A well-established maintenance management system is key in improving the operational performance within agricultural production systems. In this paper, we investigated the major criteria influencing effective maintenance management in agroindustries.To that end, we started by presenting a hierarchical structure of criteria and their Critical Success Factors (CSFs) after reviewing related studies and dividing the criteria into the categories of organization management, human-related, and organizational aspects. To assess the weight of the criteria and their cause-effect relationship, we collected the opinions of maintenance experts working in different agro-industries in Iran, using several online questionnaires which were based on Multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) techniques such as Best-Worst Method (BWM) and Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL). The results of the BWM revealed that top management support, and fund allocation and inventory resource management are the most important CSFs in the proposed maintenance model with the global weights of 0.108 and 0.075, respectively. According to the DEMATEL, five CSFs such as top management support, training and education, fund allocation and inventory resource management, maintenance strategies and policies, and adequacy of the maintenance crew, were recognized as causal variables of maintenance management within Iranian agro-industries. The proposed methodology in this paper could help agro-industries in ensuring an effective maintenance management system.

Keywords