Maintenance- and Strategic Physical Asset Management: Morphologies of Two Connate Concepts

Abstract

This paper aims to examine the relationships and delimitations between maintenance management (MM) and physical asset management (AM) concepts. There are several standards, e.g., ISO 5000*, DIN 31015, and DIN EN 13306, which define the basic terms connected to maintenance and asset management. However, they lack a clear differentiation between the two terms, and in the scientific literature, they are often used interchangeably. To gather an in-depth understanding of the usage of the two terms, a literature review (LR) was conducted based on different search strings around MM and AM. Using the principles of Design Science Research (DSR), a model was created to describe the morphologies of companies on the spectrum from MM to AM. For validation, data from assessment- and optimization projects with Austrian and German industrial companies in the fields of MM and AM was used. The results are a proposal for a differentiation scheme by the authors and a classification method that helps to understand the differences between MM and AM.