A web and mobile device architecture for mobile e-maintenance

The paper presents the development of a mobile maintenance support system based on web and mobile device technologies, i.e., personal digital assistant. The architecture relies on a shop floor system and a supporting system in a diagnostic center. The shop floor system is supported by a mobile device, which helps the maintenance engineer to perform maintenance tasks. This gives great support to the maintenance engineer as it facilitates the access to decision-making support, work order, and spare part handling modules etc. that are available in the device. The diagnostic center provides the maintenance engineer with decision support for his various tasks, when needed. Moreover, a database table listener agent, located at the database server, was developed to keep track of the maintenance engineer’s work orders at a certain priority level. The proposed approach can reduce the maintenance costs and solve the problem of the unavailability of an expert. More efficient maintenance is believed to be achieved through the use of web and agent technologies since data, maintenance systems, and processing can be gathered and integrated and data can be acquired from additional sources when necessary. The proposed system, the web, and embedded technologies as well as remote communication were tested successfully.