Maintenance Education in Engineering Programs on Bachelor and Master Level: Evidence from Finland and Sweden

Abstract

This paper discusses the need for maintenance related training in higher education and investigates the maintenance related education offered by engineering programs in Finland and Sweden. Main study objects are Finnish and Swedish Mechanical and Industrial engineering programs on both bachelor and master level. The study covers, for the selected programs, full programs in maintenance, single courses and parts of courses in which maintenance plays a role. In Finland there are in total 42 universities and applied science schools offering 115 programs within Mechanical or Industrial engineering. Of those, 17 programs contain some sort of maintenance related training. The corresponding figures for Sweden are 23 universities and applied science schools offering 87 programs within Mechanical or Industrial engineering, and 10 of these programs contains maintenance related education. For reviewing the educational contents, data was collected from course syllabuses; for each course the content and expected learning outcomes were analysed and categorised. The maintenance related education in the studied programs is in general low; less than 15% offer maintenance courses. The content in the maintenance related courses differs greatly: concept of maintenance, information systems in maintenance, reliability, life-cycle management, condition monitoring and management of maintenance are covered. For increasing the maintenance topics in higher education, the development of appropriate study material and joint online courses are suggested.