Improving maintenance processes with socio--cyber-physical systems

Maintenance is an important factor for the effectiveness of production processes. With the help of new information and communication technologies, the maintenance processes are supported and optimized. Cyber-physical systems link physical objects with information equipment. Objects such as machines, parts or tools carry sensors, control and communication devices to enhance their capabilities. In that way, they become smart and act as active participants in intelligent information networks. Furthermore, they communicate directly with humans. Thus, social factors (e.g. usability of devices, competencies or responsibilities of users) have to be involved in the design of information flows. However, different information systems are used in a factory. The data flows of different areas such as production planning and scheduling, staff planning, material management and machine monitoring often run in parallel and the maintenance is often just involved marginally in the digital systems. For that reason, a resource cockpit will be developed in the research project "Socio--Cyber-Physical Systems" (S-CPS). The cockpit will bundle and provide relevant data and information about products and production resources for maintenance processes, especially under consideration of social impacts. In the paper, the potentials of socio-cyber-physical systems for maintenance and objectives and activities of the research project are presented.