Challenges in the Development of an E-Maintenance System

e-Maintenance is generally understood to be the technology that makes the required information available for the maintenance engineer enabling communication with the supporting system irrespective of where the machine under inspection or maintenance actions is located. Increasing interest in improving overall production efficiency of manufacturing operations, together with technical developments in sensor and analysis equipment and wireless technology has led to accelerated research into e-Maintenance. Findings from a large European research project - Dynamite (Dynamic Decisions in Maintenance) are used to discuss the roles of various actors and roles in the proposed e-Maintenance scheme. The paper also highlights the main challenges faced in developing fully functional and economically optimised e-Maintenance support systems for modern production environments.