E-Prognostics: A Step towards E-Maintenance of Engineering Assets

Reliability of manufacturing or production processes is heavily dependent upon the flawless operation of asset plant and equipment utilised in the processes. Nevertheless, continuous and seamless flow of information, aimed at real time access to process stakeholders provides the foundation for effective management of these assets. An essential requirement in this regard is the continuous availability of the condition monitoring information and its analyses in order to predict failure conditions as soon as the asset starts deviating away from its standard operational behaviour. This paper presents an integrated approach for prognostics based on radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. It presents an architecture aimed at introducing information processing capabilities at the asset level, thereby equipping the asset to be proactive in identifying its maintenance requirements wirelessly rather than relying on human interaction to examine the asset for irregularities.