A novel decision support system for managing predictive maintenance strategies based on machine learning approaches

Nowadays, the industrial environment is characterised by growing competitiveness, short response times, cost reduction and reliability of production to meet customer needs. Thus, the new industrial paradigm of Industry 4.0 has gained interest worldwide, leading many manufacturers to a significant digital transformation. Digital technologies have enabled a novel approach to decision-making processes based on data-driven strategies, where knowledge extraction relies on the analysis of a large amount of data from sensor-equipped factories. In this context, Predictive Maintenance (PdM) based on Machine Learning (ML) is one of the most prominent data-driven analytical approaches for monitoring industrial systems aiming to maximise reliability and efficiency. In fact, PdM aims not only to reduce equipment failure rates but also to minimise operating costs by maximising equipment life. When considering industrial applications, industries deal with different issues and constraints relating to process digitalisation. The main purpose of this study is to develop a new decision support system based on decision trees (DTs) that guides the decision-making process of PdM implementation, considering context-aware information, quality and maturity of collected data, severity, occurrence and detectability of potential failures (identified through FMECA analysis) and direct and indirect maintenance costs. The decision trees allow the study of different scenarios to identify the conditions under which a PdM policy, based on the ML algorithm, is economically profitable compared to corrective maintenance, considered to be the current scenario. The results show that the proposed methodology is a simple and easy way to implement tool to support the decision process by assessing the different levels of occurrence and severity of failures. For each level, savings and the potential costs have been evaluated at leaf nodes of the trees aimed at defining the most suitable maintenance strategy implementation. Finally, the proposed DTs are applied to a real industrial case to illustrate their applicability and robustness.