Maintenance planning using a digital twin: principles and case studies

We present a set of principles for guiding proponents and developers of digital solutions for maintenance planning. Maintenance planning is a good arena in which to use a digital twin (DT) due to varied and evolving operational, environmental and business circumstances, and issues of risk, safety, and reliability. Therefore, the work in this paper is important. Application of the principles is illustrated using two cases studies on monitoring and restoration in the seawater desalination industry: one relating to reverse-osmosis membrane elements; the second to submerged seawater-intake pumps. Both systems provide unique and complicated contexts, both operational and environmental, that justify the development of bespoke maintenance plans. The contribution of the paper is to show, in a systematic way, according to the proposed design principles, how to develop a digital twin for planning maintenance interventions for an engineered object. The principles are derived hierarchically in the paper beginning with basic principles of effective and efficient maintenance and then moving to the principles of maintenance planning and so on to principles for DT design for maintenance planning. We aim to: provide a tool for maintainers in industry; and initiate academic discussion about DT suitability, capability, ownership, deployment, and return on investment. The proposed set of principles is: original because maintenance planning with DTs is emerging; useful for industry and application; and rigorously grounded in maintenance planning theory.