maintenance

The “IT’S DIGITIVE” research project developed the prerequisites for collaborative and platform-supported processing of additive manufacturing-based services and thus important building blocks for an additive manufacturing-based service network. The focus was on intellectual property protection and the development of secure and trustworthy order fulfillment processes. Based on the identified inherent risks and threats in this distributed order processing, appropriate security countermeasures were developed using two use cases as examples and implemented as demonstrators.

This article presents a concept for the visualization of maintenance processes in Industry 4.0 using the reference architecture model Industry 4.0, in short RAMI 4.0. The mirroring of maintenance processes is done by transferring relevant maintenance terms from various standards into maintenance assets and the corresponding management shells. Here, the role of the human being has to be considered and the dynamic behaviour of maintenance processes has to be mapped. In this respect, this concept presents different methods of visualizing these issues.

The paper describes a modular, AR-based assistance system that guides the user through a maintenance task by displaying components and meta-information step by step. By supplementing a learning success control, the system can also be used for continuing education of service technicians and operating personnel. Special emphasis was placed on an integrated information system that allows maintenance information and training tasks to be created with little effort and at the same learning and work tasks to be teached on the systems used in practice.

Wire ropes are used in different applications and human life often depend on their integrity. Therefore, technical personnel checks the tightropes on a regular basis but there are some difficulties in detecting damaged areas. Consequently, wire ropes are exchanged rather too early than too late causing avoidable extra costs. In this paper, the project MOBISTAR is presented that combines a magneto-inductive and an optical sensor to detect damages and a software based on Convolutional Neural Networks to evaluate those defects.

The comprehensive digitalization of work environment constitutes major challenges in connection with new media and an extended human-computer interaction. In this context, service and maintenance proved to be an important field of application for this form of Industry 4.0. An adequate process execution and documentation has to be secured, even under challenging conditions, e.g. malfunctions on short notice, harsh working conditions or tight timeframes. These requirements as well as the increasing digitalization promote the application of Augmented Reality solutions in this area. With a focus on maintenance of wind energy turbines, this article describes the state of the art in relation to current solution approaches and development needs in connection with a process-oriented application of Augmented Reality. Therefore, current solutions that are already on the market are considered as well as results of the joint research project “AR Maintenance System”.

In recent decades the maintenance has experienced a continuous change in the industry by the requirements and thus their influence has risen to the production system. But every industry and every production process is affected differently from it. In this paper, therefore, the most recent developments in the maintenance be excerpted from current studies and transferred into the automotive industry, specific into the supplier industry with screen printing products. Previously we created from current studies for the changing meaning of maintenance a cause-effect diagram. In order to raise the perception of the maintenance change in the industry, we conducted subsequently by an expert survey. From this we were able to describe deriving effects on the production system and the formulation of future research needs.

Maintenance is an important factor for the effectiveness of production processes. As the degree of automation and interoperation of production equipment is increasing, the significance of equipment availability and thus of maintenance is increasing. At the moment, maintenance and service engineers spend a lot of time in retrieving and preparing information. In many cases the data of business information systems is not or only partly available to maintenance engineers. In the future, resource-cockpits on mobile devices will provide maintenance and service engineers with all necessary information in situ. This will be realised interactively, with little effort and in the right context.

Multivendor capable service companies are facing growing challenges concerning the alignment of their technological capability portfolio to dynamic market requirements. This paper presents a method that enables practitioners from technical service companies to systematically manage their capability portfolio using both qualitative and quantitative data. Thereby decision makers are provided with a tool to help them shaping the company’s service portfolio.

Throughout the whole lifecycle, maintenance activities generally have to be fulfilled regarding technical systems. In logistics networks the creation of value at the nodes by means of rapid turnover is important, so that the availability of the production factor “machine” is essential. The increase in efficiency of support processes encompasses among others the maintenance of machines and installations. Within the paper, a procedure model with case study is presented, which illustrates the change-over to a condition-based maintenance strategy in the seaport surrounding.