The changes from preventative to predictive maintenance: the organisational challenge

The ‘Health and Prognostic Assessment of Railway Assets for Predictive Maintenance’ (HPA) project is developing a Prognostic tool, aiming to enhance the existing capability of London Underground escalators’ Remote Condition Monitoring (RCM) system, with the purpose of facilitating change from preventative to predictive maintenance. This paper investigates the organisational challenges associated with the introduction of this tool into the organisation. The paper will describe the approach adopted to model the extant maintenance processes and associated organisational structures which revealed issues to do with unclear processes, poor communication and data sharing links and problems with delineation of responsibility for decision making. It will go on to describe the development of a new maintenance process model that incorporates the additional functionality provided by the newly developed Prognostic Tool, which necessitate changes of roles responsibility, organisational processes and activities.