Using Decision Analysis to Select Facility Maintenance Management Information Systems

Maintenance organizations, charged with preserving the built environment, are receiving a shrinking portion of an organization's operational budget to do its job. It has been demonstrated through various studies that efficiencies can be gained by implementing a maintenance management information system (MMIS). However, with so many choices available, maintenance organizations often select the wrong system. This research effort used value-focused thinking decision analysis to create a model based on values from the Air Force Civil Engineer career field. Data for values and weights were collected from official documents and interviews. The resulting model is highly flexible, allowing the ultimate decision-maker to easily modify weights and value functions related to MMISs. The values and evaluation measures were used to score systems that were selected as alternatives. Sensitivity analyses were conducted to study the influence of evaluation measure weights on the final alternative rankings. The sensitivity analyses displayed alterations in rankings for each alternative based on changes in value weighing. Results indicate that commercially available systems may not be appropriate for Air Force use. The resulting model provides a readily modifiable decision model for the Air Force, as well as other maintenance organizations, to use when selecting a MMIS.