Although the literature on maintenance practices is relatively advanced, the research on ship maintenance, particularly at the strategic level, is yet to emerge. To explore this proposition further, a search for maintenance management was conducted through the Google and Google Scholar search engines and ABI/Inform Complete Database across the period of 1980–2014. The search was
conducted using several keywords such as maintenance, maintenance management, ship maintenance, ship maintenance management, aircraft maintenance and aircraft maintenance management. The numbers of hits resulting from each keyword and search engine are provided in Table 4.2. The search for maintenance and maintenance management resulted in a numerous range of links including engineering, social, health, business, manufacturing, advertising, public opinion and other perspectives on maintenance. However, the results show a significant difference when the word ‘aircraft’ and ‘ship’ was inserted into the keywords. The results from Google and Google Scholar search engines, although yielding fewer results than the first search, still provided broad discussions. The results from ABI/Inform Database show a much smaller number of links in comparison. These data provide some initial indication of the paucity of research in ship maintenance management in comparison to the broader fields of maintenance.
Table 4.2: Search results
Keywords Google Google
Scholar
ABI/Inform
Trade Report Theses Scholarly article Maintenance 179,000,000 3,640,000 963,891 141,132 444,597 685,021 Maintenance management 978,000 3,140,000 27,191 732 1,463 5,217 Aircraft maintenance 23,900,000 744,000 9,140 2,737 1,290 1,032 Aircraft maintenance management 14,000,000 257,000 41 36 18 25 Ship maintenance 474,000 3,790 617 221 119 109 Ship maintenance management 242,000 69 5 1 2 1
From the results found in the ABI/Inform database, 12 articles were found to be relevant to the focus of the research of this thesis (see Table 4.3). The focus of the research can be categorised into two major groups. The first group discusses the technical context of ship maintenance management. This group includes research by Mavromatakis, Colyvas and Nicolaou (1996), Deris et al. (1999), Mokashi, Wang and Vermar (2002), Oke and Charles-Owaba (2006), Buksa, Siegulja and Tomas (2009), Mahulkar et al. (2009) and Lazakis, Turan and Aksu (2010). The second group discusses the management context of ship maintenance as represented by Bitros and Kavussanos (2005), Kennedy (2005), Veenstra, Zuidwijk and Geerling (2006) and Houghton and Lea (2009).
As shown in Table 4.3, the research focus of the first group indicates interest in implementing some maintenance concepts into ship maintenance, such as ship maintenance scheduling (Deris et al. 1999), reliability centred maintenance (Mokashi, Wang & Vermar 2002), maintenance concepts adjustment (Buksa, Siegulja & Tomas 2009) and fault tree analysis (Lazakis, Turan & Aksu 2010). Although this research focuses on the technical context of ship maintenance, all of them suggest the need for a holistic and integrated involvement of all departments in shipping companies. The second group of studies extend the concept of ship maintenance within shipping companies. For example, Bitros and Kavussanos (2005) explored the policies of shipping companies with regard to maintenance expenses and Veenstra, Zuidwijk and Geerling (2006) studied the influence of spare parts on the availability of ships. The discussions in both groups indicate
some degree of strategic management of ship maintenance. However, the discussions were limited to within departments of the shipping companies.
Table 4.3: Scholarly articles on ship maintenance management
Authors Journal/ Conference Research focus
Group of technical context of ship maintenance
Mavromatakis, Colyvas and Nicolaou (1996)
Conference on Marine Engineering Systems
Maintenance management policy in relation to safety regulation compliances.
Deris et al. (1999) European Journal of Operational Research
Ship maintenance scheduling to minimise overlapping activities.
Mokashi, Wang and Vermar (2002)
Journal of Marine Policy Application of reliability centred maintenance program towards maritime operations.
Oke and Charles-Owaba (2006)
Journal of Quality and Reliability Management
Preventive maintenance for shipping industry Buksa, Siegulja and
Tomas (2009)
Strojarstvo Structure of maintenance costs and concept adjustment for ship propulsion engines. Mahulkar et al. (2009) Systems, Man, and
Cybernatics, Part A: Systems and Humans
Modelling interconnected system for decision making in Navy warships environment to increase machinery availability.
Bao, Mittal and Dean (2010)
Fleet Maintenance Modernisation Symposium
Implementation of lean principle to accommodate unplanned repair and maintenance jobs across ship operations. Lazakis, Turan and
Aksu (2010)
Journal of Ships and Offshore Structures
Failure modes, effects and criticality analysis and fault tree analysis to increase ship operational reliability.
Group of management context of ship maintenance
Bitros and Kavussanos (2005)
Journal of Social Science Research
Correlation between ship maintenance and operational policies.
Kennedy (2005) National Defense Industrial Association
Coordination among shipyards for efficient ship maintenance to minimise laid-up time Veenstra, Zuidwijk and
Geerling (2006)
International Conference on Service Operations and Logistics and Informatics
The benefits of supply chain collaboration in the dredging industry.
Houghton and Lea (2009)
Maintenance and Asset Management Journal
Contract management for managing and supporting the availability of ships.
Kennedy (2005) indicated the need for coordination between navy ship operators and shipyards who, as maintenance providers, provide efficient ship maintenance for minimising the laid-up time of ship. The coordination involves teamwork from both parties to overcome complex maintenance problems. This research
work implies, to some extent, the need for cross-department coordination to capitalise on such an approach to ship maintenance. However, the discussion reveals that in one organisation, the US Navy, there is no indication of an inter- organisational relationship such as in supply chain management. Bao, Mittal and Dean (2010) investigated implementation of lean principles to minimise the waste which is inherent in ship maintenance in relation to planned maintenance policy. They propose a concept to optimise the use of companies’ resources in terms of personnel, tools and facilities to overcome unplanned maintenance tasks that exist in the policy. The lean principle discussed in their research is applied to matching the emerging maintenance request to the availability of companies’ personnel, tools and facilities. Thus, their research applies to the operational level of ship