Coupling maintainability indicators with reliability centred maintenance for international airport facilities in Sri Lanka

Purpose International airports comprise numerous highly diverse and complex facility systems. In Sri Lanka, ensuring the availability of these systems is a major challenge due to significant gaps in current airport maintenance management processes. This study develops a reliability-and maintainability-driven maintenance optimisation framework to enhance facility systems in Sri Lankan international airports. Design/methodology/approach The study employs an exploratory sequential design approach. A case study was conducted at a Sri Lanka's main international airport to gather qualitative findings on inefficiencies in its maintenance management process, using data collection tools such as walkthrough observations, expert interviews and document reviews. After qualitative analysis of this information, a maintenance optimisation framework was developed, which includes two quantitative components: failure analysis and maintainability assessment. Findings The results reveal that the case study airport faces significant issues related to its MM process. These include low reliability of airport-specific systems, the absence of a systematic approach to maintenance strategy selection, a lack of proper failure analysis methods and significant maintenance delays due to poor system maintainability. Originality/value This study presents a maintenance optimisation framework that consists of several main elements, including a tailored reliability centred maintenance (RCM) process, an innovative maintainability assessment process and a failure data analysis mechanism. Holistically, the framework addresses the key issues identified in the airport MM and supports improvements in system reliability and maintainability, ultimately enhancing the overall availability of airport facility systems.