An Integrated Development Approach for Monitoring and Simulation to Predict Functional Product Availability

For nearly two decades, business models such as Functional Products have been in focus within research and of interest in the manufacturing industry. Functional product offers consist of hardware, software, service -support systems and management of operation which, when developed in an integrated manner, together provide the customer with an agreed-upon function with a specified level of availability. Compared to product-oriented sales, this type of business model can provide added value to customers, usually through an increase in the service content. Due to the total care commitment, offering Functional Products requires management of reliability and maintainability in order to meet the availability requirement of the function provided. The development of the Functional Product must include holistic analysis and prediction of the functional product availability performance to reduce technical and economic risks and ensure that the function is delivered according to contract. The research performed in this thesis presents an integrated development approach for monitoring and simulation to predict functional product availability. It is shown how the constituents of a functional product can be modelled in an integrated manner in order to simulate and predict functional product availability. A part of this modelling strategy is demonstrated through a simulation case example to show that is possible through this approach to evaluate the availability of different functional product designs. To support the development of the monitoring capability needed for availability simulations it is shown how it is possible to develop fault detection and diagnosis methods for fault detection systems based on data stream management systems. It is also shown how data stream forecasting can be used to predict failures due to faults occurring at short notice. Different fault detection methods have been developed, tested and evaluated on real industrial applications to verify applicability as queries on data streams, managed by data stream management systems. The results from these tests have been evaluated for their predictive performance and detection accuracy. Finally, methodological and technological approaches to monitoring and analysis in functional product development and similar business models to functional products are reviewed. The results showed that few research contributions address the information perspective in functional product development and similar business models holistically. The integrated development approach presented is a pragmatic approach to functional product development which is based on the merged research results of the papers included and knowledge domain presented