ultrasonic testing) (Al-Najjar & Alsyouf, 2003; Khazraei & Deuse, 2011).
CBM could be described as a process that integrates technology and human skills using
a combination of all available diagnostic and performance data, maintenance history,
operator logs, and design data to determine the likelihood of a potential failure. As a
result, CBM requires a high initial cost to acquire and install the necessary sensors as
well as to monitor technology (Hellingrath & Cordes, 2014; Nezami & Yildirim, 2013).

2.2.3. Design-out maintenance

DOM focuses on improving the design of a product in order to eliminate the cause to
maintenance. DOM makes maintenance easier during the life cycle of a product
(Waeyenbergh & Pintelon, 2004). DOM is based on the successive design corrections
derived from the maintenance knowledge. It is appropriate for items with high
maintenance cost, which arises because of defective design or operation outside
design specifications. The DOM concept is used in some parts of motor vehicles
such as permanent bearing (bearing using solid lubricant and permanently sealed)
(Gopalakrishnan & banerji, 2013).

2.3. TPM and lean thinking

TPM is a concept developed in Japan, which could be defined as a productive mainte-
nance that involves total participations meaning all employees across the whole levels
of the operational hierarchy (Cua, McKone, & Schroeder, 2001; Jasiulewicz-Kaczmarek,
2013). It attempts to eliminate any losses in equipment and production efficiency
through active team-based participation. Waeyenbergh and Pintelon (2002) identified the
six categories of losses in TPM: (1) breakdown losses; (2) set-up and adjustment losses;
(3) minor stoppage/idling losses; (4) reduced speed losses; (5) defects/rework losses; (6)
start-up losses. The first two losses refer to time losses and influence equipment
 Production & Manufacturing Research: An Open Access Journal 241

availability. The third and fourth losses denote speed losses and measure the equipment
performance efficiency. The last two losses designate the quality of production process
and are used to calculate the quality rate of the equipment (Chan, Lau, Ip, Chan, &
Kong, 2005). The effectiveness of TPM strategy with regard to these six losses is mea-
sured using overall equipment effectiveness (OEE). The measurement of OEE is a func-
tion of the availability, performance efficiency, and quality. TPM entails eight main
elements/pillars that can be considered as principles/tools of TPM in an organisation.

• Autonomous maintenance
• Performance improvement
• Early equipment management
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• Planned maintenance
• Environment health and safety
• Office TPM
• Education and training
• Quality maintenance

The detailed description of these pillars mentioned above is presented in Ahmed,

Hassan, and Taha (2005) and Chong, Chin, and Hamzah (2012). The TPM pillars can
be collectively used to improve equipment availability and reliability. However, accord-
ing to Baluch et al. (2012), removing or missing application of any pillars could lead to
unattainable results. Likewise, the lack of comprehensive approach for the TPM imple-
mentation has resulted in a decrease of 50% TPM initiatives in US. Moreover, there are
some deficiencies related to the TPM strategy. TPM concerns the operational issues that
handle equipment failures rather than long‐term strategic business issues. Levitt (2008)
stated that TPM is no longer lean as it focuses primarily on the operational issues of
equipment and it would take a long time to implement. Moreover, EPA (2015)
highlighted that TPM failed to consider the environmental aspects during
equipment efficiency improvement. This leaves potential waste minimisation and
pollution prevention opportunities to be more researched.
While referring to major literature on TPM, it was observed that there is a link
between TPM and lean as well as LM emerged as an effective maintenance strategy.
Levitt (2008) mentioned that TPM and lean are broadly linked. This is clear in some of
the literature that considered TPM as a subsection of lean system which mainly focused
on enhancing the efficiency and availability of the manufacturing facilities. For instance,
Shah and Ward (2003) postulated 21 manufacturing practices as the key features of lean
system. They grouped the inter-related and internally consistent practices into bundles.
TPM was one bundle which contained four practices: PM, maintenance optimisation,
new process equipment, and safety improvement. These four practices sound very gen-
eric and not provide practitioners what tools to undertake the maintenance optimisation,
or new process equipment. Another study by Mostafa (2011) extended the TPM prac-
tices, suggested by Shah and Ward (2003), to include housekeeping, cross-training and
teams of maintenance technicians, operator involvement (autonomous maintenance), and
information tracking of the work orders. Clearly, these suggested practices indicated
another dimension of TPM in lean system by considering human resource perspective.
Abdulmalek, Rajgopal, and Needy (2006) gathered 14 lean tools into three areas: qual-
ity, production process, and methods. TPM was located under quality area which can be
considered as another perspective for TPM in lean environment. It can be concluded
that TPM is considered as the foundation for the maintenance process in lean
 242 S. Mostafa et al.

environment which must be supplemented with some lean practices. That is why some
studies coined relatively new terms like lean TPM (Georgescu, 2010; McCarthy & Rich,
2004) and LM (Baluch et al., 2012; Okhovat, Ariffin, Nehzati, & Hosseini, 2012;
Romano, Murino, Asta, & Costagliola, 2013; Smith & Hawkins, 2004).
LM principles take its lead from lean manufacturing through applying some new
techniques to TPM concepts to render a more structured implementation path (Levitt,
2008; McCarthy & Rich, 2004; Romano et al., 2013; Smith & Hawkins, 2004). It is a
prerequisite for success as a lean manufacturer that provides a holistic approach to the
function of maintenance (Baluch et al., 2012; Soltan & Mostafa, 2014). As lean concept
has been taking hold in the manufacturing sector, there is an increasing insight that
maintenance must not be seen only from narrow operational perspective dealing with
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equipment failures and their consequences. Instead, maintenance must be viewed in the
long-term strategic perspective and must integrate the different technical and commercial
issues in an effective manner. However, LM approach cannot just be a mirror image of
a lean manufacturing approach because the business dynamics of asset maintenance and
those of production are fundamentally different (Baluch et al., 2012; Brown, Collins, &
McCombs, 2006; Clarke, Mulryan, & Liggan, 2010). Therefore, it is clear that there is a
need to develop an effective process to collectively integrate lean thinking into the
maintenance with long-term strategic perspective. This study addresses such an issue to
cover the major deficiencies in the existing literature.

3. Research aim and objectives

This research aims to adopt lean principles and practices/tools and collectively integrate
them into the maintenance process. It has adopted recommendations of previous
research works such as a study of Davies and Greenough (2010) that emphasised on the
necessity of conducting more research in application of lean manufacturing principles in
maintenance operations. To achieve the main aim of this research, four main objectives
have been established:

(1) To review the LM concept.

