In 1986 the indiana department of transportation (indot) realized that its computerized maintenance management system was not meeting the needs of the department. Problems included a cumbersome mainframe system that necessitated sequential running of programs, an inordinate amount of paperwork, and, most important, lack of meaningful feedback to district and subdistrict managers and foremen. Indot's maintenance management section studied several alternatives to eliminate or reduce the problems. The alternatives included the development of a new system using indot's data processing resources, the use of existing systems in operation in other states and agencies, and a contract with a vendor-consultant for a product already in use in a public agency. The pennsylvania department of transportation's maintenance operations resources information system (moris) was reviewed as part of the evaluation. A team consisting of specialists in maintenance management, equipment and inventory management, and data processing was sent to pennsylvania for 2 days. Although the team was impressed with the highly integrated nature of moris, the team eventually rejected its use for indiana. The use of moris in indiana would have required a major upgrade to the department's mainframe computer, a major reworking of the software to fit indiana's legal and financial requirements, and some departure from existing well-accepted maintenance management practices. The maintenance management section selected a commercially available product that matched, in theory, the existing maintenance management system. The product is generic, operates on a personal computer, and permits data to be uploaded to the department's data base for use by other functions. The selected product is used by the national park service to manage maintenance activities. This paper appears in transportation research record no. 1276, Maintenance management 1990: proceedings of a workshop, jackson, mississippi, july 25-27, 1990.
Abstract