Advantages and potential challenges of data management in e-maintenance

Purpose The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to understand data management challenges in e-maintenance systems from a holistically viewpoint through summarizing the earlier scattered research in the field, and second, to present a conceptual approach for addressing these challenges in practice. Design/methodology/approach The study is realized as a combination of a literature review and by the means of analyzing the practices on an industry leader in manufacturing and maintenance services. Findings This research provides a general understanding over data management challenges in e-maintenance and summarizes their associated proposed solutions. In addition, this paper lists and exemplifies different types and sources of data which can be collected in e-maintenance, across different organizational levels. Analyzing the data management practices of an e-maintenance industry leader provides a conceptual approach to address identified challenges in practice. Originality/value The so-far literature on e-maintenance has been studied with narrow focus to data and data management in e-maintenance appears as one of the less studied topics in the literature. This research paper contributes to e-maintenance by highlighting the deficiencies of the discussion surrounding the perspectives of data management in e-maintenance by studying all common data management challenges and listing different types of data which need to be acquired in e-maintenance systems.