The business case for condition-based maintenance: a hybrid (non-) financial approach

Although developing business cases is key for evaluating project success, the costs and benefits of condition-based maintenance (CBM) implementations are often not explicitly defined and evaluated. Using the design science methodology, we developed a hybrid business case approach to help managers evaluate and justify implementing CBM. We conclude that depending on the innovativeness (for the organization) of the applied technique, the business case should have a different goal orientation and be composed of different support elements. We use the proposed hybrid business case approach in an in-depth single case study that focusses on developing engine condition trend monitoring for a military transport aircraft. The case study ex-plores differences in applying innovative maintenance techniques (exploration) or applying well-known tech-niques (exploitation). Using a combination of non-financial (strategic multi-criteria analysis) and financial ele-ments (using Monte Carlo simulation), we compared the investment in CBM with both fixed-interval preventive maintenance and corrective maintenance.