The goal of the course is to introduce the student to the role of asset management and maintenance (within asset management) in order to guarantee the reliability, availability, quality and safety in the operations of complex systems. In particular, the course will consider industrial production systems (like manufacturing or process industry equipment), industrial service systems (like air conditioning, power and heat generation, etc.) and industrial infrastructures (like transport systems). The course fits into the overall program curriculum pursuing some of the defined general learning goals and, in particular, contributing to the development of the following capabilities:

• Understand context, functions and processes of industrial maintenance and asset management, as well as their impacts in terms of asset-related performances, costs and risks;
• Identify trends, technologies and key methodologies to support decision-making to manage industrial assets along their lifecycle;
• Design solutions for industrial maintenance and asset management based on the application of a scientific and engineering approach to face problems and opportunities in a business and industrial environment.

The main expected learning outcomes of the course, achievable through lectures and exercise sessions/tutorials, consist of knowledge and comprehension of the main criteria and methods to support engineering and management decisions for industrial maintenance and asset management, as well as of the practical abilities to analyze performances, costs and risks to support the asset-related decision-making. In particular, the course will allow students to achieve knowledge and comprehension in order to:

• Name and define, with precise terminology, context, functions, processes and decisions within the scope of industrial maintenance and asset management;
• Recognize and discuss the role of industrial maintenance and asset management in terms of their impacts in terms of reliability, availability, quality, safety and costs;
• Describe and explain the main performances and costs impacted by industrial maintenance and asset management;
• Describe and explain the main criteria, modeling techniques and methods, and methodologies/approaches to support engineering and management decisions for industrial maintenance and asset management;
• Identify, describe and analyze the key trends in information systems relying on key enabling technologies for information management and decision-making support in industrial maintenance and asset management.

The course will also allow students to be able to practically apply the acquired knowledge and comprehension in specific problem settings, proposed during the exercise sessions/tutorials and requiring abilities of analysis and synthesis, leading to:

• Distinguish different contexts and requirements identified in specific problem settings, eventually being able to understand problems and opportunities in a given business and industrial environment and to formulate the goals in terms of performances and costs addressed by the industrial assets;
• Analyze the data sets provided within specific problem settings, to estimate the related performances, costs as well as the risks due to uncertainties in attainment of the goals;
• Design solutions for industrial maintenance and asset management, considering the contexts and the requirements due to specific problem settings, the targeted performances and costs, and the requirements for risk mitigation.

The goal of the course is to introduce the student to the role of asset management and maintenance (within asset management) in order to guarantee the reliability, availability, quality and safety in the operations of complex systems. In particular, amongst the issues to be solved in asset management, the management of the entire life cycle of physical (i.e. industrial) assets and related resources (asset lifecycle management) plays a key role. Indeed, asset lifecycle management is becoming increasingly important in order to meet the demands of efficiency and effectiveness in the use of physical/industrial assets, and to ensure company competitiveness and sustainability through minimizing the total cost of ownership (i.e. the total cost of ownership of the asset throughout its entire life cycle).

This new vision in the management of assets can completely redefine the role of maintenance, which becomes the key component of a much more complex and integrated management concept (along the asset lifecycle). From the traditional, but raw, vision in which the maintenance must solve unpredictable failures resulting from deficiencies in design and/or construction of the asset, we switch to a vision in which the design, construction and operation phases of the asset life are closely connected and interdependent to ensure the best use of available resources. Besides, end of life management may assume an important role to manage ageing and obsolescence of the assets, with the final purpose to support company competitiveness and sustainability. Asset management then becomes the decisive factor for:

i)     reducing hidden costs (production, service and quality losses),

ii)    optimizing the service provided by the assets with respect to production capacity,

iii)   guaranteeing safety, quality and sustainability;

iv)   maximizing the value obtained from the assets use, thus improving company competitiveness.

