Modifying Maintenance Practices within a Maritime Support Solution from a Cultural Perspective

Abstract

Maintenance culture is a critical factor in sea power delivery and is embedded throughout all aspects of the maritime support solution. Preliminary research suggests that Royal Australian Navy (RAN) maintenance staff and civilian support organizations do not hold positive attitudes towards asset management. As a result, there is evidence that maintenance culture should be defined and improved. However there are no adequate instruments available to measure this gap in culture and attitude within the RAN, or their associated support organizations. Hence the intent of this research is to validate the theory of a poor maintenance culture across all facets of the RAN ship maintenance support solution. Maintenance culture has for too long been about maintaining ships rather than maintaining ship’s reliability (also known as conducting maintenance for the sake of conducting maintenance). This paper investigates asset maintenance support solutions leveraging experience from alternative industry to augment the culture towards maintaining naval assets.