5. More Reliable Profitable and Competitive Production via Effective e-Maintenance: A Case Study

Profitable production demands continuously improved maintenance decision accuracy for reducing/avoiding failures and unplanned stoppages due to their consequences. More accurate decisions prolong life length of components, and consequently machines, and maintain the production running longer. When a condition-monitoring (CM) value exceeds a significant (warning) level, it demands a clear understanding of what happened and how it will develop in the next future to avoid failures. In addition to CM it demands reliable information concerning the probability of failure, residual lifetime, and when is the most profitable time of conducting maintenance. Companies strive to reduce production cost in order to increase the possibility of offering customers lower prices and generating additional competitive advantages. But applying new technologies for enhancing maintenance, production performances, and company competitiveness counters many problems in industry. In this paper, a new innovative e-maintenance decision support system (eMDSS) is introduced; the problems facing successful implementation of eMDSS based on a case study are introduced and discussed. Solutions to avoid the problems facing successful implementation of eMDSS are suggested and discussed. eMDSS offers a unique opportunity to achieve just in time dynamic and cost-effective maintenance by selecting the most profitable time for maintenance.