SKF Reliability Systems - Library

Intelligent Maintenance Systems:
The Next Five Years and Beyond
Transforming Condition-based Maintenance to Productivity and Service Innovation
Jay Lee & Mohammed AbuAli University of Cincinnati (USA)
University Cooperative Research Center on Intelligent Maintenance Systems (IMS)
(A Paper presented at COMADEM 2009)
The evolution of maintenance has gone through different stages of transformation for the past decades.
The traditional approach to maintaining components, equipment, and processes, has been one that
is purely reactive. Mitigating procedures are performed on the equipment once it breaks down. Many
manufacturing companies have been adopting condition-based maintenance (CBM) or predictive
maintenance techniques (PdM) as the best practices.
To transform maintenance to become a truly proactive and value-added productivity improvement,
major innovation is needed to elevate the value to a new level. This paper will present recent advances
of intelligent maintenance systems as well as its systematic methodology and tools that have been
effectively utilized to transform maintenance into innovative and productive service systems in a
diverse set of industries. Two brief case studies are provided to illustrate the lessons learned with
discussions for future service innovation impacts.
1. INTRODUCTION
Maintenance practices have evolved from reactive to condition-based maintenance, but several issues have
not yet been addressed: (a) an intelligent system that is capable of transforming machine data to machine
health information, (b) a seamless communication mechanism so that health information can be disseminated
to appropriate channels; and (c) a decision-making module to efficiently schedule maintenance and production
to achieve a near-zero downtime manufacturing operational performance.
The Center for Intelligent Maintenance Systems (IMS) [1] has been in the pursuit of addressing these maintenance
gaps and needs. The Center for Intelligent Maintenance Systems (IMS) is an established NSF Industry/
University Cooperative Research Center (I/UCRC). IMS serves as a center for excellence for formulating,
planning, and conducting research projects with industry in the field of prognostics and health management.
The vision of the center is to research and effectively develop the necessary tools and techniques that are
required to transform today’s industry from a traditional maintenance approach to a predictive and preventive
maintenance practice for value-added services. The center brings value to its members by validating highimpact
emerging technologies as well as by harnessing business alliances through collaborative testbeds.
INDUSTRY COMPANY PROJECT
General Motors Prognostics of Vehicle Components
Automotive
Toyota Industrial Robots Health and Asset Management
Nissan Automotive Robot Torque Monitoring and Prognostics
Harley Davidson Spindle Bearing Machine Monitoring
Heavy Machinery
Caterpillar
Komatsu
Machine Tool Health Monitoring
Heavy Machinery Lifecycle Knowledge Management
Proctor and Gamble Quality-centric Process Health Management
Process
Parker-Hannifin Hydraulic Hose Prognostics and Safety Services
Omron Precision Energy Management Systems
Consulting
Techsolve
Siemens
Smart Machine Platform Initiative (SMPI)
Reconfigurable Plug-n-Prognose Watchdog Agent®
Table 1 Sample Portfolio of Recent Research Activities at the Center for IMS
By leading research in the development of intelligent learning agents like the Watchdog Agent®, the Center for
IMS has developed mature and enabling technology that will allow the implementation of intelligent prognostics
for the transformation of machine data into machine and process health information. It is a toolbox of algorithms
for different purposes: signal processing and feature extraction, quantitative health assessment, machine
failure prediction, and machine health diagnosis. It is based on a reconfigurable software platform, meaning
that appropriate algorithms can be selected depending on the monitored task. Because of this pervasiveness
feature, the Watchdog Agent ® has been effectively utilized for different applications such as industrial robots,
machine tools, compressors and chillers, production lines, motors, and other components. Table 1 shows a
sample portfolio of recent IMS projects in a diverse number of industries.