Opportunistic maintenance (OM) as a new advancement in maintenance approaches

Abstract

Purpose – This paper reviews the literature on opportunistic maintenance (OM) as new advance maintenance approach and policy. The purpose of this paper is to conceptually identify common principle and thereby provide absolute definition, concept and characteristics of this policy. Design/methodology/approach – A conceptual analysis was conducted on various literatures to clarify a number of principle and concepts as a method for understanding information on OM. The analysis involves the process of separating the compound terms used in the literatures into a few parts, analyse them and then recombining them to have more clear understanding of the policy. Findings – The paper discussed the maintenance approach, genealogy, principle, concept and applications of OM both in numerical analysis and real industry. OM policy is developed based on combination of age replacement policy and block replacement policy and in practical; OM is applied as the combination of corrective maintenance which is applied when any failure occurred, with preventive maintenance (PM) – a planned and scheduled maintenance approach to prevent failure to happen. Any machine shutdown or stoppages due to failure is the “opportunity” to conduct PM even though it is not as planned. The characterization of OM was provided in order to present its theoretical novelty for researchers and practical significance for industries. Practical implications – To date, there is no publication that reviews the OM in-depth and provides clear understanding on the topic. Therefore, this paper aims to show lineage of OM and the current trend in researches. This discussion will pave the way of new research areas on this optimal maintenance policy. Clear definition and principle of OM provided in this paper will trigger interest in its practicality as well as aid industries to understand and conduct OM in operation plant. Originality/value – This paper discussed the available literature about OM in various perspectives and scopes for further understanding of the topic by maintenance management professionals and researchers. Therefore, OM can be widely studied and applied in real industry as it is an effective and optimal maintenance policy.