Measuring the performance of a preventive maintenance programme for heavy truck -from a life cycle profit perspective

Sammanfattning: Problem: Scania Commercial Vehicles (Scania CV) initiated the project, as a result of a vision regarding future preventive maintenance (PM) programmes. This vision and its core concepts will impose great changes to the way PM for heavy trucks are viewed upon at Scania CV. Within this vision many questions have risen, one of which is: How does one measure the performance of a preventive maintenance programme for heavy trucks? Purpose: The result of the project will work as a tool when evaluating PM programmes for heavy trucks within Scania CV. The foundation of the measurement system rests upon identifying crucial factors with emphasis on the life cycle profit (LCP) for heavy trucks. Quantifying crucial factors within the measurement system will result in a set of maintenance performance indicators (MPI:s), which will be decisive for the customer’s, i.e. the hauler’s, profitability. The objective of the project is to: Develop a set of MPI:s, which forms a system that measures the performance of PM from a LCP perspective. Inference on how to measure the set of MPI:s. Evaluate Scania CV’ present PM programme according to the developed measurement system. Delimitations: For the projects feasibility two delimitations have to be taken into consideration. The first delimitation is that the design and customer specification of the vehicle is given. In other words, the vehicle has already been delivered and the specifications of the vehicle cannot be changed, even if it would be beneficial for the customer’s LCP. The second delimitation is that only Scania CV’ existing customers are considered and the study is confined to the Swedish market. Methodology: As a foundation for this project the authors performed, among other things, theory studies of the life cycle concepts, internship at heavy truck workshops, interviews with specialists within the field of heavy truck maintenance and interviews with the end users, i.e. the haulers. The approach has been systematic and aimed at mapping the current situation in order to identify key performance indicators. The main theoretical approach for the project has been action research based, with an initial case study as a foundation for the action research approach. However, several research strategies and methods were applied in order to have a broad approach to the study in question. Regarding the empirical collection of data, both quantitative and qualitative data has been collected. Conclusion: In the development of the measurement system the project has found three main MPI criteria: economic, availability and customer satisfaction related MPI:s. Furthermore, the project has come to the conclusion that scrutinizing the MPI:s separately can result in sub-optimization or wrongful conclusions of the PM programme’s performance. A comprehensive view is required when regarding the system. Moreover the MPI system has been ordered according to a multi-criteria hierarchical structure, in order to provide a better overview of the MPI:s, which allows management at different levels to focus on MPI:s that concern them directly. The project strived to have an unbiased approach when developing the MPI system. The project disregarded if the measures used in the MPI:s seamed difficult to measure, as long as they were not impossible to measure. The unbiased approach allowed the project to fully focus on the objective of the MPI system, developing a system that measures the performance of PM. The project found that there are crucial measures which will always have difficulties regarding their measuring process, irrespectively of resources or efforts invested in the measuring process.