Criteria and model for assessing and improving information technology maturity within maintenance

Maintenance optimization and decision-making processes have been both influenced considerably by Information Technology (IT) developments mainly by increasing data availability. The decision-making process in its turn has affected systems trustworthiness positively. Therefore, theoretically speaking it could be said that Maintenance Management Information technology (MMIT) has the potential to provide applicable solutions for many of the maintenance management problems. Nevertheless, this potential has been hardly experienced in practice because of the mismatch between the level of IT maturity in the organizations and their selected MMIT solutions. To fill this gap this paper suggests a number of criteria which are crucial in decision making for selecting a MMIT application. The criteria are formed based on previous findings utilising an extensive literature review. A model is further developed for this purpose which is also tested on a case company active in power generation in Sweden. The model proved to be helpful when taking further improvement steps for reaching high utilization of IT in maintenance.