Until few years ago, maintenance was mainly focused on productivity and technical performance, like cost reduction and asset availability improvement. Today, due to the new challenges of sustainable manufacturing and the production process digitization, it is needed to change both the scope and the perception of maintenance processes in the company. In the sustainable manufacturing frame that aims to develop sustainable production processes and tools to evaluate economic, environmental, and social impacts of industrial assets, maintenance becomes a major lever because it allows companies to keep the efficiency of their production systems, but also meet social and environmental challenges. In this way, the last few years showed the emergence of works shedding light on the contribution and the impact of maintenance processes on sustainable performance of manufacturing systems and the need to develop preventive maintenance approaches including sustainability considerations.
At the same time Industry 4.0 (I4.0) and enterprise digitalization bring in industry several new technologies that shift the paradigm toward Factory of the Future. In such a paradigm, maintenance, and more specifically predictive maintenance plays a central role thanks to its ability to anticipate failures and avoid unexpected stoppages. As such, predictive maintenance is closely related to industry 4.0 technologies as an integral part of its development.
Given the above, it seems natural to consider the contribution of maintenance to sustainable manufacturing with respect to I4.0. Indeed, the increasing adoption of predictive measures and the further exploitation of new enabling technologies 4.0 integrated with maintenance processes, would make possible to contribute to sustainability goals in the I4.0 frame.
This invited session aims at presenting works toward this direction, highlighting the critical role of maintenance in sustainable manufacturing and circular economy paradigm. We hope that our invited session will be an opportunity for scientists and engineers to present research results-oriented on advanced maintenance management methods, models and frameworks integrating technologies 4.0 for sustainable operations and performance.