Quantifying the impact of early-stage maintenance clustering

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of early-stage maintenance clustering. Few researchers have previously studied early-stage maintenance clustering. Experience from product and service development has shown that early stages are critical to the development process, as most decisions are made during these stages. Similarly, most maintenance decisions are made during the early stages of maintenance development. Developing maintenance for clustering is expected to increase the potential of clustering.

Design/methodology/approach
A literature study and three case studies using the same data set were performed. The case studies simulate three stages of maintenance development by clustering based on the changes available at each given stage.

Findings
The study indicates an increased impact of maintenance clustering when clustering already in the first maintenance development stage. By performing clustering during the identification phase, 4.6% of the planned work hours can be saved. When clustering is done in the planning phase, 2.7% of the planned work hours can be saved. When planning is done in the scheduling phase, 2.4% of the planned work hours can be saved. The major difference in potential from the identification to the scheduling phase came from avoiding duplicate, unnecessary and erroneous work.

Originality/value
The findings from this study indicate a need for more studies on early-stage maintenance clustering, as few others have studied this.