(2) To develop a process for adopting lean principles into maintenance processes.
(3) To document the maintenance wastes and establish a scheme of lean practices/tools
applied to maintenance.
(4) To develop the HoW that demonstrates the association of lean tools with the
maintenance wastes.

4. Research methodology
To achieve the research objectives, this study employed a systematic review of the
literature in order to explore major publications related to lean manufacturing and
maintenance concepts, especially research works published from 2001 to 2014. Okoli
and Schabram (2010) indicate that a systematic literature review is a systematic, expli-
cit, comprehensive, and reproducible method for identifying, evaluating, and synthesis-
ing the existing body of completed and recorded work produced by researchers,
scholars, and practitioners. According to Denyer and Tranfield (2009), the systematic
literature review has become an essential scientific activity.
 Production & Manufacturing Research: An Open Access Journal 243

From the literature review, it has been found that exploration of the applicability of
lean principles in maintenance in the existing research works is minimal. Davies and
Greenough (2010) and Soltan and Mostafa (2014) state the necessity of conducting
more research on applying lean principles in maintenance operations. As an initial step
of this research, a seven-step systematic literature is conducted as summarised in
Figure 2 to demonstrate development of the proposed LM process. It is noted that these
research steps are adapted from several academic sources, such as Joffe (2011), Okoli
and Schabram (2010), and Tranfield, Denyer, and Smart (2003).

4.1. Research selection criteria

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The research inclusion and exclusion criteria are very critical to the quality assessment
of papers (Booth, Papaioannou, & Sutton, 2012). Okoli and Schabram (2010) indi-
cated that simplifying research using these criteria (by reviewing the title and then the
abstract when needed) saves the researcher time and effort. In this study, the authors
examined research articles by title and then abstracts. In the systematic review of this
study, the criteria were addressed in order to clarify the selection of the research-
related articles. The following criteria have been considered to include/ exclude the
articles:

Establishing research criteria

Lean manufacturing Maintenance Lean maintenance

principles/practices/ waste types strategies/activities tools/waste/frameworks

Search in electronic databases

Literature works selection from 2001 to 2014

Extracting and synthesise the selected resources

Grouping lean manufacturing and maintenance

concepts

Analysis of lean maintenance concept and

strategies

Lean maintenance process development

Figure 2. Research methodology framework.

 244 S. Mostafa et al.

• Articles published between 2001 and 2014 as the rational for considering the year
2001 is that LM as a field of research was firstly addressed by Davies and
Greenough (2001)
• Search for articles published in peer-reviewed scientific journals or conference
proceedings
• Ensure essential relevance by requiring that selected articles contain at least one of
the search keywords in the title or abstract (see Table 1)
• Search well-known online databases which are Taylor & Francis, EBSCO,
Emerald, IEEE, Inderscience, ProQuest, Sage, Science Direct, and Springer Link
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5. Development of LM in the literature

The screened LM studies are dated from 2001 to 2014 with the total number of 43
retrievable publications as shown in Table 2.
The selection of published LM studies shows that most of the studies were
published in the year 2014 and focused on three aspects, namely LM implementation
initiative, suggested lean tools, and interrelationship within LM application as illustrated
in Figure 3.
From the review of 43 publications, the focus on the LM implementation has been
continuously growing since 2011 for general practice and specific industries. The sug-
gested lean tools and interrelationship within the LM initiatives were not in parallel with
the LM implementation. The LM tools were found in 18 publications. None of these
publications provided a complete set of lean tools. Only two publications in 2012 and
2013 demonstrated the interrelationship within LM application. The low volume of pub-
lications indicates that more research in LM is crucially needed, especially in establish-
ing a logical interrelationship between LM concepts and implementation and a complete
set of LM tools.

5.1. Lean maintenance

LM term was coined in the last decade of the twentieth century. Smith (2004) defines
LM as a proactive maintenance operation employing planned and scheduled mainte-
nance activities through TPM practices using maintenance strategies developed through
application of reliability-centred maintenance (RCM) decision logic and practiced by

Table 1. Research primary and secondary keywords.

Time period Primary
considered Search engines used keywords Secondary keywords
2001–2014 Taylor & Francis, • Lean • Lean principles AND
EBSCO, maintenance maintenance
Emerald, IEEE, • Lean TPM • Lean practices AND
Inderscience, maintenance
ProQuest, Sage, Science • Lean tools AND TPM
Direct,
and Springer Link
 Downloaded by [University Of South Australia Library] at 20:23 02 October 2015

Table 2. Review of existing literature on lean maintenance.

Application Suggested lean maintenance
S. no. Author(s) and year Key aspects covered industry implementation Limitations
1 Davies and (1) Investigate the level of presence of lean No No
Greenough (2001) thinking within the maintenance domain
and its influence and interaction with the
maintenance function

2 Davies and (1) A set of performance measures that can No No

Greenough (2003) be used to analyse the impact of lean
thinking within the maintenance function

3 Davies (2003) (1) Explained the contribution of lean No No

thinking to the maintenance of
manufacturing system
(2) An overall measure of maintenance
performance comprised a number of
indicators that signify change through
maintenance activity has been suggested

4 Heisler (2003) (1) Highlight the role of effective planning General- Lean maintenance process • Present the flow of
and scheduling of maintenance process planning and flow maintenance processes for the
in lean environment scheduling lean maintenance planning
and scheduling
• No lean tools or principles
demonstrated

5 Smith (2004) (1) Defined the lean maintenance No

(2) Discussed the elements for lean
maintenance success
Production & Manufacturing Research: An Open Access Journal

(Continued)
245
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Table 2. (Continued).
246

Application Suggested lean maintenance

S. no. Author(s) and year Key aspects covered industry implementation Limitations
6 Smith and (1) Reviewed the history and evolution of General The maintenance • Limited tools provided
Hawkins (2004) lean management pyramid • Flow of the implementation
(2) Explained the lean maintenance element process is limited
and TPM
(3) Discussed the pre-planning and
S. Mostafa et al.

mobilising lean maintenance

(4) Introduced the key elements for sustain
lean

7 Verma and (1) A model for ship fleet repair and Ship fleet Proposed implementation • The model contained 7 steps
Ghadmode (2004) maintenance based upon lean principles repair model for ship fleet repair with no interrelationship or
and current best practices logic to apply them
• No feedback or measuring of
the performance
• No lean tools suggested

