Improve Maintenance by Reusing and Refining Previous Maintenance Cases

A three-step decision process using case-based reasoning to support maintenance preparation is proposed. By reviewing historical maintenance records based on case similarity, the best previous maintenance solutions can be reused for current and future equipment failures. A decision process is proposed to reuse solutions, including an improvement step to increase the maintenance accuracy of the solutions. The proposed process mitigates the difficulty of reusing previous successful maintenance solutions. The study follows a prescriptive approach. A case company was used to assess and evaluate the proposed process regarding its feasibility in an industrial context. Contrary to the current known approaches presented in research, the proposed decision process enables the reuse of complete work packages rather than single activities, the evaluation of previous solutions based on accuracy, and accounting for low-quality data otherwise seen as a barrier to the reuse of activities. The application at the case company shows a faster decision process with greater employee confidence in the applicability and accuracy of the prepared maintenance work. The proposed method also supports new employee training and ensures continuous improvement in maintenance, based on the evaluation of the success of previously prepared maintenance.