Predictronics is participating in an innovative research project at the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute (DMDII) in Chicago to dynamically schedule maintenance opportunities based on machine health and overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) information.

Existing production software incorporates planned machine downtime into the production schedule through time-based preventive maintenance and the experience and domain knowledge of plant personnel, assuming machines are completely healthy and not degrading at different rates.

The project, which Predictronics is conducting alongside Lockheed Martin, FORCAM and Northeastern University has the main goal of changing factory operations from a reactive environment centered around preventive maintenance to an agile, just-in-time maintenance environment.

The predictive maintenance capabilities of PDX, Predictronics’ end-to-end software platform for developing and deploying predictive analytics solutions, will be used to determine when maintenance should be performed on the machines and, in effect, change how work orders are scheduled.

Instead of scheduling work orders on a time-based schedule, which can result in un-necessary maintenance, downtime, and labor cost, the work orders can be scheduled in a predictive and intelligent manner. Effectively, the work orders will be scheduled at convenient times for the factory and only when they are truly needed.

PDX will also be combined with FORCAM’s OEE technology into a dashboard that correlates both machine health and OEE information, measures that are usually treated and interpreted independently.

This combination will immediately impact and significantly improve the availability of OEE metrics, reducing mean-time-to-repair (MTTR) and mean-time-between-failures (MTBF). It will also reduce spare inventory levels and the cost of impact of machine downtime for an industrial organization.

Northeastern University will contribute to the project with its dynamic scheduling work, while Lockheed Martin is providing machine test-beds critical to validate and harness this new technology.

DMDII is where innovative manufacturers go to forge their futures. In partnership with UI LABS and the Department of Defense, DMDII equips U.S. factories with the digital tools and expertise they need to begin building every part better than the last. As a result, their more than 300 partners increase their productivity and win more business.

This work is sponsored in part by the Department of the Army through the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute under project DMDII 16-04-01. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of the Army.