Author: Ing. Jan Stoker MSc. MEng.   Follow Jan Stoker

Introduction 

Maintenance Engineering is a critical discipline within the broader field of Asset and Maintenance Management, ensuring that physical assets remain reliable, safe, and efficient throughout their lifecycle. In the context of Industry 5.0, this role takes on a new dimension, combining advanced technologies with human-centric approaches to create sustainable, resilient, and adaptive systems. Industry 5.0 moves beyond automation and digitalization, emphasizing collaboration between humans and intelligent systems while prioritizing sustainability and social responsibility.

Key frameworks such as the Asset Management Lemniscate and Asset Management BowTie, alongside standards like EN 17007, EN 15628, ISO 550XX:2024, and EN 17485, provide the structural foundation for integrating maintenance engineering into organizational strategies. These frameworks highlight the importance of aligning maintenance processes with asset management objectives, ensuring that maintenance actions are not isolated technical tasks but strategic enablers of long-term value creation. The structured categorization of maintenance processes into Management, Realization, and Support processes, as outlined in EN 17007, underscores the interdependence between strategy and operations.

In the Industry 5.0 paradigm, maintenance engineering goes beyond ensuring asset functionality; it becomes a driver of sustainability and resilience. The Asset Management BowTie visualizes the dual roles of risk prevention and mitigation, enabling organizations to address vulnerabilities proactively while maintaining operational continuity. Similarly, the Asset Management Lemniscate emphasizes the continuous feedback loop between maintenance activities and strategic decision-making, ensuring that organizational strategies adapt to real-time operational data and lifecycle insights.

This article explores the evolving role of maintenance engineering within this transformative context. By integrating principles from established standards and frameworks, we examine how maintenance engineering contributes to sustainable asset management, risk mitigation, and organizational resilience. As Industry 5.0 reshapes the industrial landscape, maintenance engineering emerges as a cornerstone for achieving a balance between technological advancement and human-centric values, driving the future of sustainable and adaptive asset management.

1. Understanding Maintenance Engineering

Maintenance engineering is a multidisciplinary field that plays a critical role in ensuring that physical assets perform their required functions throughout their lifecycle in a safe, sustainable, and cost-effective manner. This chapter explores the scope, benefits, and foundational concepts of maintenance engineering, with a focus on its integration within the broader framework of Asset and Maintenance Management amidst the Industry 5.0 paradigm.

1.1 Scope of Maintenance Engineering

Maintenance engineering is defined as the application of competencies, methods, techniques, and tools to develop and support maintenance. As outlined in standards such as EN 13306 and EN 17007, maintenance involves all technical, administrative, and managerial actions aimed at retaining or restoring an item to a state in which it can perform its required function. Maintenance engineering, therefore, provides the structured approach necessary to support these actions effectively.

The scope of maintenance engineering extends across the entire lifecycle of an asset, encompassing design, operation, and disposal stages. Through activities like risk evaluation, task analysis, and failure management, maintenance engineering ensures assets remain dependable, environmentally sustainable, and aligned with stakeholder objectives. This lifecycle perspective ties directly into frameworks such as the Asset Management Lemniscate, which highlights the continuous feedback loop between asset strategy and operational activities.

1.2 Benefits of Maintenance Engineering

The benefits of maintenance engineering are broad and multifaceted, providing significant contributions to organizational success. One key benefit is the achievement of dependability goals by influencing design processes to incorporate maintainability and reliability considerations. This proactive approach reduces risks and ensures that assets perform optimally in various operational contexts.

Maintenance engineering also supports sustainability by reducing energy consumption and minimizing the environmental footprint of maintenance activities. By integrating principles from the Asset Management BowTie, it enhances safety and integrity, ensuring compliance with statutory and ethical requirements. Additionally, maintenance engineering contributes to life extension decisions, improved maintenance support, and optimized resource use, ultimately increasing the competitiveness and output value of organizations.

1.3 Core Concepts in Maintenance Engineering

The foundational concepts of maintenance engineering are rooted in a combination of technical, managerial, and analytical disciplines. Key components include:

1. Maintenance Plans: Structured and documented tasks that outline activities, procedures, resources, and timelines required for effective maintenance. These plans ensure that maintenance activities align with organizational goals and asset lifecycle needs.

2. Maintenance Strategies: Methods for achieving maintenance objectives, such as preventive, predictive, and corrective maintenance. These strategies are selected based on asset criticality, operational requirements, and risk assessments.

3. Failure Management Policies: Maintenance activities and design modifications aimed at mitigating the consequences of failures. By incorporating risk analysis tools, such as those outlined in EN 17666, organizations can prevent failures or minimize their impact.

4. Lifecycle Integration: Maintenance engineering ensures that actions are planned and executed with consideration for the asset’s entire lifecycle, linking design and operational phases to disposal strategies. This integration is central to the Asset Management Lemniscate, which reinforces the dynamic interaction between maintenance and asset strategy.

1.4 The Structured Approach to Maintenance Engineering

Maintenance engineering employs a structured methodology that combines scientific principles with practical tools to address maintenance challenges. This approach includes:

1. Needs Analysis: Identifying objectives, timescales, and stakeholder requirements, such as safety, sustainability, and ethical considerations.
2. Risk Evaluation: Assessing potential risks and determining mitigation strategies.
3. Action Development: Creating and modeling maintenance actions, procedures, and proposals with an appropriate level of detail.
4. Iteration and Implementation: Iteratively refining maintenance strategies based on operational feedback, followed by the implementation of agreed-upon decisions.

These steps align with global standards, including ISO 550XX:2024, which emphasize the strategic alignment of maintenance engineering with organizational objectives. The structured approach ensures that maintenance is not only effective in the short term but also contributes to the long-term reliability and sustainability of assets.

Wrap Up

Maintenance engineering serves as the backbone of modern asset management, ensuring that assets remain functional, efficient, and aligned with organizational goals. By integrating advanced methodologies and frameworks such as the Asset Management Lemniscate, Asset Management BowTie, and EN 17007, maintenance engineering transcends traditional reactive practices to become a strategic enabler of reliability, sustainability, and competitive advantage. This chapter has outlined the core scope, benefits, and principles of maintenance engineering, setting the stage for a deeper exploration of its application in the Industry 5.0 landscape.