IMS (Intelligent Maintenance System)
An intelligent maintenance system (IMS) is a system that utilizes the collected data from the machinery in order to predict and prevent the potential failures in them. The occurrence of failures in the machinery can be costly and even catastrophic. In order to avoid them, there needs to be a system which analyzes the behavior of the machine and provides alarms and instructions for preventive maintenance. Analyzing the behavior of the machines has become possible by means of advanced sensors, data collection systems, data storage/transfer capabilities and data analytic tools developed for such purpose. More information on the related data analytic tools can be found in prognostics. The aggregation of data collection, storage, transformation, analysis and decision making for smart maintenance is called an intelligent maintenance system (IMS).
The methodology for developing intelligent maintenance systems consist of finding the critical assets within a machine or process, instrumentation for collecting the suitable data, pre-processing and analyzing the collected data and extracting indicative features, applying the relevant machine-learning algorithms for health assessment, predicting the performance of the assets, and finally devising the appropriate maintenance action based on the obtained knowledge of the assets.