Observing the effect of a policy: a maintenance case

Abstract

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to show that maintenance performance is potentially better predictable from recording routines.Design/methodology/approach– An attempt is made to observe an effect of a policy. Maintenance cases seem exceptional because of the efficiently obtainable evidence about policy violations which potentially provides access to the counterfactual reality to be avoided by the decision maker. The approach followed in this work is to use maintenance policy compliance to observe the effect of a maintenance policy.Findings– Conventional maintenance scorecards are not geared to accommodate maintenance performance predictions. The proposed alternative representation of maintenance performance indicators much better accommodates maintenance performance predictions.Research limitations/implications– This work focuses on the operationalisation and the sampling procedure of maintenance performance indicators; the selection of a predictive model is not considered.Practical implications– This work demonstrates that maintenance decision makers have the possibility to observe the effects of their policy, which potentially enables them to better control their objectives. This work provides guidelines to construct performance indicators that much better accommodate maintenance performance predictions than conventional maintenance performance indicators.Originality/value– The approach to make the effects of maintenance policy compliance observable is an original contribution to normative decision theory. To construct a maintenance scorecard that accommodates maintenance performance predictions is an original contribution to the field of maintenance performance measurement.