Towards an industry 4.0-based maintenance approach in the manufacturing processes

Maintenance is one of the key application areas of Industry 4.0. Every day, maintenance managers and technicians face the challenge of ensuring maximum machine reliability and availability, while minimizing the utilization of materials consumed by maintenance and repairs. As productivity is pressured to further improve, finding a successful balance between these aspects is becoming increasingly difficult. Therefore, integrating condition-monitoring systems with predictive and prescriptive maintenance principles, a new Industry 4.0-based maintenance can be obtained that enables maintenance engineers to better deal with this challenge. In this context, Maintenance 4.0 expands existing maintenance functions by the integration of Industry 4.0 technologies, like internet of things, cyber physical systems, augmented reality, and 3D printing. This chapter presents the main maintenance areas that are supported and enabled by Industry 4.0 technologies and introduces an Industry 4.0-based predictive maintenance approach for the manufacturing industry.