Evidence-based study of the impacts of maintenance practices on asset sustainability

Abstract

In practice, without clear evidence of the positive impacts of maintenance on sustainability, organisations/companies are not encouraged to look at (or invest in) maintenance as an effective tool to enhance sustainability. Therefore, it is essential to show them that such evidence exists, which is the aim of this paper. The paper reviews and analyses evidence from the literature about maintenance’s social, environmental, and economic impacts. It identifies the required sustainability-related indicators associated with these impacts and provides aggregate quantified percentages for them (positively or negatively), as shown in the reviewed papers. An evidence-based research is conducted in this paper to achieve this purpose. The search process results in a research sample of 58 publications that have been surveyed and analysed. Based on the conducted analysis, the results show that maintenance positively impacts economic, environmental, and social sustainability. Many reviewed cases appear in manufacturing and buildings (both residential and commercial) and primarily consider environmental and economic sustainability indicators. The cases with social sustainability indicators are limited. Regardless, these results bring adequate evidence to encourage researchers and practitioners to view maintenance as a practical approach to improve sustainability and to investigate more in this domain.

KEYWORDS:

• Evidence-based research
• sustainability
• maintenance practices
• sustainability indicators
• maintenance management
• asset management

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability

The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada (CRD); Fiix Software for Information Technology and Services.

Notes on contributors

Mageed Ghaleb

Mageed Ghaleb is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering (MIE). He has joined the Reliability, Risk, and Maintenance Research (RRMR) Laboratory in January 2021 as a post-doctoral research fellow. He obtained his Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Ryerson University. His Ph.D. research was focused on developing real-time optimisation algorithms for production scheduling and maintenance planning problems in advanced manufacturing systems. He has worked on various projects and has obtained broad knowledge in real-time decision-making, production scheduling, reliability engineering, maintenance planning, hybrid optimisation algorithms, sustainability management, and machine learning applications in production planning and control.

Sharareh Taghipour

Sharareh Taghipour is Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Physical Asset Management at the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University). She obtained her PhD in Industrial Engineering from the University of Toronto and received her BSc in Mathematics and Computer Science and her MASc in Industrial Engineering, both from Sharif University of Technology, Iran. Her research interests include stochastic modelling and optimisation with applications in reliability engineering, maintenance optimisation, and production scheduling.