Condition-based Maintenance and the product improvement process

The evolution of enterprise services is changing the approach for enabling Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and Supply Chain Management (SCM) business processes. Enabling systems are migrating to process- and service-oriented solutions. In particular, the paper demonstrates how the new technologies can be used to enable a critical process that links vehicle health maintenance to PLM. Our hypothesis is that Condition-based Maintenance (CBM) and PLM integration is achievable through composite application design. The key process for linking CBM to PLM must convert prognostic and diagnostic information into actionable information that can be directed into a project-level PLM environment that supports the end-to-end product improvement process. To test this hypothesis, we designed a composite application within the context of a Small Business Innovative Research project that is sponsored by the US government. This paper motivates the problem from the strategic level to the implementation level and describes the successful test of the hypothesis.