Prioritization of factors influencing outsourcing maintenance decisions in thermal power plants – A case study

Purpose Although the factors that affect the decision of outsourcing are variant from one industry to another and from one application to another, this paper aims to investigate the factors that influence the decision of outsourcing using a systematic literature review (SLR) approach to fill the gap of the literature and focus on maintenance activities in terms of industrial firms. Furthermore, the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) method will be developed to prioritize the important factors according to the experts' judgments and reveal the factors' weights to support decision-makers in thermal power plants to realize the factors that have a high impact on outsourcing maintenance decisions and enhance their decision-making to increase power plant competitive advantages over quality, availability and safety requirements. Design/methodology/approach The purpose of this research is to prioritize the factors that influence outsourcing maintenance decisions to be considered by decision-makers in power plants before making a decision of outsourcing maintenance activities. In this research, an SLR approach was applied to identify the factors in terms of industry and rank them accordingly using factors' frequency process. A questionnaire survey was designed to seek the experts' opinions to prioritize the factors that influence the decision of outsourcing maintenance activities in power companies using AHP. The research found that “Improve service quality”, “acquire new skills or technical knowledge” and “Function difficult to manage” have the first priority before making the decision of outsourcing maintenance activities in the context of power plants. Findings The decision of outsourcing regarding maintenance activities in the context of industry, as well as determining the most critical factors among the extracted factors from the literature and rank them accordingly using factors' frequency process. Next, a questionnaire survey was designed and conducted to seek the experts' opinions to prioritize the factors that influence the decision of outsourcing concerning maintenance activities in thermal power companies using AHP method. According to the SLR, industrial companies are mainly pursuing outsourcing maintenance services to focus on core activities, save overall costs and improve service quality. Originality/value This is an original research paper out of an MSc thesis submitted at the Industrial Engineering Department, University of Jordan.