IT: opportunities

Information technology: for maintenance

opportunities for maintenance management

management
9
Liliane Pintelon
KULeuven, Center for Industrial Management, Leuven, Belgium
Niek Du Preez
University of Stellenbosch, Industrial Engineering, Stellenbosch,
South Africa, and
Frank Van Puyvelde
Glaverbel/Glavinfo, Mol, Belgium

Keywords Information technology, Maintenance, Maintenance programmes,

Planned maintenance
Abstract The information revolution and its impact on businesses, academic life and everyday
life is still receiving much attention at conferences, in business publications and academic journals.
This paper addresses some important opportunities created by the information technology
(r)evolution for maintenance management. It also indicates how IT is already actively used in a
number of normal working situations and points to possible new uses.

Introduction
The information revolution and its impact on businesses, academic life and
everyday life is still receiving much attention in conferences, in business
publications and academic journals. The purpose of this paper is not to discuss
the technological details of this information revolution, nor its potential
organizational impact, but rather to focus on the short- and medium- term
opportunities of information technology for a specific business function:
maintenance management. Before proceeding, both terms, “information
technology” and “maintenance management” will be defined.
Information technology impacts all parts of the life cycle of products, services
and businesses. It is difficult to formulate a definition of information technology
that satisfies everyone involved with it. In Karake (1994) the following
definitions are suggested: “computer-based technology of sensing, coding,
transmitting, translating and transforming information”, “the installation of
computer-based information systems”, “the integration of telecommunications,
data processing and office automation”.
Perhaps the latter definition is the closest to what we in this article want to
call information technology, namely computerized systems consisting of
hardware and software components, datacommunications equipment and data- Journal of Quality in Maintenance
base management systems. This means that these systems can have several Engineering, Vol. 5 No. 1, 1999,
pp. 9-24, © MCB University Press,
functions (Davenport and Short, 1990), like transactional (transforming 1355-2511
JQME unstructured processes into routine transactions), geographical (making fast
5,1 communications over long distances possible), “automational” (reducing
human labor), analytical (using complex analytical methods), informational
(processing large amounts of information), sequential (allowing, for example, to
simultaneously work on multiple tasks), knowledge management (capturing
and disseminating knowledge and expertise to improve the process), tracking
10 (allowing a detailed follow-up on task status, inputs and outputs) and dis-
intermediation (directly connecting two parties that would otherwise
communicate through an intermediary).
Maintenance management (Pintelon and Gelders, 1992) was picked as the
“example” area because it is still relatively “young” in the business arena. In
addition, sound maintenance management requires a lot of interaction with
other business functions as the era of enterprise-wide information management
and business planning becomes a norm rather than an exception. Figure 1
presents the evolution of maintenance management in a time perspective. It is
only from the late 1970s’ onwards that maintenance was considered – by most
managers – to be a fully mature (or full fledged) business function.
Industrial maintenance management may be defined as all activities required
to restore equipment to, or keep it in, a specified operating condition. As such,
maximum installation availability is ensured with the required operational
working quality. Of course these activities must be conducted in a cost efficient
way and conform with safety and environmental legislation.

Structured maintenance management and information technology

The following topics will be covered systematically:
• setting clear objectives for maintenance management;
• the maintenance management decision framework: long-term, medium-
term and short-term planning;
• resource management for maintenance, including: personnel, materials,
documentation and management information systems;
• evaluating maintenance performance.
The IT applications will be discussed and illustrated with real life examples.