8 Zwas (2006) (1) Investigated how lean techniques can be No

employed in bus and rail maintenance

9 Colbert (2008) (1) Benefits of integrating lean into IR No No

predictive maintenance programmes
(2) Lean concepts/tools are able to better
manage and maintain the real value of
their IR programmes while drastically
increasing their ROI

10 Van den Heuvel (1) Increasing the efficiency of the activities No No

(2008) during regular maintenance shutdowns at
steel Sheet Plant using lean and six
sigma approaches
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11 Marks (2008) (1) Created an accurate and enhanced No No

CMMS database and a safe and efficient
Rotable Plant storage system
(2) Explored and implemented an Effective
Rotable Plant Management Programme
that fulfils the lean maintenance strategy
(3) Demonstrated how all value adding in
terms of Effective Rotable Plant
Management is maintained using very
little resources

12 Yile, Hang, and (1) Based on the value stream analysis Frictional Maintenance management • The pyramid defined the lean
Lei (2008) (VSA), inherit ‘value’ relation of TBM, clutch pyramid maintenance as an integration
RCM, and remanufacture engineering is maintenance of 13 practices
established • No limitation process flow
(2) A simple layered technology framework were provided
of lean maintenance • The lean principles were not
included

13 Georgescu and (1) A lean TPM approach to the current No No

Militaru (2009) understanding of the TPM system
(2) 7Ss as a critical first step in any
improvement programme; instant
maintenance; improvement set-up
operations

14 Thiruvengadam (1) A method for assessing the breakdown No No

(2009) maintenance factors using a value stream
maintenance map in a clearly and
precisely measurable technique
Production & Manufacturing Research: An Open Access Journal

(Continued)
247
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Table 2. (Continued).
248

Application Suggested lean maintenance

S. no. Author(s) and year Key aspects covered industry implementation Limitations
15 Clarke et al. (1) One of the most important aspects of No No
(2010) lean maintenance is developing an
understanding of the maintenance
processes and applying a risk-based
approach in a pharmaceutical asset
S. Mostafa et al.

maintenance. This involves evaluating

whether each element of maintenance
practice used adds value to the product
and benefits the customer

16 Davies and (1) A lean practice template which represent No No

Greenough (2010) activities possible within a company’s
maintenance department
(2) Performance indicators to identify the
impact of lean thinking within
maintenance activities

17 Georgescu (2010) (1) A new maintenance system called lean No No

TPM. It is a systematic approach based
on three techniques: the 7Ss as a critical
first step in any improvement
programme; instantaneous maintenance;
improvement set-up operations

18 Ghayebloo and (1) A MODM model to determine minimum No No

Shahanaghi (2010) level of maintenance requirements and to
satisfy expected reliability level

19 Sheng and Tofoya (1) Four core lean rules (activities, No No

(2010) connections, flows, and improvements)
transferred in the maintenance context
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20 Ayeni, Baines, (1) Application of lean within MRO in the No No

Lightfoot, and Ball aviation industry
(2011)
21 Kolanjiappan and (1) Application of root cause failure analysis Aircraft Schematic diagram for • The focus of the diagram is
Maran (2011) (RCFA), RCM, Failure mode and effect maintenance servicing time reduction of to reduce the service time not
analysis, and maintenance procedure aircrafts to implement lean
effectiveness analysis maintenance
• process flow is missing
• no lean tools provided

22 Qiang, Zhu, and Li (1) The characteristics of the military Military Components of MELM • The MELM contains three
(2011) equipment lean maintenance (MELM) equipment stages: models of
and main components for improving the maintenance, components of
MELM MELM, and output
• No implementation
introduced
• Lean tools has been
suggested

23 Baluch et al. (1) Lean maintenance cannot be a mirror of No No

(2012) lean production as the business
dynamics of asset maintenance and
production are fundamentally different
(2) TPM and lean initiatives that allowed
organisations to focus on improving the
efficiency of production processes

24 De Silva, (1) Improving maintainability of buildings No No

Ranasinghe, and can promote lean maintenance
De Silva (2012) (2) Challenges of lean maintenance in the
Production & Manufacturing Research: An Open Access Journal

construction industry
249

(Continued)
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Table 2. (Continued).
250

Application Suggested lean maintenance

S. no. Author(s) and year Key aspects covered industry implementation Limitations
25 Huang, Bian, and (1) Key technical characteristics of lean Military LM technical supporting • The frame showed the key
Cai (2012) maintenance (RCA, FMEA, value equipment frame techniques of
stream analysis) maintenance LM
(2) Realisation of lean maintenance (LM) • Some lean tools have been
through updating maintenance concept, provided
S. Mostafa et al.

highlighting the academic innovation • No implementation of the

and integration, and enhancing the LM introduced
culture construction of LM theory
(3) A theoretical basis for the equipment
maintenance reform

26 Okhovat et al. (1) Developed a strategic framework to General- Framework for world-class • General frame for production
(2012) provide guidance and support to reach world-class standard and maintenance included
world-class standards both in manufacturing TPM, lean, and 6σ
maintenance and manufacturing • Limited lean tools
processes through continual documented for maintenance
improvement process
(2) The framework integrated three process
improvement strategies: six sigma, TPM,
and lean

27 Rastegari (2012) (1) A maintenance strategy in manufacturing No No

organisation that can be linked to the
company’s business strategy in lean
environment

28 Tinashe George (1) A framework for implementing a lean in Rolling stock Lean maintenance supply • Frame for specific case study
Tendayi and Fourie a rolling stock maintenance environment maintenance chain framework supply chain
(2012) that seeks to eliminate waste, add value, • Not incorporated the lean
and continuously improve its supply principles
chain • Lean tools are not included
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29 Hou, Zhao, Meng, (1) Lean Maintenance System Model for No No

and Ma (2013) China’s hydropower equipment
maintenance enterprises by the
(2) Application of the lean production
theory and ideas, and the model consists
of lean culture building, system file
structure, maintenance project
management, maintenance on-site
management and safety management

30 Jahanbakhsh, (1) Benefits of using lean approach in Teen No No

Moghaddam, and Dairy Industry to reduce the amount of
Samaie (2013) losses and rework of maintenance
systems

31 Romano et al. (1) A LRCDA method to reduce scraps and Power cables LRCDA model • The model is based on the
(2013) work-in-process in manufacturing factory RCDA not lean principles
context • The model contained limited
(2) LRCDA merges steps of RCFA, lean lean practice within the
maintenance, and TPM model

