Supporting developers in addressing maintenance aspects: an empirical study in the industrial equipment manufacturing industry

Addressing maintenance aspects has become increasingly important in development projects of industrial equipment. Developers of such equipment need to address the maintenance aspects in order to achieve competitive equipment and service offerings. This research focuses on the identification of the maintenance aspects that are relevant to be addressed in development projects and on how developers can successfully do this. The ultimate goal of the research is to support developers in addressing maintenance aspects in development projects in practice. The research consists of a descriptive and a prescriptive study. The descriptive study focuses on eliciting knowledge from experts in companies and proposing overviews that represent this knowledge in a usable way. The results are (1) a model of relevant maintenance aspects to be addressed in development projects, (2) an overview of development activities that developers perform to address these aspects and (3) an overview of factors that affect whether the maintenance aspects are addressed successfully. The prescriptive study focuses on describing design support that is useful to support developers in addressing the maintenance aspects. Three types of concrete design support that could help developers in addressing the maintenance aspects are proposed and described. The overall conclusion is that, in industrial equipment manufacturing companies, vast knowledge exists about the maintenance aspects that are relevant to address and about how they can be addressed successfully. The main contribution of this research is that it has made this knowledge of developers explicit and has synthesized it in a holistic way. This provides a starting point for companies that want to address maintenance aspects better. Furthermore, the research gives a starting point for further development of design support that fits the needs of developers in practice.