This view was confirmed by the recent adoption of ISO 5500x body of standards on asset management that will certainly give a strong impetus also to the modernization of maintenance management. This process of change is also due to the recent introduction of technological and organizational changes, such as:

i)     availability of advanced ICT tools that allow remoting and automating part of maintenance activities (remote maintenance, remote support, remote data transmission..) as well as data analytics to enhance asset-related decision-making support;

ii)    the availability of new diagnostic and prognostic technologies that allow to evaluate and predict the health state of the asset, increasing the intelligence of maintenance and allowing optimization of planning interventions,

iii)   the development of new organizational forms of management of the maintenance service (remote maintenance, global service, etc.) that enable companies to delegate to third parties the maintenance activities through the establishment of contracts also related to performances indicators.

Considering the all developments and expected trends related to asset management and maintenance (within asset management), the following topics are presented during the lectures:

·     Introduction to asset maintenance and lifecycle management

·     Role of asset maintenance and lifecycle management for competitiveness, quality, safety, sustainability

·     Basics of reliability, maintainability and availability

·     Basics of maintenance costs

·     Maintenance policies

·     Maintenance policies and cost optimization

·     Condition based maintenance program development: monitoring, diagnostics and prognostics

·     Methodologies, methods and techniques for Reliability and Maintenance Engineering: RBD, FMECA, RCM

·     Methodologies, methods and techniques for Total Productive Maintenance (TPM)

·     Spare parts and material management

·     Maintenance organization, Maintenance outsourcing and Global Service in Maintenance (GSM)

·     Maintenance organization and maintenance processes

·     Maintenance planning and scheduling

·     Budget and cost control in maintenance

·     Maintenance performance measurement and benchmarking of maintenance services

·     Maintenance norms and standardization

·     Computerized Maintenance Management System and Reliability and Maintenance Engineering System

·     E-maintenance, Intelligent Maintenance and the role of digitization and the new Key Enabling Technologies in asset maintenance and lifecycle management (CPS, IoT, ...)

·     Asset lifecycle management and total cost of ownership

·     Maintenance strategy and optimization of asset lifecycle

Practical abilities will be achieved during exercise sessions when a series of tutorials will be presented and solved. The tutorials are made by exercises built on application cases of the content of the lessons, and inspired by real industrial cases. The following tutorials are considered:

·                Basics on RAM analysis and maintenance terminology

·                Analysis of maintenance costs in European Tile Company

·                Definition of maintenance policy in the robotized packing area of European Tile company

·                Reliability analysis of the filters area of the cooking oven in European Tile company

·                Budget and maintenance cost control of European Tile company

·                State space analysis and RBD in European Tile company

·                FMECA analysis of the extrusion machine of Profilati Europe company

·                Spare parts management in European Tile company

·                Maintenance planning of European Tile company

·                TPM practices in Birra Europe company

·                Case study in European Tile Company, analysis of failure data (part 1)

·                Case study in European Tile Company, analysis and optimization of maintenance policy (part 2)

·                Evaluation of the Total Cost of Ownership of an industrial plant

The examination consists of a written examination on the content of the lectures and exercise sessions/tutorials and of an oral examination.

Overall, the students will have to demonstrate, during the exam, his/her learning outcomes as knowledge and comprehension of the main criteria and methods to support engineering and management decisions for industrial maintenance and asset management, as well as of the practical abilities to analyze performances, costs and risks to support the asset-related decision-making.

In particular, during the exam, the students will have to:

• be able to name and define, with precise terminology, context, functions, processes and decisions within the scope of industrial maintenance and asset management;
• be able to recognize and discuss the role of industrial maintenance and asset management in terms of their impacts in terms of reliability, availability, quality, safety and costs;
• be able to describe and explain the main performances and costs impacted by industrial maintenance and asset management;
• be able to describe and explain criteria, modeling techniques and methods, and methodologies/approaches to support engineering and management decisions for industrial maintenance and asset management;
• be able to identify, describe and analyze the key trends in information systems relying on key enabling technologies for information management and decision-making support in industrial maintenance and asset management.
• be able to distinguish different contexts and requirements identified in specific problem settings, eventually being able to understand problems and opportunities in a given business and industrial environment and to formulate the goals in terms of performances and costs addressed by the industrial assets;
• be able to analyze the data sets provided within specific problem settings, to estimate the related performances, costs as well as the risks due to uncertainties in attainment of the goals;
• be able to design solutions for industrial maintenance and asset management, considering the contexts and the requirements due to specific problem settings, the targeted performances and costs, and the risk mitigation.

Book for the tutorial activity