maintenance as maintenance integration external & internal

production task department efforts partnerships

“necessary “technical “profit “positive

Figure 1. evil” specialization” contributor” cooperation”
Maintenance
management in a time
perspective
1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 time
Setting objectives IT: opportunities
As every business function, maintenance management needs some clear for maintenance
objectives, which of course have to support the global business objectives. The management
impact of the latter on the scope of maintenance management may be
considerable as illustrated by the example in Hammer (1990). The example
concerned a manufacturer of electronic products which re-engineered its field
service process by pushing some of the process steps on to its customers. 11
Consequently, the mission of the maintenance people in field service was
redefined. The re-engineering of the field service was initiated because of the
typical problems with the traditional way of working: technicians who were
unable to finish a repair because they had not brought the right spare in their
van, slow response to customer calls, and excessive spare parts inventory. In the
re-engineered situation customers make small repairs themselves. A set of
spare parts is stored at the customer’s site and managed through a
computerized inventory-management system. When a problem arises, the
customer calls the manufacturer’s hot-line and describes the symptoms to a
field service diagnostician. The latter investigates the problem with a
computerized diagnosis support system. If the problem appears to be
something simple, the diagnostician tells the customer what part to replace and
how to install it. The old part is picked up and a new part is left in its place at a
later time. Only for complex interventions is a service technician dispatched to
the site. This example also illustrates how IT is an enabler of business process
re-engineering (BPR) (see Appendix for complete list of abbreviations used
throughout this article). BPR has received a lot of attention lately; at the heart of
it is the notion that fundamental rethinking (recognizing and breaking away
from outdated rules and fundamental assumptions that underlie operations)
offers more potential benefits than small stepwise improvements to existing
process.
Some other areas where the introduction of distributed computer systems
may change the scope and objectives are:
• The installation of more and more integrated control systems. Nowadays
shopfloor control systems have moved on from the idea of islands of
automation. They are part of company-wide information systems and
incorporate, for example, planning and tracking systems for production
and inventory control and maintenance monitoring modules.
• The information support for business decentralization. Lately a lot of
companies are reorganizing their operations in business units. Along
with production, maintenance gets decentralized. This means, for
example, that each business unit has its own MRO store (maintenance,
repair and operating supplies). If not centrally controlled, this may lead
to excessive spares inventories and inefficient purchasing. Computer
networks allow for physical decentralization, while facilitating central
control and cooperation between the different stores and avoiding
inventory inefficiencies.
JQME Decision framework
5,1 As in any other business function, three different levels of decisions for
maintenance management can be distinguished:
(1) strategic or long-term planning;
(2) tactical or medium-term planning; and
12 (3) operational or short-term planning.
Strategic planning is concerned with providing the resources required to ensure
the company’s competitive capabilities. Equipment replacement decisions are
obviously not the responsibility of the maintenance manager alone, but
maintenance cost, expected downtime cost and cost of maintenance logistics
(e.g. required spare parts inventory) do play an important role in replacement
decisions. Along with these costs, capacity considerations, impact of
technological changes, economic factors and investment criteria are taken into
account. These decisions are supported by engineering economy models. Life
cycle costing (LCC) – also called terotechnology – is an old (some 25 years)
philosophy which takes into account all these aspects, not only at the moment
of procurement but during the whole equipment life cycle. The technique has
only fairly recently been accepted for implementation in industry. Although its
concept was accepted from the beginning, its implementation was delayed
because of the lack of underlying information technology support. More
recently the developments in IT supports the applications of LCC through,
among others, the possibilities for data storage and processing and the
facilitation of communication. It is obvious that a sound internal
communication network will largely facilitate this process. The availability of
historical data in a user-friendly database and smooth and fast external
communication with alternative suppliers can help to improve the process.
The purpose of tactical planning is to ensure effective resource utilization.
Tactical maintenance planning consists in finding the optimum maintenance
policy. The optimum maintenance policy ensures the availability of reliable
equipment, while keeping maintenance costs (direct costs like labor and spare
parts, for example) and maintenance-related costs (indirect costs like excessive
wear due to bad maintenance planning) under control. Using the two generic
types of maintenance interventions – i.e. corrective maintenance (CM) which
restores the equipment to its desired operating condition after a breakdown or
failure, and preventive maintenance (PM) which is carried out in order to
decrease the failure probability – four basic maintenance policies can be
formulated. These policies are defined in Table I.
Whereas some decades ago there was a shift from CM (failure-based
maintenance or FBM) towards PM (use-based maintenance or UBM),
nowadays the benefits of extensive PM (e.g. replacing some component at a
fixed interval) are more and more questioned. This implies, among others,
a trend towards more condition-based maintenance (CBM). Techniques like
vibration monitoring, thermography, tribology are not new but these
 Corrective if required,
IT: opportunities
Policy preventive . . . Notes for maintenance
management
FBM None • random failure behavior
• low cost CM
• PM too expensive (downtime cost)
UBM Every T periods • wear-out 13
• cost (PM) < cost (CM)
CBM Triggered by parameter • sophisticated
• appropriate parameter available
• cost (PM) < cost (CM)
OBM When opportunity arises • criticality and residual life
DOM MTBF ➚ • modifications, improvements
MTTR ➘
Notes:
FBM = failure-based maintenance
UBM = use-based maintenance
CBM = condition-based maintenance
OBM = opportunity-based maintenance
DOM = design-out maintenance
CM = corrective maintenance
PM = preventive maintenance Table I.
MTTR = mean time to repair Basic maintenance
MTBF = mean time between failure policies