32 Tendayi (2013) (1) A framework, based on lean thinking Rolling stock Framework for lean thinking • Insufficient implementation
tools and relevant performance measures maintenance in maintenance process flow
to prove the applicability or otherwise, • Limited lean tools introduced
of lean thinking in an operational
maintenance environment outside the
traditional domain of manufacturing

33 Djurovic and (1) Implementation of the ‘S5’ LEAN No No

Bulatovic (2014) methods concept in maintenance,
storage, as well as other elements of the
Production & Manufacturing Research: An Open Access Journal

business system

34 Bulatovic and (1) Lean production cannot be implemented No No

Djurovic (2014) without the use of lean strategy in the
251

equipment maintenance

(Continued)
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Table 2. (Continued).
252

Application Suggested lean maintenance

S. no. Author(s) and year Key aspects covered industry implementation Limitations
(2) 5S is one of the most basic tools in the
lean maintenance

35 Dunn (2014) (1) Focus on key elements within each of No No

the work management framework
S. Mostafa et al.

processes that will produce

improvements in maintenance
productivity and remove waste
(1) Three ways in which continuous
improvement approaches can further
improve Maintenance Productivity and
eliminate waste:
• Improving maintenance efficiency
• Improving the predictive
maintenance programme
• Eliminating defects

36 Irajpour, Fallahian- (1) Identify and evaluate the effectiveness of General-rank Model of effective • The model is used to rank
Najafabadi, a given maintenance strategy and to rank component of maintenance strategy the effective elements of
Mahbod, and components of maintenance system maintenance maintenance strategy
Karimi (2014) (2) Using DEMATEL method on • Lack of model elements
maintenance strategy as a guideline to dependency
rank the lean components in • Limited lean tools provided
maintenance • Lean principles is not
incorporated in the model

37 Jasiulewicz- (1) The common elements of the lean and General- Lean & green maintenance • The frame demonstrated the
Kaczmarek (2013) green paradigms introduced for better production results requirements and results of
understanding of synergy between them management using lean and green in
and overall improvement of maintenance maintenance process
efficiency • No presentation of how to
incorporate either lean or
green in the maintenance
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38 Nima, Hesamodin, (1) Development of a practical model to No No

and Alireza (2014) define an optimised effective
maintenance strategy using lean
approach

39 Önder (2014) (1) How maintenance may contribute to General-lean Reducing environmental • Generic framework contained
decreasing the environmental impact of green impacts and improving four phases: plan, learn,
production maintenance efficiency with lean green action, and improve
concept maintenance • Not comprehensive nor
designed based on lean
principles
• Very limited lean tools were
suggested

40 Shou, Wang, (1) Apply BIM and lean concepts to No No

Wang, Hou, and practical maintenance to improve
Truijens (2014) efficiency

41 Soltan and Mostafa (1) Lean and agile can manage the General Lean and agile factors in • No lean tools provided
(2014) maintenance processes maintenance operations • No implementation process
(2) Lean and agile maintenance should be flow provided
considered as a prerequisite for any
successful lean or agile application
(3) A framework to measure the
performance of maintenance strategies
based on lean and agile factors

(Continued)
Production & Manufacturing Research: An Open Access Journal
253
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Table 2. (Continued).
254

Application Suggested lean maintenance

S. no. Author(s) and year Key aspects covered industry implementation Limitations
42 Stuchly and (1) The maintenance aim has been shifted No No
Jasiulewicz- from production paradigm to sustainable
Kaczmarek (2014) development that resulted in a change
towards the product life cycle as well as
taking into account economic,
S. Mostafa et al.

environmental, and social aspects

(2) Maintenance offers numerous
opportunities of decreasing influence of
business processes on natural
environment and more efficient resources
utilisation

43 Sunjka and (1) Determine the status of lean No No

Murphy (2014) implementation within South African
aircraft maintenance organisations
(AMOs)
 Production & Manufacturing Research: An Open Access Journal 255
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Figure 3. Distribution of lean maintenance studies.

empowered (self-directed) action teams. LM generates a desirable outcome by minimis-

ing consumption of inputs (Smith & Hawkins, 2004). LM represents adopting lean
principles into the maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) operations. It could reduce
unscheduled DT through optimising maintenance support activities and maintenance
overhead. The lean tools are representing the lean principles for the implementation pro-
cess (Mostafa, Dumrak, & Soltan, 2013). To achieve LM improvement effectively, key
lean tools such as VSM, 5S, and visual management need to be employed (Smith,
2004; Smith & Hawkins, 2004). A comprehensive lean tools developed for maintenance
activities within an organisation include 5S, TPM, OEE, Kaizen, Poka-Yoke, process
activity mapping, Kanban, computer managed maintenance system (CMMS), enterprise
asset management (EAM) system, and Takt time (Davies & Greenough, 2010; Smith,
2004).
Despite the benefits of LM mentioned earlier, the review of previous studies con-
ducted in this study found that the investigation on the applicability of lean principles
into maintenance is marginal. The existing research works have been largely limited to
the manufacturing environment where LM is practised as a prerequisite for lean manu-
facturing (Tendayi, 2013). This proposition has been mentioned in Davies and
Greenough (2010) emphasising on the necessity of conducting more research on practi-
cal application of lean manufacturing principles in maintenance operations. It was dis-
covered that the previous studies mainly focused on ranking the maintenance strategies
based on some specific scope. Moreover, few initiatives have included comprehensive
frameworks or models that can integrate lean thinking in operational maintenance envi-
ronments outside of the manufacturing context. Ghayebloo and Shahanaghi (2010)
formulate a model for determining the minimal level of maintenance requirements and
satisfying reliability level through the use of the lean concept. Tendayi and Fourie
(2013) use a combined approach between QFD and AHP to evaluate the importance of
maintenance excellence criteria and prioritise the lean tools upon these criteria. The
 256 S. Mostafa et al.

recent study of Soltan and Mostafa (2014) introduces a framework for measuring
maintenance strategies based on lean and agile components, i.e. waste removal and
responsiveness. However, the study cannot provide sufficient practical application of
lean concept in the maintenance process. Romano et al. (2013) formulate lean root
cause and defect analysis (LRCDA) to reduce scraps and work-in-process in manufac-
turing system. Nevertheless, the LRCDA model introduced is based on RCDA (not lean
principles) as well as contains limited lean practice within the model. The paucity of
practical application in the existing LM studies provides an opportunity for this study to
expand the prevailing knowledge into a new framework for lean integration in the
maintenance process.
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5.2 Lean tools for maintenance activities

