JMTM special issue on: advanced maintenance engineering, services and technologies

Citation

(2014), "JMTM special issue on: advanced maintenance engineering, services and technologies", Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management, Vol. 25 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/JMTM-03-2014-0015

JMTM special issue on: advanced maintenance engineering, services and technologies

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management, Volume 25, Issue 4.

Maintenance is an essential function in any successful operations. Today, it is enhancing its contribution to companies’ competitiveness and profitability thanks to relevant innovations achieved by advanced methodologies, services and technologies. A leading concept is becoming maintenance engineering, an increasingly important topic which covers wide range of related application areas. Maintenance engineering aims at investigating how engineering theories and practices can improve maintenance plans in order to impact dependability and asset management performance, which in turn facilitate the adoption of innovative solutions enhancing profitability of industrial operations.

This Special Issue of JMTM on “Advanced maintenance engineering, services and technologies” demonstrates such innovative trend by blending diverse application areas of maintenance engineering, thanks to the relevant contributions emerged from the second IFAC A-MEST Workshop on “Maintenance for Dependability, Asset Management and PHM (Prognostics and Health Management)” held in Seville in November 2012. Within this issue, a total of eight papers are covering a wide range of topics that are distinguished by their sound theoretical foundation coupled with understanding of practical matters. We have ordered the papers’ presentation in a manner that provides an organized “picture” of advanced maintenance engineering, emerging services and technologies, within industrial operations.

The first two papers focus on the role of maintenance in improving company’s business and profitability (see the paper authored by Maletič, Maletič, Al-Najjar and Gomišček) and on the strategic alignment of actions in maintenance or after-sales areas with business objectives (see González-Prida, Viveros, Barberá Martínez and Crespo Márquez). The following two contributions are centered on reliability and maintenance analysis by stochastic simulation, respectively, focussing on the assessment of the performances of multi-state systems (see Zhouhang, Maen and Kondo) and on a methodology to transform the expert knowledge in stochastic simulation models for “Complex maintenance programs quantification of industrial systems” (see Ruin, Levrat, Iung and Despujols). The fifth and sixth papers are directed toward the maintenance logistics support. The former proposes a modelling framework based on queuing networks to reduce the sojourn time of failed equipment in the maintenance workshop (Simeu-Abazi, Di Mascolo and Gascard). The latter proposes a review of multi-criteria classification of spare parts which highlights the gaps of current situation in the real industrial world with respect to scientific knowledge (Roda, Macchi, Fumagalli and Viveros). The last two contributions provide different perspectives on asset health monitoring and prognostics. The former presents a method for trends extraction from multidimensional sensory data to be used for machinery health monitoring and remaining useful life prediction (Mosallam, Medjaher and Zerhouni). The latter proposes a methodology for “Value-driven engineering of E-maintenance platforms”, whose purpose is to facilitate the introduction of technological innovations for condition monitoring and predictive maintenance based on an analysis of the benefits provided to the maintenance processes target of innovations (Macchi, Crespo Márquez, Holgado, Fumagalli and Barberá Martínez).

We hope we have succeeded in presenting this collection of carefully selected papers which blends the thorough theoretical investigations with implementation issues in maintenance practice. Most papers are supported by real life investigations involving case study or survey. This Special Issue should be of interest to both academics and practitioners who are concerned with maintenance modelling and management.

About the Guest Editors

Adolfo Crespo Márquez is currently a Full Professor and Head of the Department of Industrial management at the School of Engineering of the University of Seville. His research works have been published in journals such as Reliability Engineering and System Safety, International Journal of Production Research, International Journal of Production Economics, European Journal of Operations Research, Omega, Production Planning and Control, Decision Support Systems, Computers in Industry, Quaity and Reliability Engineering International, Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management, Journal of Quality in maintenance engineering, among others. Professor Crespo is the author of eight books, the last four with Springer-Verlag in 2007, 2010, 2012 and 2014 about maintenance, supply chain and warranty management. He leads the SIM (Sistemas Inteligentes de Mantenimiento) Research Team currently with five PhD students and seven researchers. He has extensively participated in many engineering and consulting projects for different international companies and institutions. He is the President of INGEMAN (ingeman.net) since 2002.

Benoît Iung is currently a Full Professor at the Lorraine University (France). He conducts research at CRAN laboratory (CNRS, UMR7039) where he is managing today a research group on sustainable industrial system engineering. His research and teaching areas are related to dependability, prognostics, maintenance engineering and e-maintenance. In relation to these topics, he took scientific responsibility for the CRAN participation in a lot of national, European (e.g. Dynamite) and international projects, for example, with China (e.g. EIAM-IPE,) and Chile (e.g. iMaPla). He is now the Chairman of the IFAC WG A-MEST and of the ESRA TC on Manufacturing, a fellow of the IFAC TC 5.1., a French Associate Member to CIRP and a Founding Fellow to ISEAM. Benoît Iung has co-authored several books (e.g. first e-maintenance book in Springer) and has published more than 100 scientific papers. He has supervised until now about 15 PhD students, 15 MA and four Post-Doctorate students.

Marco Macchi is an Assistant Professor at the Politecnico di Milano, Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering. He is currently teaching Modeling of Production Systems and Logistics and Design and Management of Production Plants. He is the scientific responsible of the Observatory on Technologies and Services for Maintenance (www.tesem.net), the secretary of the IFAC Working Group on Advanced maintenance engineering, Services and Technology (A-MEST WG), and the Book Review Editor of the International Journal Production Planning and Control: The Management of Operations. He is author or co-author of four books and more than 100 papers at national and international level. His research interests are in industrial engineering and operations management, with a special concern to manufacturing systems planning, asset and maintenance management, and industrial plant automation.

Dr Khairy Kobbacy was a Professor of Management Science at the Salford University from 2000 to 2013 having joined Salford in 1990. He lectured at the Strathclyde University in OR (1986-1990) following industrial experience gained in a major oil company. At present he undertakes academic activities with various universities as independent academic. Khairy has published extensively in the area of maintenance modelling including a joint editorship of the Complex System Maintenance Handbook (2008). Khairy was the Head of the School of Accounting Economics and Management Science, Head of the Management and Management Sciences Research Institute and Executive Dean of the Faculty of Business, Law and Built Environment during the period 2000-2010 at the Salford University. He was the Vice President of the OR Society (2001-2003) and was awarded the medal of the President of the OR Society and Literati Club Award.