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Maintenance, Repair and Operations or Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO), is fixing any sort of mechanical or electrical device should it get out of order or broken (repair) as well as performing the routine actions which keep the device in working order (maintenance) or prevent trouble from arising (preventive maintenance).
The European Federation of National Maintenance Societies defines maintenance as:
All actions which have as an objective to retain an item in or restore it to, a state in which it can perform the required function. The actions include the combination of all technical and corresponding administrative, managerial, and supervision actions.
In telecommunication, the term maintenance has the following meanings:
1. Any activity, such as tests, measurements, replacements, adjustments and repairs, intended to restore or retain a functional unit in a specified state in which the unit can perform its required functions.
2. [For material], All action taken to retain material in a serviceable condition or to restore it to serviceability. It includes inspection, testing, servicing, classification as to serviceability, repair, rebuilding, and reclamation.
3. [For material], All supply and repair action taken to keep a force in condition to carry out its mission.
4. [For material], The routine recurring work required to keep a facility (plant, building, structure, ground facility, utility system, or other real property) in such condition that it may be continuously used, at its original or designed capacity and efficiency for its intended purpose.
Source: from Federal Standard 1037C and from MIL-STD-188 and from the Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms
In many organizations because of the number of devices or products that need to be maintained or the complexity of those systems, there is a need to manage the information with software packages. This is particularly the case aerospace (e.g. airline fleets), military installation, large plants (e.g. manufacturing, power generation, petrochemical) and ships. These software tools aim to help engineers and technician in increasing the availability of system and reducing costs and repair times as well help to reduced material supply time and increase material availability by improving the supplier chain communication. As MRO involves working with products, an organization’s resources, supplier and customers, MRO packages have to interfaces in to many enterprise’s business software systems ( PLM, ERP, SCM, CRM). One of the functions of such software is the configuration of bill of material, taking the components parts list from engineering (eBOM) and manufacturing (mBOM) and updating to “as delivered” through “as maintained” to “as used”. Another is project planning logistics, for example identifying the critical path on the list of task to be carry out (inspection, diagnose, locate/order parts and service) to calculate turnaround times (TAT). Other tasks that software can perform:
Many of these tasks are address in Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS)
In economics and marketing, a service is the non-material equivalent of a good. Service provision has been defined as an economic activity that does not result in ownership, and this is what differentiates it from providing physical goods. It is claimed to be a process that creates benefits by facilitating either a change in customers, a change in their physical possessions, or a change in their intangible assets.
By supplying some level of skill, ingenuity, and experience, providers of a service participate in an economy without the restrictions of carrying stock (inventory) or the need to concern themselves with bulky raw materials. On the other hand, their investment in expertise does require marketing and upgrading in the face of competition which has equally few physical restrictions.
Providers of services make up the Tertiary sector of industry.
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Services can be described in terms of their main attributes.
The delivery of a service typically involves five factors:
The service encounter is defined as all activities involved in the service delivery process. Some service managers use the term "moment of truth" to indicate that defining point in a specific service encounter where interactions are most intense.
Many business theorists view service provision as a performance or act (sometimes humorously referred to as dramalurgy, perhaps in reference to dramaturgy). The location of the service delivery is referred to as the stage and the objects that facilitate the service process are called props. A script is a sequence of behaviours followed by all those involved, including the client(s). Some service dramas are tightly scripted, others are more ad lib. Role congruence occurs when each actor follows a script that harmonizes with the roles played by the other actors.
In some service industries, especially health care, dispute resolution, and social services, a popular concept is the idea of the caseload, which refers to the total number of patients, clients, litigants, or claimants that a given employee is presently responsible for. On a daily basis, in all those fields, employees must balance the needs of any individual case against the needs of all other current cases as well as their own personal needs.
Under English law, if a service provider is induced to deliver services to a dishonest client by a deception, this is an offence under the Theft Act 1978.
The dichotomy between physical goods and intangible services should not be given too much credence. These are not discrete categories. Most business theorists see a continuum with pure service on one terminal point and pure commodity good on the other terminal point. Most products fall between these two extremes. For example, a restaurant provides a physical good (the food), but also provides services in the form of ambience, the setting and clearing of the table, etc. And although some utilities actually deliver physical goods — like water utilities which actually deliver water — utilities are usually treated as services.
In a narrower sense, service refers to quality of customer service: the measured appropriateness of assistance and support provided to a customer. This particular usage occurs frequently in retailing.
The following is an incomplete list of service industries, grouped into rough sectors. Parenthetical notations indicate how specific occupations and organizations can be regarded as service industries to the extent they provide an intangible service, as opposed to a tangible good.