Maintenance Management and Operational Performance of Service Parastatals in Kenya

Abstract

Maintenance management practices that a firm adopts, impact heavily on its operational performance. A firm must hence adopt practices which offer it operational success. There are many maintenance management practices in use in different organizations. The study aimed at knowing maintenance management and operational performance of service parastatals in Kenya. The study was guided by the following theories; Transaction cost theory and Resource Based view theory. The study employed a cross-sectional survey design. A cross-sectional survey enabled the researcher to bring out the unique way maintenance management practices impact operations performance. The target population for this study was 29 Service Parastatals in Kenya. Primary data was collected by means of structured questionnaire. The questionnaires were selfadministered via drop and pick later method to the respective operations managers of various service Parastatals. The data collected was analysed using descriptive statistics (measures of central tendency, regression and measures of variations) with the help of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20 to achieve the objectives of the study. Regression was used in determining the relationship between maintenance management practices and operations performance. Based on the findings of this study conclusion was that service parastatals have high relationship between operations performance and all maintenance management practices since they explain a large variation of Operations Performance. The study also concluded that majority of the service parastatals applied Preventive Maintenance practices at a moderate rate. The study further concluded that moderate application of maintenance practices also led to a moderate performance in the various parastatals studied. On the operation performance, the study concluded that preventive maintenance, productive maintenance, condition based maintenance and reliability-centered maintenance all have a significant effect on operations performance in service parastatals. The study further concluded that holding preventive maintenance, productive maintenance, and condition based maintenance and reliability-centered maintenance constant, other factors influence operations performance. However, it also meant that there are other variables that affect the operations performance of the service parastatals. These findings showed that preventive maintenance was the most influential factor in operations performance. The study recommends that top management of the parastatals studied should take keen interest in application of maintenance practices in their firms so as to improve from moderate to high. The study findings were applicable to service parastatal institutions only. The findings can therefore not be generalized to all organizations. The study recommends that further research should be done on challenges affecting application of maintenance management in service parastatals in Kenya.