Abstract:

The evolving trend of mobile technologies is rapidly developing and they are viewed as business enablers, and have the potential to support asset maintenance practice. On one hand it is able to maintain collaborative information sharing and on the other hand mobile technology is providing a number of benefits to the organization such as working collaboratively or separately. By implementing mobile collaboration technology, organizations can ensure that their maintenance personnel are always reachable anytime, in the context of their site, meaning they are more available for planned and/or unplanned maintenance and provide information as quickly as possible (Tsirulnik, 2009; Saran, 2006; Koseoglu & Bouchlaghem, 2004). Moreover, Smailagic et al., (1997) argue that a combination of mobile/wearable computers with wireless technology develops greater effectiveness and accuracy in maintenance. This technology allows maintenance personnel at a specified location to communicate with a remote expertise centre through digital data, audio, and images. With these capabilities, even a non-expert maintenance crew is able to carry out simple repair maintenance tasks with the assistance from a remote expert’s counter. This study’s aim is to present the current roles of mobile technology to support collaborative maintenance work in the domain of engineering assets organisations. The identified mobile technology roles presented in this paper was obtained from international Delphi study. Twelve maintenance professionals and eight academicians who have high academic background and research experience were involved in this study. The Delphi study is conducted from September 2012 to May 2013.