The importance of maintenance increased significantly in the last decades due to a wide range of reasons, include technical and economic aspects. The ongoing substitution of labor by capital leads to the use of modern, intensive fixed-cost, chained plants with high number of units. A comprehensive view is necessary to cover the resulting increase in demands concerning objectives and challenges in maintenance. Strategic planning plays a key role against this background. The making of anticipatory decisions requires high quality methods and instruments. The dissertation focusses on the development of a model for the selection of maintenance strategies for components in chained, capital intensive industries with a high number of similar units. To fulfill the research assignment, in the first section of the thesis the tasks of maintenance are discussed before the focus is set on strategic maintenance management (chapter 2 and 3). Besides the discussion of the target elements, the role of strategic planning and the leadership instruments, also the relevant factors for determining the maintenance strategy are derived. Due to the significant impact of the failure behavior of units also reliability theory and multivariate data analysis methods are shown (chapter 4). Prior the presentation of the developed model, a classification and critical appraisal of existing approaches is done (chapter 5). The answer to the main research question is carried out explicitly in chapter 6. In the pre-sented model, the conceptual and methodical requirements as well as insights of the critical appraisal are merged. Following the introduction of a unit differentiation framework based on property and influence characteristics, the individual steps of the model are presented. These steps are: prioritization of the units, determination of failure behavior, and selection of the strategy. Finally a discussion of the dynamic aspects as well as a critical appraisal of the model is done. Chapter 7 shows the practical implementation and the verification of the model. The se-lected units were mechanical seals of centrifugal pumps installed in an oil and gas company. In the final part of the thesis (chapter 8) the summary of the essential contents of the dissertation and the reflection on the research questions posed at the beginning is done. Furthermore, recommendations concerning possible future research areas are given.