Customers and suppliers have started to prefer availability based maintenance contracts as maintenance contracts and using these kinds of contracts is becoming a trend in the industry. In availability based maintenance contracts the supplier does not sell maintenance, but for example availability of the operation in the customer plant. The main objective of this study is to enable for the target company to manage these kinds of contracts and to create tools to support those contracts.
This thesis is a study on what are the important factors in availability and how are those managed in the contract where equipment are not always manufactured by the supplier and equipment are not similar to one and other. The goal of the thesis is to examine availability based maintenance contract framework and availability costs with availability factors. To the research is selected a case study as a research method. It was grounded with literature review, benchmarking and interviews. Based on literature review, benchmarking and interviewing the framework was created for the target company to be used to manage availability based maintenance contracts.
Based on the framework, it was determined a suitable availability calculation model. With the calculation model it is possible to examine different factors and costs influences on availability. Also, effects of changes in availability to the company’s total cost and profitability are investigated.
The research offers a methodology for adopting availability based maintenance contracts in target company. The emphasis is put on clarifying and focusing the availability factors and those affect to availability. While doing the research it was noticed that small changes in availability have a large impact on company’s performance and profitability.
As a future measurement is presented that the company becomes more familiar with availability and that the company’s management gives clearer instructions on where to invest in and what changes does it require from the company. This includes for example that the company start systematically design and manufacture equipment for availability purposes. This would make maintenance work faster and increase availability
