Measuring maintenance performance -: in search for a maintenance productivity index

A partial maintenance productivity goal is that the firm should seek to maximize its maintenance productivity in economic terms, and should aim at producing any level of output which is decided upon at minimum maintenance cost with respect to the production system's state. The state of objects or production systems is such a property, i.e., a multidimensional proper ty. In this paper we amalgamate these various dimensions into a single measure of the property involved. All things considered it would seem, that in measuring partial maintenance productivity, minimization of maintenance costs is incorporated as a subgoal, based on the maintenance inputs called for an "optimal budget". These imputed maintenance costs do not have to be calculated separately, but emerge as a by-product of finding a high productivity index. In our pai tial productivity model, the output prices of the produced products and input prices (maintenance costs) will change over time. Expected changes in the prices of outputs and of current inputs would be built into the model. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.