The WEAR methodology for prognostics and health management implementation in manufacturing

Prognostics and health management (PHM) uses process state information to inform decision making with the goal of improving maintenance activities, performance, safety, and reliability. In this paper, we present a new methodology for (i) targeting areas in a manufacturing setting that could benefit from a PHM system, and (ii) testing and comparing PHM strategies for implementation on the targeted areas. Our proposed WEAR methodology is inspired by its four principal steps: (1) World - identifying targets, (2) Experiments - collecting candidate PHM strategies, (3) Assess - evaluating the proposed strategies using simulation, and (4) Return - constructing a business case for PHM implementation. The goal of the methodology is to streamline the decision making process before installing a PHM system so that the impacts of PHM are maximized with regards to the manufacturing system as a whole, and the total cost of implementation is reduced. A case study is presented in which the WEAR methodology was implemented at a manufacturing facility in cooperation with an industry partner.