Reducing the NVA within maintenance activities can be accomplished through imple-
menting lean tools (Jasiulewicz-Kaczmarek, 2013). The lean tools that suit the mainte-
nance activities have been stated in previous studies. Smith and Hawkins (2004)
identify the key lean tools including VSM, 5S, and visual management. Davies and
Greenough (2010) develop a comprehensive lean tools template that represents possible
lean activities within the maintenance process within an organisation. The tools are 5S,
TPM, OEE, standards, mapping, inventory management, and visual management. Okho-
vat et al. (2012) suggest six lean tools that fit the maintenance processes of an organisa-
tion. These tools include visual control, 5S, seven wastes, single minute exchange of
die (SMED), and Poka-Yoke (mistake proofing). Clarke et al. (2010) target eight LM
practices as a preparation for delivering lean project objectives in a pharmaceutical
organisation. A list of the references including LM tools is demonstrated in Table 3.

6. A proposed LM process
This section demonstrates an attempt to propose a process for adopting lean thinking
into the maintenance activities. The process adopts the hypothesis of Womack and Jones
(2003) that lean principles can be deployed to all organisations and sectors. Lean princi-
ples have being increasingly extended for industrial and service sectors. This is known
as lean thinking which refers to the thinking process of lean (Holweg, 2007). The pro-
cess proposed in this study is designed on the basis of the five lean manufacturing
principles stated by Womack and Jones (2003). Some authors including Karim and
Arif-Uz-Zaman (2013) develop lean implementation methodology based on the five lean
principles for a manufacturing environment. Mostafa et al. (2013) state that lean prac-
tices/tools represent lean principles in the implementation process.
The process introduced in this study could be considered as an attempt to pave the
way of applying or adopting lean principles to maintenance activities (Figure 4). The
process provides guidance and support towards maintenance excellence for an organisa-
tion pursuing to extend lean practice to its maintenance department or other organisa-
tions starting introducing lean thinking to maintenance department. The process was
developed through conceptual integration of five lean principles as they are the back-
bones of any lean initiatives (Womack & Jones, 2003). The principles specify the value,
identify the value stream, flow the value, pull the value, and pursuing perfection. In
addition, analysing and addressing limitations of the existing initiatives assist in
developing the comprehensive LM process proposed in this study. The process is more
flexible and can be adjusted according to any maintenance strategy. It could work
 Production & Manufacturing Research: An Open Access Journal 257

Table 3. Lean maintenance practices/tools reported in previous studies.

Previous study
Lean maintenance tool 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
TPM * * * * * * * * * * *
5S/CANDO * * * * * * * * * * * *
Kaizen (continuous improvement) * * * * * * * * * * *
CMMS/EAM * * * * * *
Distributed MRO storerooms * * * *
RCFA/FMEA * * * * * * *
PdM * * * * *
Autonomous maintenance * * * * *
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SMED * * * *
Poka-Yoke * * * * * * * * * *
PDCA * * *
OEE *
Kanban * * * * * *
Jidoka * *
JIT/inventory management * * * * * * *
RCM * * * * * *
Process mapping (VSM) * * * *
Maintenance and reliability group * *
Work standardisation * * * * * * * *
Story boarding * *
Visual control * * * * *
Work order system * * *
Self-audit *
Supplier association *
Open book management * *
Empowered maintenance team * *
Multi-skilled work team *
Maintenance crew training and learning * *
Hoshin planning * * *
A3 *
Note: 1 – Baluch et al. (2012); 2 – Clarke et al. (2010); 3 – Davies and Greenough (2003); 4 – Davies and
Greenough (2010); 5 – Djurovic and Bulatovic (2014); 6 – Huang et al. (2012); 7 – Irajpour et al. (2014); 8 –
Kolanjiappan and Maran (2011); 9 – Okhovat et al. (2012); 10 – Önder (2014); 11 – Qiang et al. (2011); 12 –
Romano et al. (2013); 13 – Smith and Hawkins (2004); 14 – Smith (2004); 15 – Tendayi (2013); 16 – Verma
and Ghadmode (2004); 17 – Yile et al. (2008); 18 – Zwas (2006).
*Presence of the lean maintenance practice within the study.

simultaneously and complementary with previous framework developed for shop floor
area as it is inclusive for the maintenance processes. The proposed process entails five
stages and detailed steps within each stage.

6.1. Stage one: specify the value

The first stage focuses on defining an organisational maintenance system including
activities, maintenance planning, strategies, and maintenance crew. In this stage, the
employees training on LM wastes are assigned. Furthermore, identifying the types of
wastes in maintenance processes is included. The core concept of lean manufacturing is
eliminating the seven cardinal forms of waste. The seven cardinal types of waste in the
maintenance process can be discussed in the same manner as in the eight waste types
 258 S. Mostafa et al.

identified in the production system (Baluch et al., 2012; Clarke et al., 2010; Davies &
Greenough, 2010).

(1) Too much maintenance: performing PM and predictive maintenance (PdM) tasks
at intervals more often than optimal which results in the overproduction of
maintenance work.
(2) Waiting for maintenance resources: production department is waiting for mainte-
nance personnel to perform the maintenance service. It involves waiting for
tools, parts documentation, and buys extra tools and stores them near the job
location.
(3) Centralised maintenance: the centralisation of the MRO stores that are far from
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the job, commonly used repetitive parts that have not been kitted, documentation
that must be hunted down, and work orders for machines that are not available
all cause excess transportation. Therefore, maintenance personnel spend more
time in motion and transportation which do not add value to the process.
(4) Non-standard maintenance: maintenance operations are normally conducted to
achieve operation as soon as possible with no standard guidelines. This some-
times eliminates an opportunity to perform a higher quality repair.
(5) Excessive stock: the MRO inventory contains needed materials and spares.
Additionally, work-in-process inventories may be used to ensure availability of
required materials. Inventory for a maintenance operation also includes the work
order backlog. Excessive maintenance work inventory results in slow response,
unexpected breakdowns, and a high reactive labour percentage.
(6) Double handling: the wasted motion is usually concentrated around PM tasks.
Doing inspection monthly on a pump that has not changed status in three years
should be extended longer to quarterly, semi-annually, or annually depending
upon the criticality of that piece of equipment.
(7) Poor maintenance: performing incorrect repair is a source of poor maintenance.
Incorrect maintenance requires several repeated times to complete the repair job
correctly. This affects the maintenance cost and the quality of the product.
Applying proper training and detailed procedures can assist in poor maintenance
elimination.
(8) Under-utilisation of maintenance crew: maintenance technicians do NVA work
or do not perform as required/at the best interest of the organisation.