techniques are becoming more widely available and at lower price. This means
that their application is no longer limited to expensive and highly critical plants
such as nuclear power plants or large CPI plants. The same applies to BITE
(built-in test equipment) technology, which has moved from the aerospace
sector to other more general applications. Another trend in CBM is that the test
equipment becomes smarter through built-in intelligence, e.g. the self-
diagnostic equipment installed on the now widely used AGVs (automated
guided vehicles) and telemonitoring, where the equipment (e.g. automatic bank
tellers, elevators or photocopiers) are connected through a modem with a central
control unit in order to be able to quickly respond in case of failures. For the still
widely applied UBM, rather detailed historical information on equipment
failure and repair characteristics and on the corresponding costs is needed.
This means that a good data-capturing system should be linked with a database
which is preferably easy to access. It is obvious that the more advanced IT
applications for maintenance are, the easier this can be accomplished (e.g.
automated work order system). The availability of low cost computing power
also facilitates the use of OR/MS (operations research/management science)
models and software to help to decide on the optimal PM intervention
frequency, for example. Many databases – commercial or governmental – with
reliability data on electronic components (mean time between failures (MTBF)
and correction formulas to fine tune these MTBF for your specific application
JQME taking into account component quality, working environment, etc.) and, more
5,1 recently, also on mechanical components (although here “transfer” between
situations is very tricky) are available. IT networking makes these databases
very accessible and allows for efficient search procedures; the data retrieved can
be helpful for deciding on the most appropriate maintenance policy.
Operational planning concerns the day-to-day scheduling decisions which
14 have to be made after an aggregate allocation of resources has been made.
Maintenance scheduling addresses the problem of arranging the sequence in
which the work orders will be executed and by whom. Aspects to be considered
are job duration, required skills, job priorities, availability of required spare
parts, worker availability, special tooling availability and availability of
equipment maintenance. Due to the complexity of these problems, no single all-
round algorithm or planning technique can be suggested. The availability of a
DSS (decision support system), however, may largely improve the scheduling
process. A computerized DSS allows the decision maker to be more productive
in the sense of facilitating more effective and more efficient decision making.
This DSS should provide online information on availability of workers,
production planning, availability of spares (and alternatives) and be flexible
enough to allow for quick scheduling and frequent rescheduling (which is often
needed in such a dynamic and stochastic environment). An example of such a
DSS, developed by American Airlines, is described in Gray (1992).

