PROTEUS—Creating distributed maintenance systems through an integration platform

This paper is based on the results from the project PROTEUS sponsored by the French Ministry of Economy, Finance and Industry and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany under the label of European Commission Initiative ITEA. It presents the architecture and the basic concepts of an integration platform, which constitutes the framework of systems implementing the tasks dedicated to remote maintenance, as well as other applications, for large and medium scale industrial installation. The approach illustrated here is useful for executing any maintenance strategy by implementing the relevant means for controlling workflow between several system components as well as the component's integration itself.The paper first points out the need for designing such a maintenance-oriented platform, continues with a requirements analysis to a global maintenance system followed by the description of the fundamentals of a maintenance application integration system. Finally a sample implementation of a maintenance scenario is given.