Maintenance can be considered as a combined information and knowledge processing and management system. Effective knowledge, practices and experiences management is growing in importance, especially in advanced processes and management of advanced and expensive assets. Efforts of integrating maintenance knowledge management (MKM) processes with MKMM will be increasingly more important due to the increasing complexities of these overall systems – the context in which the performance measurements has been performed is also important input in the performance analysis. Integration of MKM in MPMM can result in higher quality of the decisions and actions in the maintenance processes and in the overall work to increase efficiency and decreasing costs in the organizations.Integration of MKM (Maintenance Knowledge Management – knowledge, experiences and practices management) with collaborative structures and interfacing abilities with qualified services for simulation, modeling and computations can be regarded as Intelligence-based Maintenance (iMaintenance).These infrastructures present in iMaintenance can further improve MPMM efforts due to possible utilization of more accurate property and context information and services – changes in installations, environmental factors etc. not easily integrated in current MPMM implementations.Integration of MPMM with iMaintenance solutions can also improve the interaction between management and the maintenance operators and also allow improved interaction and integration with production operators in the organization. MPMM can with this approach be integrated as a natural component in the overall ICT-based maintenance and collaboration solutions – the performance status reporting will be seen as a natural extension to the normal routines. In this context the usability of the end-user environments will be very important – especially when designing systems for mobile use by maintenance operators in the field.

An existing demonstrator for E-maintenance solutions for advanced aviation maintenance staff was extended to incorporate abilities as a collaborative environment for developers of sustain­able products. Most of the existing core concepts and functions in the demonstrator were found to be viable: work context management, modularisation, information and web services access. This paper pres­en­ts more in detail the modularization concept used in the demonstrator and its potential use in collaborative environments for sustainable prod­ucts developers. This concept if implemented allow faster integration of external web services and information sources into the sustainable product design work­flows and processes.

Maintenance can be considered as an information, knowledge processing and management system. The management of knowledge resources in maintenance is a relatively new issue compared to Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS) and Condition Monitoring (CM) approaches and systems. Information Communication technologies (ICT) systems including CMMS, CM and enterprise administrative systems amongst others are effective in supplying data and in some cases information. In order to be effective the availability of high-quality knowledge, skills and expertise are needed for effective analysis and decision-making based on the supplied information and data. Information and data are not by themselves enough, knowledge, experience and skills are the key factors when maximizing the usability of the collected data and information. Thus, effective knowledge management (KM) is growing in importance, especially in advanced processes and management of advanced and expensive assets. Therefore efforts to successfully integrate maintenance knowledge management processes with accurate information from CMMSs and CM systems will be vital due to the increasing complexities of the overall systems.Low maintenance effectiveness costs money and resources since normal and stable production cannot be upheld and maintained over time, lowered maintenance effectiveness can have a substantial impact on the organizations ability to obtain stable flows of income and control costs in the overall process. Ineffective maintenance is often dependent on faulty decisions, mistakes due to lack of experience and lack of functional systems for effective information exchange [10]. Thus, access to knowledge, experience and skills resources in combination with functional collaboration structures can be regarded as vital components for a high maintenance effectiveness solution.Maintenance effectiveness depends in part on the quality, timeliness, accuracy and completeness of information related to machine degradation state, based on which decisions are made. Maintenance effectiveness, to a large extent, also depends on the quality of the knowledge of the managers and maintenance operators and the effectiveness of the internal & external collaborative environments. With emergence of intelligent sensors to measure and monitor the health state of the component and gradual implementation of ICT) in organizations, the conceptualization and implementation of E-Maintenance is turning into a reality. Unfortunately, even though knowledge management aspects are important in maintenance, the integration of KM aspects has still to find its place in E-Maintenance and in the overall information flows of larger-scale maintenance solutions. Nowadays, two main systems are implemented in most maintenance departments: Firstly, Computer Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS), the core of traditional maintenance record-keeping practices that often facilitate the usage of textual descriptions of faults and actions performed on an asset. Secondly, condition monitoring systems (CMS). Recently developed (CMS) are capable of directly monitoring asset components parameters; however, attempts to link observed CMMS events to CM sensor measurements have been limited in their approach and scalability. In this article we present one approach for addressing this challenge. We argue that understanding the requirements and constraints in conjunction - from maintenance, knowledge management and ICT perspectives - is necessary. We identify the issues that need be addressed for achieving successful integration of such disparate data types and processes (also integrating knowledge management into the “data types” and processes).

The maintenance & operations fields are & will increasingly be dominated by information fragmentation, product & process complexities, increasingly important needs to access relevant knowledge in an ever faster pace, increased need for accurate analysis & implementation of the analysis results & need for more effective & accurate management.In addition to this the created solutions & processes also has to be effectively used in different work contexts including mobile work contexts & supporting interoperability with external ICT systems & processes. ICT-based frameworks should according to the factors & challenges described above be structured to be flexible enough to over time integrate new types of information & services, be usable both internally in the industrial facilities & in the field (mobile) & effectively act as a bridge between older & future ICT-systems. An example of such an integration approach is the PROTEUS project aiming at developing an "integrating" platform for maintenance management. The frameworks described during this presentation also will include modularised integration of not only data in existing maintenance systems and knowledge resources but also integration with web services (SOA), access & management of external computational services (analysis). These different modules will be accessible more dynamically than earlier web-based solutions. This in an environment that support several parallel work contexts & use not only in fixed networks but also in mobile / nomadic settings allowing a high degree of flexibility for the maintenance & operations staff.

The modern systems operating at varying conditions brought a new paradigm shift to in-machine renovation and repair. These systems often encounter an infinite collection of clumsy diagnostic tools and applications that decrease agility, increase time-to-repair, and increase management overheads. One approach is to remove the human and potential costly and time consuming human errors, from the diagnosis of faults and implementation of a maintenance strategy. In order to achieve this it is necessary to develop systems that support advanced intelligent maintenance systems or smart maintenance technologies. Self-maintenance machines can be a better option with the capabilities of condition monitoring, diagnosing, repair planning and executing in order to extend the life and performance of equipment. The objective of this paper is to discuss the concept of self-maintenance, need of self-maintenance, potential scenarios where self-maintenance can be successfully implemented and issues related to self-maintenance machines. It has been concluded that the aim is to have self-maintenance system in order to make a machine capable of reconfiguration, compensation, and self-maintenance.