Abstract
Unscheduled downtime in manufacturing systems can be a major source of lost productivity, profits, and, ultimately, reduced process quality and reliability. However, the incorporation of asset condition management (ACM) into manufacturing systems offers an approach to improve equipment and plant operations by providing real-time condition awareness, system diagnostics, and estimates of future health to enable predictive maintenance. ACM is a framework for assessing the current and future state of health of a manufacturing system and integrating that knowledge with enterprise applications to meet the demand of production operations. In manufacturing systems, successful operations rely on the ability to maintain production assets at their optimal working levels to optimize operations and system performance. Some large corporations have made great strides in incorporating smart technologies to enhance their asset management strategy; however, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) face distinct challenges. One of the key challenges is that most SMEs do not have the wherewithal to invest in new machines nor is there standard guidance on how older machines can be integrated into an ACM solution, so that their end-to-end manufacturing process can be optimized from a health management point of view. This research presents a framework for ACM to facilitate its introduction into manufacturing systems based on their “health-ready” capabilities. Specifically, an ACM system architecture is defined for manufacturing systems, the health-ready principles and capability levels from the aerospace and automotive industries are adapted to the manufacturing domain, and the results from the outreach effort to the manufacturing community are discussed.
