Underpinning success factors of maintenance digital transformation: A hybrid reactive Delphi approach

Abstract

In today's competitive landscape, maintenance is one of the critical functions that may greatly benefit from digital transformation (DT). Advances in technological developments are proving to be a game changer for improving maintenance strategies and practices. However, several challenges related to the lack of adequate managerial aspects, and adoption of wrong approaches to this transformation hinder its success. Research has shown that technology alone is not sufficient for organizations to ensure the success of their digitalization attempts. Therefore, the aim of this research is to adopt a holistic approach to identify, evaluate and rank a comprehensive list of the various influencing variables, multifaceted in nature, that drive the success of maintenance DT initiatives. To that end, the authors solicited the different success factors based on a systematic literature review, then conducted a purification phase of these enablers and categorized them. Subsequently, a hybrid reactive Delphi approach, combined with AHP method, was adopted to evaluate and rank the success factors and their corresponding clusters through a panel of 17 highly qualified experts. The verified final list includes 41 factors mapped into 10 categories. The clusters are ranked according to their relative level of importance, and normalized weights are attributed to their factors. In particular, “Digital strategy - strategic alignment” cluster ranked highest followed by “Top management and leadership skills” then “Organizational development and change management”. The findings of this study contribute to enriching the extant literature, serve as a foundation to conduct further academic research, and provide proper guidance to practitioners in this field.