Improving industrial maintenance contract relationships

Unavailability of technical systems, such as aircraft, is expensive. Technical systems require maintenance to prevent and to remedy defects that cause unavailability. Users of technical systems usually bear the consequences of the risk of unavailability, in particular the loss of productivity. This is based on the presumption that users are best able to insure the risks, although maintenance organisations may be more capable to mitigate the risks. The risks are seldom allocated to maintenance organisations because users and maintenance organisations tend to have conflicting objectives. This raises the questions if a maintenance organisation can be motivated to pursue the objective of the user. This would be possible if the maintenance organisation is rewarded for the “commercial success of the user of the technical system”. If the maintenance organisation indeed pursues the objective of the user of the technical system, the maintenance organisation can make autonomous decisions about the maintenance activities. And if the maintenance organisation can make decisions, it can make investments in measures to mitigate risks, knowing that it can decide if these measures will be employed. This research shows that it is efficient and effective to transfer the risks of the unavailability of a technical system from the user to the maintenance organisation on the condition that the maintenance organisation (a) will be compensated for the risks of unavailability, (b) will be rewarded for the contribution of the technical system to the commercial success of the user, and (c) is assigned the required decision rights. This will in practice require new “collaborative” contracts that can be used for the supply of long-term maintenance services of technical systems where unavailability causes a significant economic risk, for example in aircraft maintenance