Towards Prescriptive Maintenance Using Digital Twins and Artificial Intelligence

Licentiate thesis · Chalmers University of Technology · 2025

Abstract

Engelskt originalabstract

In the era of Industry 4.0, industrial sectors worldwide face increasing complexity and operational challenges driven by rapid technological advancements and evolving market demands. Among these challenges, maintenance plays an important role in ensuring system reliability and sustaining productivity in manufacturing environments. While the evolution toward prescriptive maintenance promises significant value, its adoption is hindered by persistent technical and organizational barriers. This thesis develops and validates an integrated framework that leverages artificial intelligence and digital twins to enable this transformation, providing a systematic pathway from predictive insights to actionable prescriptions. Employing a design research methodology based on five studies, this research systematically addresses three key research questions. It first identifies critical barriers to industrial implementation, including data scarcity, system integration complexity, and organizational skill gaps. To overcome these challenges, a stakeholder-weighted decision model is applied to test what-if scenarios, and the thesis proposes an AI-enhanced digital twins framework complemented by a five-layer conceptual framework that guides scalable adoption. The effectiveness of these solutions is demonstrated through two empirical studies encompassing automated maintenance prioritization using deep reinforcement learning, and unsupervised anomaly detection and localization. This work bridges the academic-industry gap by delivering both theoretical insights and validated frameworks that transform maintenance from a reactive cost center into a strategic driver of operational resilience, accelerating the adoption of intelligent, autonomous systems and supporting the evolution toward sustainable, self-optimizing manufacturing.

Originalkälla: Chalmers Research ↗

Licentiatavhandlingen undersöker övergången från felprognoser till genomförbara underhållsbeslut. Den sammanför fem studier om industrins krav, digitala tvillingar, förstärkningsinlärning och anomalidetektion.

Huvudpunkter

  • Sammanför fem studier med en designforskningsmetod.
  • Behandlar databrist, systemintegration och kompetensgap.
  • Kopplar intressentkrav och scenarioanalys till underhållsprioritering och anomalidetektion.

Citera arbetet

Ladda ned BibTeX

Siyuan Chen (2025). Towards Prescriptive Maintenance Using Digital Twins and Artificial Intelligence. Licentiate thesis · Chalmers University of Technology.

@phdthesis{Chen2025PrescriptiveMaintenanceLicentiate,
  title = {{Towards Prescriptive Maintenance Using Digital Twins and Artificial Intelligence}},
  author = {Chen, Siyuan},
  year = {2025},
  school = {Chalmers University of Technology},
  type = {Licentiate thesis},
  url = {https://research.chalmers.se/en/publication/547701}
}

Originalabstractet återges från den länkade källposten. Översikten och huvudpunkterna ger korta förklaringar av studien.