e-Maintenance: trends, challenges and opportunities for modern industry

E-Maintenance has upraised growing interest in recent years. Equipment manufacturers seek to provide equipment-related services in an effort to increase their immunity to market variations. Furthermore, both equipment manufacturers and users are paying more attention to issues such as energy-efficiency and sustainability, in parallel with safety, quality and reduced costs. This emerging market landscape has given a boost to research in e-Maintenance, aimed at making more efficient use of resources and engineering assets. However, it seems that manufacturing companies and end users are somewhat uncertain on how to go ahead but also on which are the particular benefits they may gain with the adoption of e-Maintenance technologies. One reason is that various actors in this area of research offer somewhat differing views on the issue. This paper presents a generic view of e-Maintenance and points out both the benefits as well as the hurdles there still exist on the road to support the complete life cycle of a product with e-Maintenance, while providing a critical assessment of the current state of affairs. Based on this discussion, the paper seeks to assess how e-Maintenance will develop within the next five to ten years. Special emphasis is given on how the end users can benefit from e-Maintenance i.e. how radical the change really is and what are the financial implications related to its adoption.