Specification of a Collaborative Platform for Intercompany Maintenance Information Sharing: A Case Study

In the current competitive markets, the possibility to obtain relevant and accurate data and information can make the difference between achieving success or not. A company which has several maintenance technicians in the final stage of their career and plants spread through different countries, can benefit from a collaborative platform that aggregates the maintenance information and knowledge to support decision making. The more accurate the data, the more reliable will be the analyzes and better decisions can be made. This paper presents a study performed in a wood derivatives company which intends to see the knowledge of its most experienced maintenance technicians and all the information related to maintenance department being captured, retained, and disseminated by all elements of the maintenance teams from the different plants. To capture and disseminate the relevant information by all the plants, a collaborative platform and its information architecture were proposed. The platform aims to obtain accurate records for supporting failure diagnosis and maintenance interventions, as well as process the data to carry out benchmarking actions and defining improvement actions. This paper presents the test results of the collaborative platform prototype, developed to validate its specification and information architecture, and the benefits that the company can obtain through its implementation. These benefits are the reduction of the interventions duration, promoting internal Benchmarking actions and establishing priorities in problems solving to improve performance. The proposed novel platform provides helpful information for both technicians and decision-making agents, and considers future integration with holographic solutions.