Autonomous Maintenance (AM) is part of a maintenance strategy that focuses on the man-machine relationship to effectively carry out cleaning, lubrication, inspection and minor repairs. When properly implemented, AM can significantly improve productivity and quality, as well as reduce cost, therefore, it is an important area of operations management (OM). However, the industry has been challenged with numerous barriers to successfully implement AM and the academy has done little to help industry in this regard. This paper addresses this current research practice gap by offering as its main goal a framework for implementation of AM with the Human, Technological and Organizational (HTO) dimensions. It builds upon an action-research conducted within a longitudinal study in a rolling mill production process. The adoption of the HTO approach by OM scholars has been successfully conducted in different cases and is well documented in the literature. However, the author suggests that this is the first research to use this approach within AM. The research findings indicate the adherence of the HTO dimensions to match the AM implementation challenges and reinforce the need for a holistic and combined perspective of these dimensions for business development, resulting in gains of both a quantitative and qualitative nature and that fourteen lessons were learned with immediate practical implications. Practitioners can take stock of the lessons learnt within this action-research and the offered framework to aid the successful implementation of AM in their industrial operations.