Do not let bad maintenance ruin your day : A case study of coordinating turnaround maintenance in a continuous flow process industry.

Sammanfattning: The uptime of machinery in continuous flow process industries such as steel manufacturing plants puts pressure on the maintenance function. This in turn contributes to sustaining reliable physical assets. As absence of reliable physical assets highly affects the competitive advantage. Turnaround maintenance is a common practice in such production setups and requires top-of-the-line managerial attention to be planned,executed and assessed in an efficient manner. By applying an abductive approach and combining the qualitative and quantitative research approaches, this thesis aims to explore the managerial issue of coordinating turnaround maintenance within a continuous flow process industry. The research questions that guide this thesis consist of describing how turnaround maintenance can be coordinated and its associated challenges. By comparing publicly available literature and empirical evidence provided by performing a case study, it is confirmed that the main challenges for conducting efficient turnaround maintenance comes down to the management in all stages associated with the turnaround. To coordinate turnaround maintenance activities in the most efficient manner, several challenges must be overcome. Aligning organisational goals and generating management commitment is the first prerequisite before any improvements can be done. It is necessary to define a common scope that strives for creating reliable physical assets to enhance the competitive advantage. The defined challenges in coordination are related to before, during and after the turnaround execution. These relate to creating a cyclical process for the turnaround where previously acquired knowledge is used for improving future turnarounds. While detailed planning is necessary for each turnaround, a high level of contingency is also necessary. To achieve this and succeed, it is argued that a high level of visibility during the turnarounds and the use of standardised methods is required.