Resource management
Maintenance personnel management is becoming increasingly important.
Equipment gradually became more and more complex. Most production
systems are no longer purely mechanical or electrical but also contain a lot of
electronics, making them integrated “mechatronic” systems, in which failures
are often difficult to diagnose. The more production was automated the larger
the impact of breakdowns became as more machines were affected by a
breakdown of one of the machines in the production line. The movement
towards less WIP (work-in process or buffer stocks) made this problem even
worse. These continuing trends increase the need for highly trained
maintenance technicians. Unfortunately worker experience decreased:
equipment became more reliable (so less “failures to learn from” occurred) and
personnel rotation increased (nowadays people are more likely to change jobs
than, say, ten years or more ago). IT offers splendid opportunities here, both
for diagnostics and training. Note that training is not only required for
inexperienced workers but also for the more experienced workers who need
additional training in order to maintain newly acquired equipment. The
traditional on-the-job training or classroom is now often abandoned for more
advanced learning tools like computer-aided instruction. The latter – often
multi-media applications with texts and drawings – allow the students to
proceed at their own pace and/or to focus on areas in which they feel weak. The
rather high preparation cost of such courseware is only justified if it can be
reused over and over (with regular updating of course). The lack of social IT: opportunities
contact may be a drawback of this method. for maintenance
The recent trend in quality certification (e.g. ISO 9000) is often supported by management
a well designed system of computerized standard documents and procedures
which should enhance the productive working climate.
Although computers are becoming more and more familiar in most working
environments, introducing them (or expanding their use) sometimes causes 15
some problems: people refusing to use computerized work orders (terminals
instead of paper), lack of standardization on failure cause makes computer
inputs almost useless, lack of discipline short-circuits the automated MRO
(maintenance, repair and operating supplies) store management. These
problems may be conceptual, organizational or motivational and should be
tackled as quickly as possible when noted.
Many maintenance departments have a workshop where spare parts can be
repaired or even manufactured and, of course, an MRO store. This store can
contain several tens of thousands of different items and its inventory can be of
several 100 thousands of BEF (serious capital immobilization, and serious
obsolescence risk).
Whereas some ten years ago making a spare parts ABC-analysis for most
companies still meant taking (representative!) samples and counting the items
manually, the implementation of automated inventory administration and
control systems (with bar-codes, for example) makes it possible to perform such
analysis very fast for the whole population and not just for a sample. It also
allows us to refine the analysis and thus it enables better problem area
detection.
Nowadays many intercompany partnerships concerning spare parts
management are being developed and are growing rapidly. Needless to say that
a quick and accurate datacommunication is needed here (for example, EDI
between customer and outsourcing firm). Some of these alternatives are:
(1) Physical intracompany pooling of spare parts: close cooperation between
MRO stores of different business units of the same firm helps to reduce
the spare parts inventory, while maintaining or even improving the
service level. An ongoing study at our department addressed this
problem for an airline company with several bases in Europe. In
this study, some mathematical models are being developed in order to
determine which spares and how many of them should be located in each
MRO store. The purpose is to find the optimal trade-off between two
management objectives: “maximize the service level” and “minimize
MRO costs”.
(2) Physical intercompany pooling of spare parts: recently some spare parts
outsourcing firms were founded (often spin-offs of maintenance
consultants or maintenance firms). These firms make it their business to
keep a large inventory of mostly a specific type of spare parts (e.g.
bearings or hydraulic components). Mathematical modeling for this type
JQME of decision is possible (cfr. queueing, Marko), but a lot of questions still
5,1 need to be addressed before these models can be used in practice, such
as:
• Finding a mechanism for the outsourcing firm to charge its customers;
namely how to “divide” the logistic MRO cost among all kinds of
customers (small, large), how to act if new customers want to join, what
16 to do if current customers withdraw.
• How to compute the joint probability function of demand for spares
and how to predict individual service levels.
• How to take specific delivery elements into consideration: locating
spares in an MRO store 30km away from most customers (e.g. MRO
store in Brussels, most customers in Antwerp) may seem very
reasonable at first sight, but the chronic traffic jams between Brussels
and Antwerp are a serious threat for short delivery times.
• What standard to take? As a recent case in Belgian industry showed
this is a very difficult and sensitive issue. Even when the range of
spares to be pooled is narrowed down to a specific part, e.g.
electromotors, many options remain due to technical differences, but
also due to different standards (German, British).
(3) Virtual pooling of spare parts: with virtual pooling, a third party (or
outsourcing firm) provides information on the availability of spares to
potential buyers and sellers. We call this “virtual” pooling because the
spares are not really put together in a pool, only the information on the
spares of the participants in the network is shared. The spares in
question are mostly spares of strategic importance or also “older” (for
some companies already obsolete) spares. The participants pay a
subscription fee to the database service. Sometimes the outsourcing firm
offers an active search service, for which an additional charge (like 10 per
cent of the spares price, for example) has to be paid. A well-known
example of this virtual pooling is the Dutch LogLines initiative.
Maintenance documentation is an asset. First of all there is the historical
information on previous job details and equipment repair and failure history,
but there is also technical documentation. The latter consists of a collection of
instructions, drawings and manuals. Making these available on computer (e.g.
CD-ROM instead of books) increases information availability and allows for
quicker and more efficient searches.
A fairly recent development here is the GIS (geographic information system).
GIS software offers the opportunity to combine a large amount of spatial and
administrative information. Besides an appropriate DBMS (database
management system), a CAD environment and a navigational tool is needed.
The latter allows one to geographically “move around” in the software. Typical
applications for maintenance management exist in, for example, building
maintenance, where a building can be stripped down from a global building
overview, over a walk through the corridors, a detailed view of a room to a IT: opportunities
detailed plan of all nets of electricity and water in that room together with its for maintenance
connections. The same can be applied to industrial installations where one can management
start from a global picture of a refining plant, zoom in on a distillation tower,
zooming again onto a particular pump and get at the same time all technical
specifications of that pump together with information on the availability of a
spare pump (or a interchangeable one) in the MRO store. These applications 17
were pioneered by the US Navy and the British Navy; they are expensive both
to install and to keep up to date, which makes them only available to larger
companies.
Nowadays most companies have their MMIS (maintenance management
information systems). There has been a tremendous evolution in the use of
computers for business lately. This evolution starts at the mainframe DP (data
processor) of the 1950s-1960s, goes over the mainframe and mini MIS
(management information system) of the 1970s, the DSS (decision support
systems) also available on individual PCs and networks) of the 1980s on to the
TSS (task support system) of the 1990s, with further “microization”. Besides
this trend of more and more powerful computer applications for lower costs,
there is also the aspect of user friendliness, which has largely increased over the
past decade.
In the early 1980s the first MMIS appeared, on one hand, due to the full
recognition of maintenance as an important business function and, on the other
hand due to cheaper and more powerful computer power. The initial MMIS,
mainly mainframe applications, were mostly administratively oriented with
only very limited management support options (e.g. cost control).
Progressively, MMIS acquired more decision support-like capabilities (e.g.
for work order planning). More and more specific maintenance software
focused on the needs of the maintenance manager became available. It
contained modules with technical and historical data on the equipment, work
order planning, personnel management, inventory control and reporting
facilities. Recently these software packages became even more user-friendly
through the use of GUI (graphical user interfaces) and multimedia applications
like the integration of technical drawings and support texts on one screen.
For spare parts management these GUI-MMIS (Basta, 1994) offer very
interesting search services (like where-used, can-be-used-instead, etc.). They
allow one to click on a photo or drawing of a plant module and are able to
narrow down their focus from a module to every individual unit or bolt. Each
time, of course, information about (dis)assembly and spares characteristics may
be looked up. Most of the recent MMISs not only carry out classical inventory
administration, but also offer the opportunity to build in some more or less
sophisticated inventory control models.
Whereas some years ago the question “make or buy?” was still often asked,
nowadays most companies buy their maintenance software, either as a
standalone package or as a module in integrated systems (such as SAP, for
example). The main reason for this shift in the MMIS market is undoubtedly the
JQME maturing of this market. In Belgium, for example now only a few packages (e.g.
5,1 R/5, Rimses, Maximo) remain on the market; they are “old” packages, with all
(or almost) all bugs removed and fine-tuned based on the experiences of many
users.
A recent trend which goes much broader than mere MMIS, but which will
undoubtedly have its influence on the MMIS environment, is the evolution in
18 middleware software. This software should manage the communications
between corporate (e.g. ERP, enterprise resource planning) and plant-floor (e.g.
MES, management execution) systems. This vertical enterprise integration will
encourage data sharing and manipulation across, up and down in the
organization and will foster better strategic business management (Crossan and
Hodgson, 1997).

