The objective of this thesis is to develop a maintenance approach that fulfills the requirements of Industry 4.0. It explores the role and importance of maintenance activities in today’s industry. Then, it develops the features and tasks required to be performed by maintenance to fulfill the demands of Industry 4.0. Finally, it develops a reference model to be used in designing maintenance system for Industry 4.0. To perform these studies, real data were collected and applied as well as a typical scenario was implemented. The results achieved in the papers of this thesis are 1) a mathematical representation and application of a model that identifies, analyses and prioritizes economic weakness in working areas related to production, 2) a model that analyses, identifies and prioritizes failures that impact the competitive advantages and profitability of companies, 3) characterization of a suitable maintenance technique for Industry 4.0 and 4) a reference model i.e. a framework, that could be utilized to develop a maintenance approach for Industry 4.0. The conclusion of this thesis confirms that maintenance has a significant impact on companies’ competitive advantages, other working areas and profitability. To achieve a suitable maintenance technique for Industry 4.0, this technique must be able to monitor, diagnose, prognosis, schedule, assist in execution and present the relevant information. In order to perform these tasks several features must be acquired, the most important features are to be: digitized, automated, intelligent, able to communicate with other systems for data gathering and monitoring, openness, detect deviation in the condition at an early stage, cost- effective, flexible for adding new CM techniques, provide accurate decisions and scalable. The developed framework could be used as a base to design a maintenance system for Industry 4.0. This study contributes to our understanding of the maintenance importance in today’s industry and how to develop a maintenance approach for Industry 4.0.

Industry 4.0 is changing the manufacturing environment with its cyber-physical infrastructure to support and help increase production performance. The cyber-physical infrastructure brings new technologies such as Internet of Things, big data, cloud computing, and machine learning using advanced algorithms. To deal with this new order to preserve asset performance, industrial maintenance needs to be prepared. This study aims to understand the impact of Industry 4.0 on the skills required within industrial maintenance departments. A survey of industrial maintenance professionals finds that the majority of training comes from internal sources and that much of the information systems used for training are out-of-date or does not exist. The results of this study show that Industry 4.0 will impact the maintenance department and that a Change Management process should be put in place to accomplish this transition smoothly.