Creating an open-books implementation framework for a maintenance-related value-based life-cycle model

This study is a qualitative action research by its nature with elements of personal design in the form of a tangible model implementation framework construction. Utilized empirical data has been gathered via two questionnaires in relation to the arranged four workshop events with twelve individual participants. Five of them represented maintenance customers, three maintenance service providers and four equipment providers respectively. Further, there are two main research objectives in proportion to the two complementary focusing areas of this thesis. Firstly, the value-based life-cycle model, which first version has already been developed prior to this thesis, requires updating in order to increase its real-life applicability as an inter-firm decision-making tool in industrial maintenance. This first research objective is fulfilled by improving appearance, intelligibility and usability of the above-mentioned model. In addition, certain new features are also added. The workshop participants from the collaborating companies were reasonably pleased with made changes, although further attention will be required in future on the model’s intelligibility in particular as main results, charts and values were all reckoned as slightly hard to understand. Moreover, upgraded model’s appearance and added new features satisfied them the most. Secondly and more importantly, the premises of the model’s possible inter-firm implementation process need to be considered. This second research objective is delivered in two consecutive steps. At first, a bipartite open-books supported implementation framework is created and its different characteristics discussed in theory. Afterwards, the prerequisites and the pitfalls of increasing inter-organizational information transparency are studied in empirical context. One of the main findings was that the organizations are not yet prepared for network-wide information disclosure as dyadic collaboration was favored instead. However, they would be willing to share information bilaterally at least. Another major result was that the present state of companies’ cost accounting systems will definitely need implementation-wise enhancing in future since accurate and sufficiently detailed maintenance data is not available. Further, it will also be crucial to create supporting and mutually agreed network infrastructure. There are hardly any collaborative models, methods or tools currently in usage. Lastly, the essential questions about mutual trust and predominant purchasing strategies are cooperation-wise important. If inter-organizational activities are expanded, a more relational approach should be favored in this regard. Mutual trust was also recognized as a significant cooperation factor, but it is hard to measure in reality.

Publication Statistics Books 2000-

Vapaakappalekartuntaan perustuva tilasto Suomessa kustannetusta kirjallisuudesta vuodesta 2000 lähtien

Open Access in Times of Knowledge Unlatched : Cooperative Action for Books and Journals

Presentation at the seminar "Publishers and Funders for OA in Finland", Helsinki, May 24, 2016