Open Access

Paul-Roux de Villiers, Johannes Jooste, Dominik LuckeORCiD

• As part of the emerging Industry 4.0 movement, maintenance is increasingly being digitalized. This trend sees the realization of smart maintenance strategies and systems that allow organizations to take better control of their maintenance. The reality is that the maintenance approaches and systems that are currently in use at inner city public bus services are based on previous technological and industrialization methods. Smart maintenance and Industry 4.0 technologies can be used to optimize maintenance at inner city public bus services to support informed decision-making. This paper presents the development of a smart maintenance system for these organizations to minimize the downtime caused by unexpected breakdowns and ensure inner city buses operate reliably. Designing the smart maintenance system is done by considering the findings from an extensive literature review and the feedback from structured interviews with bus service representatives. The system validation is performed as a case study with an industry partner. For conducting the case study, a concept demonstrator is designed according to the defined system and addresses the main problem causing downtime of the buses at the industry partner. Tests are conducted with the demonstrator to verify the smart maintenance system's functionalities.