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The use of learning factories for education in maintenance concepts is limited, despite the important role maintenance plays in the effective operation of organizational assets. A training programme in a learning factory environment is presented where a combination of gamification, classroom training and learning factory applications is used to introduce students to the concepts of maintenance plan development, asset failure characteristics and the costs associated with maintenance decision-making. The programme included a practical task to develop a maintenance plan for different advanced manufacturing machines in a learning factory setting. The programme stretched over a four-day period and demonstrated how learning factories can be effectively utilized to teach management related concepts in an interdisciplinary team context, where participants had no, or very limited, previous exposure to these concepts.
The increasing complexity and need for availability of automated guided vehicles (AGVs) pose challenges to companies, leading to a focus on new maintenance strategies. In this paper, a smart maintenance architecture based on a digital twin is presented to optimize the technical and economic effectiveness of AGV maintenance activities. To realize this, a literature review was conducted to identify the necessary requirements for Smart Maintenance and Digital Twins. The identified requirements were combined into modules and then integrated into an architecture. The architecture was evaluated on a real AGV on the battery as one of the critical components.
The maintenance of railway infrastructure remains a challenge. Data acquisition technologies have evolved because of Industry 4.0, expanding the capabilities of predictive maintenance. Despite the advances, the potential of these emerging technologies has not been fully realised. This paper presents a technology selection framework in support of railway infrastructure predictive maintenance, which is based on qualitative methods. It consists of three stages, including the mapping of the infrastructure characteristics with the identified technologies, the evaluation of the most appropriate technologies, and the sourcing thereof. This presents the collective decision support output of the framework.
Maintenance is an increasingly complex and knowledge-intensive field. In order to address these challenges, assistance systems based on augmented, mixed, or virtual reality can be applied. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to present a framework that can be used to identify, select, and implement an assistance system based on reality technology in the maintenance environment. The development of the framework is based on a systematic literature review and subject matter expert interviews. The framework provides the best technological and economic solution in several steps. The validation of the framework is carried out through a case study.
Railway operators are being challenged by increasing complexity and safeguarding the availability of passenger rolling stock, bringing maintenance and especially emerging technologies into the focus. This paper presents a model for selection and implementation of Industry 4.0 technologies in rolling stock maintenance. The model consists of different stages and considers the main components of rolling stock, the related appropriate maintenance strategies and Industry 4.0 technologies considering the maturity level of the railway operators. Relevant criteria and main prerequisites of the technologies were identified. The model proposes relevant activities and was validated by industry experts.
Automatic content creation system for augmented reality maintenance applications for legacy machines
(2024)
Augmented reality (AR) applications have great potential to assist maintenance workers in their operations. However, creating AR solutions is time-consuming and laborious, which limits its widespread adoption in the industry. It therefore often happens that even with the latest generation machines, instead of an AR solution, the user only receives an electronic manual for the equipment operation and maintenance. This is commonplace with legacy machines. For this reason, solutions are required that simplify the creation of such AR solutions. This paper presents an approach using an electronic manual as a basis to create fast and cost-effective AR solutions for maintenance. As part of the approach, an application was developed to automatically identify and subdivide the chapters of electronic manuals via the bookmarks in the table of contents. The contents are then automatically uploaded to a central server and indexed with a suitable marker to make the data retrievable. The prepared content can then be accessed for creating context-related AR instructions via the marker. The application is characterized by the fact that no developers or experts are required to prepare the information. In addition to complying with common design criteria, the clear presentation of the contents and the intuitive use of the system offer added value for the performance of maintenance tasks. Together, these two elements form a novel way to retrofit legacy machines with AR maintenance instructions. The practical validation of the system took place in a factory environment. For this purpose, the content was created for a filter change on a CNC milling machine. The results show that inexperienced users can extract appropriate content with the software application. Furthermore, it is shown that maintenance workers, can access the content with an AR application developed for the Microsoft HoloLens 2 and complete simple tasks provided in the manufacturer's electronic manual.