Organizational Structure and Performance of Plant Turnaround Maintenance in Large Process-Based Industries in Malaysia

Abstract - Plant turnaround maintenance is an activity that is aimed at revitalizing, maintaining, and improving the plant facilities for optimal and efficient operations. It is a maintenance activity that is unique to the process-based industries. A growing emphasis has been given on the performance of this activity as a source of sustainable competitive advantage of the business entities. Studies have shown that performance of turnaround maintenance is one of the pressing and challenging tasks faced by the turnaround maintenance managers. Although turnaround maintenance performance depends very much on the technology and technical systems, organizational aspect of the turnaround event notably the organizational structuring processes have significant amount of influence. This paper highlights the linkages between organizational structuring processes namely centralization and formalization on performance of plant turnaround maintenance in large process-based industries in Malaysia.

Key words - Plant turnaround maintenance, organizational structuring processes, centralization, formalization, performance of plant turnaround maintenance.