Maintenance Management Workflow Optimization: a case study on the Wärtsilä fluid management process

Abstract

This thesis studies the usage of Business Process Reengineering for small scale process definition and optimization through a case study analysis of the Wärtsilä Oyj fluid management process.

Fluid management within Wärtsilä involves constant remote monitoring of customer engine fluid condition through laboratory testing and reporting. Each fluid management subprocess was defined and modeled in detail in Business Process Model and Notation in order to analyze the current process and evaluate potential needs of improvement through Bhaskar’s proposed life cycle methodology for Business Process Reengineering, BPR-LC. The BPR-LC methodology relies on process-specific reengineering through analysis, redesign, evaluation, and implementation of a process. The thesis produced a comprehensive list of needs of improvement for the Wärtsilä fluid management process, mainly centered around the need for reduced manual tasks and improved data maintenance. The key identified improvement needs were a need for a fully automated fluid report entry system, a need for an improved analysis and reporting tool, and a need for a defined system for process-related data maintenance. These results support the conclusion that Wärtsilä needs to assign a product owner for the fluid management process.

The results of this paper support the usage of BPR and BPMN as valid methods for small scale process and workflow optimization and suggest that Wärtsilä should continue to investigate the implementation of these methods for other processes.