Improvement of maintenance management through Lean Philosophy and Industry 4.0

Abstract

For companies to be able not only to survive, but also to differentiate themselves in the current global market scenario, all their functional areas must be in line with short, medium, and long-term management objectives and policies. The performance and competitiveness of companies depend on the behaviour of their production system, so an ambitious and adequate maintenance management is necessary. In this way, companies seek to adopt new methodologies and approaches to maintenance management that allow them to prepare maintenance for the challenges of Lean Philosophy and Industry 4.0. The Lean philosophy aims to do more and more with less and less, that is, using less equipment, less human effort, less space, and time, trying to offer customers exactly what they want, at the right time. On the other hand, Industry 4.0 is based on intelligent factories with production processes with a computer interface between people, machines, and resources, through extensive communication networks that combine the virtual and the real world, to obtain all integrated processes generating thus a real-time information system. Thus, an adequate maintenance management system contributes not only to improve maintenance performance as well as the production system. The maintenance management system, when combined with Lean Philosophy and Industry 4.0 concepts, makes it more efficient and effective. To improve maintenance performance, a system that combines these three concepts is proposed.