Evaluating performance
Regular performance reporting is an important building block in any business
function. It closes the management loop, and allows comparison of the outcome
(working results) of the execution of the planning with the objectives. This
allows continuous improvement programs to be defined. Maintenance
performance reporting is hard because of the close (and dependent) relationship
between maintenance and production and also because of the time lag existing
between the execution of maintenance work and the results of it. In the past an
additional problem was (and for some companies still is) that data on
maintenance are scattered all over the company (e.g. spare parts consumption is
registered by accounting, hours worked are kept by the personnel department)
and moreover are often incomplete. With the implementation of MMIS this has
improved a lot. Furthermore, the extensive attention which has been given to
performance reporting in general has helped to define usable maintenance
performance reporting tools. The MMT shown in Figure 2 is an example of
such a tool (Pintelon and Van Wassenhove, 1990; Pintelon and Van Puyvelde,
1997); needless to say that the better the DBMS and network connections are,
the more efficient such a tool is. It consists of a control board which highlights

MMT
Control board
with PIs symptoms
Detailed reports
network of different types
of reports diagnosis

improvement program
• further audit remedies
Figure 2. • procedural changes
A maintenance • PM policy optimization
management tool etc.
the areas in maintenance management performance where something went IT: opportunities
wrong or is likely to go wrong (“symptoms”) and a network of detailed reports for maintenance
which allow the user to find the causes of the bad performance in an efficient management
way (“diagnosis”). The tool has been developed at the Center of Industrial
Management of the KULeuven and has been implemented in several industrial
companies.
Apart from regular performance reporting there is often the need for a 19
“snapshot” of the maintenance organization. This snapshot or audit will result
in a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis. An often
heard question of maintenance managers in this respect is, “How well do we
compare with our competitors?”. Apart from confidentiality considerations
which may occasionally hinder such study, conducting a benchmarking study
involves a lot of work for which a maintenance manager has no time. Asking a
consultant to do it is another possibility, but this will cost a lot of money. As the
preparedness to talk with colleagues is often there, but communication is
the problem, IT communication development can create unexpected
opportunities here (like teleconferencing, for example).

