A Process-based Review of Post-Prognostics Decision-Making

Abstract

Condition-based maintenance (CBM) and prognostics and health management (PHM) are established paradigms that evidently offer a competitive advantage to a company. However, to make a business case, it must be examined where PHM and a remaining useful life (RUL) estimation can lead to substantial benefits. These benefits are strongly tied to the decision-making that succeeds prognostics. While the prognostics component of PHM is well examined, research on post-prognostics decision-making (PDM) is still in its infancy. It is generally assumed that PHM can lead to benefits for business processes beyond 'traditional' maintenance management. Unfortunately, there is no overview for which processes (such as production scheduling or route planning) PDM can be applicable and how exactly specific optimizations and their corresponding benefits can be achieved. This work provides a structured literature review on PDM and identifies studies that exploit the RUL prediction for optimizing business processes. The review synthesizes the following aspects within a PDM framework: a) which processes are improved through post-prognostics decision-making, b) what decisions must be made, and c) what novel benefits are achieved and which challenges arise. This review enables scholars to identify how current prognostics research can be extended to the decision stage of CBM and PHM and aids practitioners in pinpointing how operations can be optimized through PDM.