Part 6 Summary: Predictive Maintenance in Industry 4.0 - Methodologies, Tools and Interoperable Applications

Maintenance is a key operation function within manufacturing enterprises related to all of their processes and focuses not only on avoiding the equipment breakdown but also on improving business performance. In the last years, due to the evolution of technology, products and machines have become more and more complex. Consequently, the costs of time-based (planned) maintenance have increased and predictive maintenance has evolved as a novel lever for maintenance management. To this end, the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) can enhance the condition monitoring capabilities by paving the way for extensive use of physical and virtual sensors generating a multitude of data. In this way, predictive maintenance can significantly evolve in the frame of Industry 4.0. Industry 4.0 indicates the flexibility that exists in value-creating networks which enables machines and plants to adapt their behaviour to changing orders and operating conditions through self-optimization and reconfiguration with the aim to implement distributed and interconnected production facilities in future smart factories.