Abstract

Maintenance management is connected with two opposing aspects, management costs and operational efficiency. With the implementation of new technology within the Industry 4.0 (I4.0) concept, new technical solutions are being created. These solutions (mainly robotic workplaces) must reach a maximum performance rate, production quality, and, of course, high availability. Their operation, during the whole life cycle, is expected to be absolutely safe with minimum maintenance costs. These trends, even though they seem to be optimistic, face a lot of problems. The conducted research follows up on the results of previous research aimed at the initial assessment Slovak industrial company readiness status for the I4.0 conception between 2017 and 2019. The aim of the ongoing research was to assess the readiness status in more than 70 industrial organizations in the selected area for the new concept of maintenance management (eMaintenance) and its relation to machinery integrated safety. The research was carried out by questioning, with the structure of individual questions and closed answers stemmed from the self-evaluation according to the new European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Excellence Model (2020). The results of the research were presented to managements of questioned organizations and confirmed the assumptions about a low level of maintenance management transformation to eMaintenance.

Highlights

  • The Industry 4.0 concept, since it was first named in Germany in 2011, has undergone various stages of both development and implementation, mainly in the countries with developed industries [1,2,3]

  • (9%); higher than the average score recorded for grated safety (IS), approximately 90 points (9%); higher than the average score recorded the overall evaluation in the maintenance area

  • Whatever the interpretation of analyzed results may be, the fact is that the empirical research on a randomly selected sample of top managers of selected Slovak organizations has shown that they perceive the readiness of their organizations in the area of machinery integrated safety (IS) on a higher level than the readiness of maintenance to be transformed in terms of I4.0 requirements

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Summary

Introduction

The Industry 4.0 concept, since it was first named in Germany in 2011, has undergone various stages of both development and implementation, mainly in the countries with developed industries [1,2,3]. The nation-wide initiative, called ‘The concept of intelligent industry for Slovakia’ [5], the aim of which is to transform, strengthen, and maintain the competitiveness of the Slovak industry, with the help of the latest technological development, creates space for the research in the readiness of Slovak companies for the implementation of the I4.0 concept. As Madsen [9] clearly summarized in his paper, the concepts of modern management have evolved significantly in the last few years (e.g., Agile Management, Big Data analysis, Customer Relationship Management). As he said, I4.0 can be understood as a Sustainability 2021, 13, 3682.

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