6.2. Stage two: identify the value stream

This stage includes all maintenance-related activities and processes. The stage starts by
mapping the maintenance value stream then locating the wastes sources. This stage ends
with setting equipment performance measures such as availability, OEE, and meantime
between failures. VSM is used for visualising the flows of information and materials
within a supply chain. VSM primarily helps an organisational management to recognise
different forms of waste and its sources. One key metric of VSM is value added (VA)
time percentage which measures VA activities against NVA activities (Monden, 1998).
Standard icons for drawing the current and future VSM are available in Sullivan,
McDonald, and Van Aken (2002). These icons should be modified to fit the mainte-
nance activities. In this study, a new set of VSM icons fitting all the maintenance activi-
ties was introduced (see Figure 5). The new icons were designed using Edraw Max™
 Production & Manufacturing Research: An Open Access Journal 259

Specify the value Identify the value stream Flow the value Pull the value

Undertaking the Mapping the maintenance

maintenance based on Waste network analysis and Reconfigure the VSM
value stream priority of removal
time/condition/planned

Define the organisation Locating wastes within the Lean best practices selection
maintenance system maintenance activities

Wastes/Practices analysis Develop the lean maintenance

Employees training on lean implementation strategy
maintenance waste
Maintenance performance
measures
Lean pilot project simulation
Recognise the maintenance Document the current state
wastes gap

Execute lean maintenance

transformation
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Evaluate the
OEE

Teams and employees Lean practices/procedures Auditing lean

Expand the lean practice
development standardisation maintenance results

Pursuing Perfection

Figure 4. Proposed lean maintenance process.

Figure 5. VSM symbols for maintenance activities (developed from Edraw Max software).

professional software package. The discussion of each activity is displayed in Table 4.

An example of mapping the maintenance process using these icons for visualising a
general current state is displayed in Figure 6.
 260 S. Mostafa et al.

Table 4. Maintenance VSM symbol description.

Symbol Description
(1) Machine down Machine need maintenance (e.g. break down, time-based, or
condition-based)
(2) Communicate the Machine operator communicates the maintenance department
problem
(3) Go see Maintenance personnel go and check the machine condition and
report to the maintenance department
(4) Identify and allocate Identification and locating of appropriate resources such as tools,
resources spare parts, manpower for fixing an equipment
(5) Work orders Generating maintenance work order through the maintenance software
Machine fix Steps for fixing the machine
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(6)
(7) Test the machine Testing of machine after repair until first good part is produced
(8) Delay Waiting time due to unavailability of resources (e.g. technician, tools,
and spare parts)
(9) Manual information The flow of information from reports
flow
(10) Electronic The flow of information from the internet, intranet, local area
information flow network, wide area network, and other notes
(11) Push flow Represent the physical flow sequence of the maintenance activities
(12) Time line segment Represent the VA and NVA time for each activity
(13) Time line total Represent the maintenance lead time (down time)
(14) Data box Record the information of each maintenance process including cycle
time (C/T), changeover time (C/O), and number of employees

Figure 6. Example of general maintenance state map (developed from Edraw Max software).

6.3. Stage three: flow the value

The process of ‘flowing the value’ starts from waste network and waste/practices
analyses before the results of the analyses are documented at the current state gap of
 Production & Manufacturing Research: An Open Access Journal 261

maintenance using the calculation of OEE within an organisation. The documentation of

lean practices for maintenance was conducted through the literature presented in Table 3
through marking out the most frequently suggested practices in these studies and then
constructed the hierarchical scheme for LM practices as demonstrated in Figure 7. The
structure is similar to Shah and Ward (2003), however, for the use of this structure is
dedicated to the maintenance process not the manufacturing process. The structure con-
sists of two levels and four bundles: just-in-time (JIT), total quality management
(TQM), human resource management (HRM), and TPM and practices assigned under
each bundle. The scheme can be used to indicate the association between the eight types
of maintenance waste and the LM practices. The success of the LM depends on the
application of each bundle. Each practice provides some benefits within the maintenance
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process. As a result, the performance of a whole maintenance department can be

improved. The four LM bundles are briefly explained below.

6.3.1. JIT bundle

The JIT bundle encompasses all practices which are designed to reducing and eliminat-
ing unnecessary inventory and waiting in maintenance activities. These practices are
Kanban, SMED, work standardisation, Takt Time, visual control, distributed MRO
storeroom, and CMMS.

6.3.2. TQM bundle

The TQM bundle aims at continuously improving and sustaining the quality of products
and processes through the participation of management, workforce, suppliers, and

Lean Maintenance Practices

JIT Bundle TQM Bundle TPM Bundle HRM Bundle

Kaizen (continuous Autonomous

Kanban Work teams
improvement) maintenance
SMED 5S Training and
Planned maintenance development
Work standardization Maintenance process
mapping Root Cause Analysis
Employee involvement
Takt Time (RCA) and problem
solving
Poka-Yoke
Visual control
Safety improvement Openness information
Benchmarking sharing
Distributed MRO
storeroom OEE
Jidoka Maintenance and
Work order system reliability group
CMMS FMEA
Multi-skilled
maintenance technician

Figure 7. Scheme for lean maintenance practices.

 262 S. Mostafa et al.

customers, in order to meet or exceed customer expectations (Cua et al., 2001). The
practices of TQM are customer focus, leadership, strategic quality planning, use of
information and analysis, management of people (participation and partnership), and
continuous improvement (Chin, Rao Tummala, & Chan, 2002). This ensures higher cus-
tomer satisfaction, better quality of products, and higher market share; improving the
competitiveness, effectiveness, and flexibility of the whole organisation (Pheng &
Chuan, 2001). In this study, the TQM bundle consists of Kaizen, 5S, maintenance pro-
cess mapping, Poka-Yoke, benchmarking, Jidoka, and FMFA.

