A Proactive Event-driven Decision Model for Joint Equipment Predictive Maintenance and Spare Parts Inventory Optimization

Manufacturing operations can take substantial advantage of the proactivity concept by utilising event-driven information systems, able to process the sensor data and to provide proactive recommendations. Despite the recent advances in technology and information systems and the variety of methods for prognosis, decision models for joint maintenance and inventory optimization on the basis of real-time prognostic information have not been explored. We propose a proactive event-driven decision model for joint predictive maintenance and spare parts inventory optimization which addresses the Decide phase of the “Detect- Predict- Decide- Act” model and can be embedded to an Event Driven Architecture (EDA) for real-time processing in the frame of e-maintenance concept. The proposed approach was tested in a real manufacturing scenario in automotive lighting equipment industry and proved that maintenance and inventory costs can be significantly reduced by transforming the company's maintenance strategy from time-based to Condition Based Maintenance (CBM).