Some case experiences

A work order management system for a car manufacturer
The car manufacturing company had an MMIS (maintenance management
information system) installed for a number of years, but it was not being used
to its full potential. A SWOT analysis concerning the organization showed that
(among many other findings):
• there was insufficient feedback from maintenance to production;
• maintenance activities were poorly supported by formal agreements.
For example, the sequencing of maintenance and repair tasks was determined
by maintenance foremen, but their choice was not always in accordance with
the desires of the production department.
One of the causes of these problems was failing communication: formal
information flows (maintenance request forms) and informal information flows
(beepers) were not in harmony with each other. In fact, the maintenance request
forms were only used for administrative purposes such as accounts of working
hours and failure analysis. They were only entered into the computer system
afterwards. Apart from the same work being done twice, this caused incomplete
or incorrect documents (especially for information on downtimes and failure
causes).
Introducing electronic maintenance request forms could improve this
situation (De Smet et al., 1997). The costs for this mainly consisted of
developing extra software: as there were already a number of computer
terminals available on the shopfloor for production flow control purposes, the
hardware investment was minimal. Table II illustrates the different statuses
defined for a maintenance request. This fairly simple extension of the existing
information system leads to better operational control: at each moment an exact
JQME overview can be extracted of current disturbances and preventive maintenance
5,1 tasks. Moreover, as these data are of better quality, they led to improved
management information, which allows for better decisions in the medium to
long term.

An expert system for failure diagnosis for an electronic component

20 An ES was developed for a company producing electronic components
(De Smet et al., 1997). This company used ten similar machines for a given
production step. These machines were designed and constructed within the
company. They are all based upon the same principles, but they can be
subdivided in a number of versions, between which there are some minor
differences. The machines are very sensitive to disturbances (the major problem
being quality losses) and they need frequent adjustment, maintenance and
repair. To do this, repairmen must adjust certain machine settings.
Unfortunately, there is no exact model describing the influence of the
parameters on the end result, and repairmen are using their experience when
performing this task. This leads to the following problems:
• Training repairmen is a time-consuming and expensive process: the on-
the-job training method used takes a long time (one to two years) and
even then, the repairman-in-training cannot solve autonomously the
problems that have not occurred during the training period.
• Work methods used by repairmen are not standardized: some problems
are solved in different ways by different repairmen. An opportunity to
learn from the experience of colleagues was missed here.
A traditional approach to such problems would be to write down big
maintenance manuals for the machines. Unfortunately, this is a gargantuan
task, especially if one desires user-friendly manuals (using indices, references,
trouble-shooting procedures, etc). Moreover, there is the danger that, once
written down, the manuals would become static, i.e. the information would not
be updated whenever changes are made to the machines. Another approach is
setting up an expert system. It embodies structured knowledge in a knowledge
base and is meant to serve as a competent and cost-effective consultant.

Status Machine Activity

Request down between assessment and begin repair

Start down repair in progress
Wait down wait for parts
Interruption down wait for repairmen
Table II.
Follow-up up follow-up or work of maintenance outside production time
Possible status of
a maintenance Temporary up temporary solution
request form Ready up permanent solution
It was decided to build an ES using a commercially available shell. A shell is a IT: opportunities
program containing a user interface, an inference engine and an empty for maintenance
knowledge base. Building the expert system then only requires filling management
the knowledge base with the desired domain knowledge. This process of
knowledge elicitation is a problem in its own right: the fact that someone is an
expert in a given domain does not imply that he/she is also an expert in
formulating or structuring that expertise. 21
At first, an expert system developed by a sister company for similar
machines using the shell Crystal was analyzed. The program appeared to be
nearly useless because the knowledge in it was out of date and, worse, the
separation between knowledge and inference engine was not strict enough.
This made the system difficult to understand, hard to use and nearly impossible
to maintain. As there were budget and time constraints for the purchase of
another shell, we opted for a development based on database technology in the
programming language Clipper. For this purpose we first adopted a knowledge
model for failure diagnosis that could be implemented as a set of relational
databases. The model works as illustrated in Figure 3. The development of the
system (including a menu-driven user interface) required about 400 hours of
programming work.
This approach has many advantages for the protection, dissemination and
transfer of the available knowledge. Besides, this system can be part of an
integrated knowledge system, in which the expert system is not seen as an
isolated application (which would cause it to lead an isolated life). For spare
parts management this ES assured that the right spares were used for each job,
something that was not always the case in the past. Apart from assisting
repairmen, via the expert system interface, with failure diagnosis and
repairmen-trainees with their training, this integrated knowledge system is
now also extended with systems for registration and failure analysis. This
component is very useful as a management tool. Moreover, the expert system
can use this knowledge to produce a better diagnosis: by recording
systematically which failures occur frequently, the most likely failure and its
test can be suggested first.

