An AI based decision support system for preventive maintenance and production optimization in energy intensive manufacturing plants

Besides pursuing the economic goals of low costs and high profits, companies are becoming more and more aware of the environmental and social impact of their actions. Companies striving for the integrated optimization of environmental and economic perspectives within their production processes, need to be supported by tools helping to understand the effects of the decision making process. In this context, this paper describes a Decision Support System (DSS) enabling the early identification of problems occurring on manufacturing lines thus suggesting related recovery actions, together with the potential repercussions of their adoption, at economic and environmental level. The decision making process beneath the DSS starts from the aggregation of production lines sensors data in Key Performance Indicators (KPI). The data are then processed by means of an Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) based knowledge system which enables to suggest preventive maintenance interventions. The proposed maintenance activities, elaborated throughout a scheduling engine, are integrated within the weekly production schedule, according to the selected optimization policy. Preliminary tests have been carried out in manufacturing plants of IKEA industries and Brembo.