What is Maintenance as a Service (MaaS)?

Published 2023-02-07 by Alvaro Oberon (a 2.6 minute read) | Back to the main page

Introduction

Industrial equipment maintenance as a service (MaaS) is a business model that transfers the responsibility of managing and maintaining industrial machines from the users to the equipment manufacturer or equipment vendors. Instead of buying the equipment outright, the final users pay a recurring fee or subscription to access the equipment and its associated services. In some literature, MaaS is additionally defined as services where a supplier provides predictive and prescriptive maintenance solutions to customers on a subscription basis. Both these definitions make sense to be classified as MaaS. Note that both of these definitions differ from the common simple contractual outsourcing of maintenance services; for the first, that is because the contractor also owns the equipment and on the second it's because the performance monitoring (checks) are performed by the external contractor.

Advantages of the MaaS model

MaaS can offer several advantages for both parties. Some of these advantages can be:

1. Reducing capital expenditure (good for the final user).
2. Improving operational efficiency for example by always having access to the most advanced - highest throughput machinery (good for the final user).
3. Creating new revenue streams for the service provider (think a machine vendor that can now also rent their used equipment along with the included maintenance on demand, there's more value - and return - for the vendor).

In many ways, MaaS is like a car rental - the final user needs only consider the output of the machinery and how that tights in with production targets - the assurance that the machine fulfills its requirements is a contractual responsibility of a third-party. Monitoring of that performance to ensure targets is also responsibility of the MaaS provider.

Disadvantages of the MaaS model

Like with everything, MaaS also has some challenges, some are as follows:

1. Data security concerns (as data is shared with others).
2. Establishing clear service level agreements.
3. The return on investment now becomes fully the responsibility of the machine owner (MaaS provider) which may be an aspect that is hard to optimize.

Real-world example

ADB SAFEGATE, an aviation company that offers MaaS for airfield equipment such as lighting systems, power supplies, and control systems. - you can know more about their services here (PF consultants have no affiliation).

Last comments

Most likely the application of the MaaS model is not implemented company-wide in what concerns equipment maintenance. It is more likely that it is applied to discreet elements of the production (i.e. one machine or another rather than all of the machines) and thus lives alongside more conventional maintenance management setups (most likely also managed by a CMMS). It is yet another tool on the maintenance manager arsenal.