A Model to assess the maintenance leanness of apparel industry buildings in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Escalating needs of availability in built environments have pursued maintenance to be recognized with the strategic importance notwithstanding the conventional belief of necessary evil. Nevertheless, it absorbs the three-quarters of whole building lifecycle cost. Studies proved that proportion significantly contributed by inefficiencies owing to poor maintenance, lack of reliability focus, poor management commitment, technical and human resources-related issues. Consequently, Sri Lankan buildings opted to adopt numerous strategic management approaches such as Lean, Six-Sigma to acquire the higher status of efficiency and effectiveness in their operations. Simultaneously, adherence to lean concepts was apparent in Sri Lankan manufacturing context, relatively fewer attempts were made on establishing assessment procedures to distinguish the degree of leanness. Hence, research was focused on developing an assessment model to address the leanness levels in maintenance operations. Lean quantification metric “Leanness” in maintenance is defined through identified parameters in literature and those were narrowed down into seven (7) leanness criteria and further expanded into forty-two (42) leanness attributes paving a pathway to the formation of a theoretical assessment model. For the investigation, nine semi-structured interviews were conducted from three identical cases. The derived data were analysed using the manual content analysis technique. Empirical findings revealed satisfactory adherence scoring the thirty-eight (38) attributes accomplishment as the highest and twenty-five (25) as the least. Findings point out significant gaps in lack incorporation of planned maintenance programs with maintenance inventory-related aspects, lack of undertakings on extensive reliability analysis efforts for maintenance activities. The outcomes will mark valuable insights for building practitioners to engage in maintenance operations in a versatile manner to acquire a waste-free, quality, stakeholder-driven maintenance environment.