CBLS project in a virtual enterprise

The equipment concerned is complex, manufactured by different companies
(virtual enterprise concept), and sound configuration management is needed
(due to the large diversity at the applicability and manufacturing level for the
same functional BOM, due to retrofitting, mission-specific configuration

trigger hypothesis test till confirmation

(failure) (cause) failure-cause link

appropriate maintenance
Figure 3.
intervention
ES knowledge model
JQME requirements, etc). Examples of such equipment are airplanes, ships, trains,
5,1 telecommunication equipment, etc. This configuration management is of course
a basic need for sound spare parts management in this context.
It is clear that the customers need the manufacturer(s) through the products’
life cycle (total service enterprise concept, Figure 4). Currently there is no
software available which covers the whole chain. It would be particularly
22 interesting for these types of applications if data communication between the
PDM (product data management) and the CAMM (computer-aided maintenance
management) software could be properly provided. The above-mentioned
project focuses on this CBLS (configuration-based logistic support), and the
concepts used are widely standardized (most of them MIL-STD based). In order
to make such data communication possible not only the right software but also
the right hardware is needed, standardization and open system platforms being
very important issues here.

Conclusions
In conclusion, we can follow the line of thought pictured in Table III (based on
Tapscott and Caston, 1993). There are very promising developments in IT
which can help to improve maintenance practice and as such create better
competitiveness. Buying highly sophisticated IT hardware or software is not
the complete answer; IT is only an enabler of changes – changes in
organization, in working methods, in communication (both internal and
external), in attitude. Master-slave computer systems or stand-alone PC
applications have evolved towards client-server architectures, and work group

virtual enterprise
design engineering manufacturing distribution support exploitation
configuration management
as-designed as-built as-is
logistic support analysis
PDM production & distribution CAMM
Figure 4. control software
CBLS project scope integrated data environment

Enabling technology Benefits Necessary changes

Workgroup computing Better performance Business process re-engineering,

e.g. redefining field service
Integrated systems Integrated business Organizational transformations,
function approach e.g. decentralized MRO stores with
central control
Table III. Inter-enterprise Extended business Redefining external relationships,
IT opportunities partnerships e.g. outsourcing
computing. Business function integration has been made easy through IT: opportunities
integrated information and communication systems. Communication systems for maintenance
have changed so that not only internal business contacts get easier, but they management
have opened the way to inter-enterprise computing. In this paper we have some
examples of the changes that may brought in by this enabling technology:
business process redesign may mean that, for example, field service is
reorganized; organizational transformation may mean that physical 23
decentralization becomes feasible because of the ease of central control and
outsourcing is a typical example of recasted external relationships.
IT offers a lot of opportunities; these opportunities should be investigated
and exploited – if not they may become a threat.

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Appendix
Abbreviations
ABC inventory analysis technique
AGV automated guide vheicle
BEF Belgian Franks
BITE built-in test equipment
BPR business process re-engineering
CAD computer-aided design
CAL computer-aided learning
CAMM computer-aided maintenance management
JQME CBLS configuration-based logistic support
CBM condition-based maintenance
5,1
CD-ROM compact disk – read only memory
DBMS database management system
DOM design-out maintenance
DP data processing
24 DSS decison support system
ERP enterprise resource planning
ES expert system
FBM failure-based maintenance
GIS geographic information system
GUI graphical user interface
ISO international standards organization
IT information technology
LCC life cycle costing
MES management execution planning
MIS management information system
MMIS maintenance management information system
MMT maintenance management tool
MRO maintenance, repair and operating supplies
MTBF mean time between failures
MTTR mean time to repair
OBM opportunity-based maintenance
OR/MS operations research/management science
PC personal computer
PDM product data management
PI performance indicator
SWOT strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats
TSS task support system
UBM use-based maintenance