Prerequisites for Reliability Engineering: Assessing Maintenance Maturity for Sustainable Equipment Availability

Organizations frequently adopt advanced Reliability Engineering (RE) techniques prematurely without establishing fundamental maintenance practices, resulting in poor operational performance. This research develops a five-level behavioral framework for assessing maintenance maturity prior to RE implementation, emphasizing organizational readiness through behavioral indicators rather than technical characteristics alone. Unlike existing maturity models that focus on methodology adoption, this framework prioritizes cultural and operational prerequisites for RE success. Using mixed methods-systematic literature review, structured interviews with 12 industrial experts over 6 months, and longitudinal case study-the framework was empirically validated. The case study demonstrated substantial availability improvement (62.13% to 93.81%, +31.68 percentage points) through sequential implementation of fundamental practices. Results indicate organizations can achieve world-class levels (85%) by initially focusing on basic and intermediate practices, with diminishing returns pattern (+17.74, +8.22, +5.72 pp) confirming highest ROI at pyramid base, maximizing return on investment before advancing to sophisticated RE techniques.

Keywords: Maintenance Maturity, Reliability Engineering, Equipment Availability, World-Class Maintenance, Implementation Framework, Operational Readiness.