6.3.3. TPM bundle

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The TPM bundle incorporates all practices that are designed to maximise the equipment
effectiveness. The bundle contains autonomous maintenance, planned maintenance, root
cause analysis (RCA) and problem solving, safety improvement, OEE, and work order
system. The concept of TPM was developed in Japan by Seichii Nakajima aiming at
achieving zero losses (e.g. zero breakdowns, zero defects, zero accidents) and attaining
the Takt time through improving and maintaining equipment to its highest performance
level (Brown et al., 2006). TPM can be integrated with lean in order to distinguishing
and attacking six big losses which are reducing the effectiveness of equipment
(Rodrigues & Hatakeyama, 2006). These six categories of losses are (1) breakdown
losses, (2) set-up losses, (3) minor stoppage/idle losses, (4) reduced speed losses (equip-
ment speed is slow than the designed speed), (5) rework losses, and (6) start-up losses
(start-up after periodic repair, start-up after holidays, start-up after lunch breaks, and
start-up after suspension) (Waeyenbergh & Pintelon, 2002).

6.3.4. HRM bundle

The HRM bundle encompasses all the practices to ensure that the human resources of
an organisation are used in such a way that the employer obtains the greatest possible
benefit from their abilities. At the same time, the employees obtain both material and
psychological rewards from their work (Hiltrop, 1996). The HRM practices form an
organisation performance through increase employees’ knowledge, skills, and abilities
(KSAs), motivate employees to leverage their KSAs for the firm’s benefit and employ-
ees empowerment. In addition, work teams, performance appraisal, and information
sharing have been recommended to enhance an organisation performance (Huemann,
Keegan, & Turner, 2007). In this study, the HRM bundle includes work teams, training
and development, employee involvement, openness information sharing, maintenance
and reliability group, and multi-skilled maintenance technician.

6.4. Stage four: pulling the value

The fourth stage is to confirm that an equipment (i.e. considered as the customer in the
maintenance process) is pulling the value through all maintenance processes. The execu-
tion of lean principles takes place at this stage. The stage involves steps in reconfiguring
the VSM or designing the future stream map, selecting LM practices, developing the
lean transformation strategy, and evaluating the OEE.
 Production & Manufacturing Research: An Open Access Journal 263

6.4.1. Association between maintenance wastes and LM practices

Selecting LM tools is the next step after identifying and discussing the types of waste
and lean tools. It assists an organisation to achieve LM targets by associating suitable
tools to tackle the spotted waste types. The QFD is suggested in this study to develop
the association between these tools and wastes. Mostafa (2011) suggested using QFD to
assign the lean practices for each waste. Nonetheless, the study was in a general manu-
facturing environment rather than a maintenance process. Likewise, Tendayi (2013)
applies QFD coupled with AHP to rank the maintenance excellence criteria with some
lean tools. The study focused only on a certain case study of rolling stock maintenance.
It used limited lean tools and did not include the maintenance wastes. In contrast to
Tendayi (2013), this study has identified 26 lean tools for maintenance (see, Figure 7)
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and eight types of maintenance wastes (discussed in Section 6.1). QFD is a structured
tool that identifies important customer expectations and translates them into appropriate
technical characteristics which are operational in design, verification, and production.
QFD enables resources to be focused on meeting major customer demands. Figure 8
displays the structure of QFD which is frequently called a house of quality (HOQ)
because of the shape presented (Bottani & Rizzi, 2006).
The HOQ comprises customer requirements (horizontal axis) and technical charac-
teristics (vertical axis). The customer axis designates what customers require, importance
of the requirements, and competitive performance. The customer requirements are often
referred as what’s. The technical axis describes the technical characteristics that affect
customer satisfaction directly for one or more customer expectations. Moreover, on the
technical axis are the correlations, importance, and targets of the technical characteristics
and technical competitive benchmarking. The technical characteristics are denoted as
How’s, meaning how to address what’s. The technical targets are accordingly called

Figure 8. House of quality.

 264 S. Mostafa et al.

How Much. The interrelationships between customer wants and technical characteristics
are evaluated in the relationship matrix.

6.4.2. House of Waste

The HoW is developed in this study to demonstrate the maintenance wastes/lean tools
association. HoW identifies the importance of each LM tool in the elimination of each
waste type as demonstrated in Table 5. It has two main parts: the horizontal part
‘What’s’ which contains information relevant to the waste types and the vertical part
‘How’s’ which comprises corresponding LM tools. The basic process underlying ‘How’
resides in the centre of the matrix where intersect of maintenance waste types and lean
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tools provides an opportunity to examine each waste type versus each tool.
Five steps in developing the wastes/tool association using HoW are briefly described
as follows:

(1) List the waste types within the maintenance process in the horizontal axis.
(2) Determine each waste priority (Pi), which rates the significance of each waste to
the maintenance performance. Otherwise, it can be based on the waste occur-
rence or cost of removal. A scale of 1 to 9 can be used, where 9 is given to
extremely important, 7 strongly important, 5 to very important, 3 to important,
and 1 to not important.
(3) List LM tools on the vertical axis. An organisation can state suitable LM tools
for their own maintenance process in terms of the application cost of LM tools.
(4) Identify the interrelationships between wastes and tools (wij ). The strength of
relationship may be classified into three levels, where a rating of 9 is assigned
to a strong relation, 3 to a medium relation, and 1 to a weak relation. Each tool
must be interrelated to at least one waste; one waste must also be addressed by
at least one tool. This ensures that all wastes are concerned in the maintenance
removal planning, and all tools are properly established.
(5) Calculate the score (Sj ) and (RSj ) to rank each LM tool. The following formula
can be used to calculate the score

X
8
Sj ¼ wij Pi ; 8j (1)
i¼1

Sj
RSj ¼ P26 ; j ¼ 1; . . .; 26 (2)
j¼1 Sj
where
Pi relative priority of ith waste
i type of maintenance waste, i ¼ 1; 2; . . .; 8
Tj LM tool, j ¼ 1; 2; 3; . . .; 26
wij numerical VA to position (i, j) of the HoW matrix. This refers to the weight of
eliminating waste ith by tool jth. Numerical scale can be (9, 3, 1)
Sj score of tool jth over the total types of waste
RSj relative score of tool jth over the total score of tools
 Downloaded by [University Of South Australia Library] at 20:23 02 October 2015

Table 5. House of Waste.

