16.7 Cooperative Maintenance Programs

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The cooperative approach to maintenance, whereby in-house staff work right alongside primary vendors and third-party maintenance firms, can yield compelling benefits. Oftentimes such arrangements produce a synergistic effect among the various players that manifests itself in performance of the highest quality, resulting in maximum equipment uptime that, in turn, ensures a high level of satisfaction among the numerous users and work groups of the organization.

Such arrangements usually require that the customer establish a help desk to minimize trouble calls for routine problems. This allows the customer to keep maintenance costs in line by using experienced staff to perform first-level maintenance. Staff members are vendor-certified to assume responsibility for primary equipment service, responding to trouble calls and performing first-level troubleshooting and repair. The vendor acts as a support backup and as the primary escalation point for service.

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