Development in the application of ICT in condition monitoring and maintenance

This paper reviews the available literature on the application of information and communication technologies (ICT), more specifically, Web and agent technologies in condition monitoring (CM) and the maintenance of mechanical and electrical systems. The rarity of experts led to the application of artificial intelligence and, later, distributed artificial intelligence. The Web and agent technology is the latest development in this area. The literature findings have been analysed and classified in a framework which highlights the baseline technology, the objective of the technology and the industry of application. The OSA-CBM (Open System Architecture Condition-Based Maintenance) layers are also used for the analysis of the reviewed work. The review shows that Web and agent technologies are being used for monitoring and maintenance in manufacturing, power, and chemical industries. It is used to integrate geographically distributed systems, processes and heterogeneous data for asset management. Different architectures, methodologies and tools are proposed by the researchers for the development of agent systems. Few findings report the use of the mobile devices. Finally, the review shows that limited consistent and systematic efforts have been made, in an isolated manner, to apply ICT to CM and maintenance.