How’s (lean maintenance tools)

Distributed Work Training Openness Maintenance Multi-

What’s (maintenance Waste Work Takt Visual MRO Maintenance Poke Autonomous Planned order Work and Employee information & reliability skilled Safety
wastes) priority Kanban SMED standardisation Time control storeroom CMMS Kaizen 5S VSM Yoke Jidoka Benchmarking FMEA maintenance maintenance RCA OEE system teams development involvement system group technician improvement

To eliminate too much P1 w11 w12 w13 w14 … … w125 w126

maintenance
To eliminate waiting P2 w21 w22 w23 w24 … … w225 w226
for resources
To eliminate P3 w31 w32 w33 w34 … … w325 w326
centralised
maintenance
To eliminate non- P4 w41 w42 w43 w44 … … w425 w426
standard
maintenance
To eliminate excessive P5 w51 w52 w53 w54 … … w525 w526
stocks
To eliminate double P6 w61 w62 w63 w64 … … w625 w626
handling
To eliminate incorrect P7 w71 w72 w73 w74 … … w725 w726
maintenance
To eliminate P8 w81 w82 w83 w84 … … w825 w826
underutilisation
of maintenance
crew
LM score S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 S6 S7 S8 S9 S10 S11 S12 S13 S14 S15 S16 S17 S18 S19 S20 S21 S22 S23 S24 S25 S26
Relative score RS1 RS2 … … RS25 RS26
Rank
Production & Manufacturing Research: An Open Access Journal
265
 266 S. Mostafa et al.

The score Sj represents the absolute importance of tool jth over all types of wastes.
The relative score RSj refers to the importance of the tool jth over all tools. According
to Bottani and Rizzi (2006), the technical characteristics are usually ranked based on
relative importance rather than absolute importance. Therefore, LM tools should be pri-
oritised based on RSj. The higher the RSj , the more important the LM tool that should
be incorporated in order to eliminate the waste.

6.5. Stage five: pursue perfection

The last stage is to pursue the complete waste elimination from maintenance processes.
This could be achieved through auditing the LM results, standardise the lean tools and
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procedures, teams and employees developments and expand the lean practice.

7. Implications of proposed LM process

Most of literature works on lean implementations fall into the manufacturing environ-
ment albeit LM is essential part for the lean manufacturing system (Soltan & Mostafa,
2014; Tendayi & Fourie, 2013). Plethora of studies included and mentioned lean and
maintenance concepts (see Table 2). Nevertheless, the integration of lean principles into
the maintenance environment has not evidently received full attention. The common
aspects among the previous studies were (1) introducing partial lean tools to be applied
in the maintenance process; (2) developing diagrammatic structures (model, pyramid, or
scheme) with unspecified sequence of LM implementation; and (3) lack of proper struc-
ture. Consequently, some researchers including Davies and Greenough (2010) and
Soltan and Mostafa (2014) have proposed more research on incorporating lean princi-
ples in the maintenance activities. Therefore, this study proposed a LM process to cover
most of the limitations or deficiencies of the existing suggested LM initiatives.
The proposed LM process is a straight forward, comprehensive, and easy to under-
stand for maintenance practitioners and maintenance strategy decision makers. The
benefits of the proposed process can be summarised as:

(1) The process is straightforward and easy to comprehend. This is because of the
simple structure that is combined in the process.
(2) A systematic procedure of applying the five lean principles into maintenance
activities can result in better understanding from an organisation’s management
view.
(3) All advantages of lean are kept as the process focus. These advantages are inte-
grated and systemised in the steps of the process.
(4) Application of the process establishes pursuing a perfectionist culture in an
organisation. This is done through auditing the LM results, standardisation,
team’s development, and expansion of the practice. Hence, with every iteration
of the process, an organisation maintenance activities move a further step
towards maintenance excellence.
(5) Aligning the human resource aspects (maintenance employees training and
development) with other steps can bring high potential for a comprehensive and
sustainable LM implementation process as well as overall process improvement
in an organisation.
(6) The process promotes the teamwork and problem solving cultures to ensure
high-quality outcomes of the implementation process.
 Production & Manufacturing Research: An Open Access Journal 267

(7) The maintenance process can be converted to be a predictive and proactive sys-
tem that provides the reliable process using lean principles. As a result, it
enhances the maintenance excellence and world-class manufacturing as mainte-
nance and manufacturing are inseparable (i.e. reliability and availability of
manufacturing facilities).
(8) The process can be applied to all manufacturing and non-manufacturing organ-
isations that are pursuing the world-class status in their maintenance function.
The process suits those organisations either in pursuing to transfer lean thinking
to their maintenance departments or starting lean transformation from the
maintenance department.
(9) Hitherto, some initiatives have been developed for specific larger size organisa-
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tions such as shipbuilding and military (see Table 3). However, the proposed
process can be accepted within all level of skills and organisational sizes. This
is due to the fact that the process is more flexible and can be adjusted according
to any maintenance strategies.
(10) The proposed process is precisely documented and discusses the maintenance
wastes and LM tools. It is to enhance the understanding the waste elimination
and lead to successful LM implementation.
(11) The process presented wastes/tools association to assign LM tools for each
waste type. This leads to an effective waste elimination process and sustainable
outcomes.

8. Conclusion
Maintenance is a critical contributor to progressing towards world-class manufacturing
of an organisation. It has rapidly grown into a very complex undertaking as technolo-
gies, competition, and product characteristics have evolved. In order to achieve
world-class performance, the maintenance strategies should be linked to manufacturing
strategies such as the lean concept. Applying an effective maintenance strategy can
ensure a high degree of utilisation, reliability, and availability of manufacturing facilities
especially in a continuous production process. This study has introduced a process to
adopt lean into maintenance activities. The process highlights types of NVA mainte-
nance activities, a package of VSM symbols to capture the maintenance activities, LM
tools scheme, and tools/wastes association. Moreover, it promotes the culture of continu-
ous improvement aiming at maintenance excellence. In general, any improvements
attained from implementing the suggested process might take time to transform mainte-
nance activities into LM. Nevertheless, commitment and direct involvement of an organ-
isational management along with employee training and teamwork development can be
a catalyst to accelerate the transformation process. The proposed LM process can
be applied in real conditions to test its validity and reliability of the process. This can
be considered as a further suggestion to the proposed process in this research. Hence,
application of the process in different industrial sectors and a wide range of manufactur-
ing companies can contribute to additional empirical evidence.

Acknowledgements
The authors would like to express their gratitude to the anonymous reviewers for their
constructive comments and suggestions to improve the quality of the paper.
 268 S. Mostafa et al.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID
Sherif Mostafa [Link]
Jantanee Dumrak [Link]
Nicholas Chileshe [Link]

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