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The purpose of this paper is mainly to highlight how a simplified and streamlined approach to the condition monitoring (CM) of industrial rotating machines through the application of frequency domain data combination can effectively enhance the eMaintenance framework.

The paper commences by providing an overview to the relevance of maintenance excellence within manufacturing industries, with particular emphasis on the roles that rotating machines CM of rotating machines plays. It then proceeds to provide details of the eMaintenance as well as its possible alignment with the introduced concept of effective vibration-based condition monitoring (eVCM) of rotating machines. The subsequent sections of the paper respectively deal with explanations of data combination approaches, experimental setups used to generate vibration data and the theory of eVCM.

This paper investigates how a simplified vibration-based rotating machinery faults classification method based on frequency domain data combination can increase the feasibility and practicality of eMaintenance.

The eVCM approach is based on classifying data acquired under several experimentally simulated conditions on two different machines using combined higher order signal processing parameters so as to reduce CM data requirements. Although the current study was solely based on the application of vibration data acquired from rotating machines, the knowledge exchange platform that currently dominates present day scientific research makes it very likely that the lessons learned from the development of eVCM concept can be easily transferred to other scientific domains that involve continuous CM such as medicine.

The concept of eMaintenance as a cost-effective and smart means of increasing the autonomy of maintenance activities within industries is rapidly growing in maintenance-related literatures. As viable as the concept appears, the achievement of its optimum objectives and full deployment to the industry is still subjective due to the complexity and data intensiveness of conventional CM practices. In this paper, an eVCM approach is proposed so that rotating machine faults can be effectively detected and classified without the need for repetitive analysis of measured data.

The main strength of eVCM lies in the fact that it permits the sharing of historical vibration data between identical rotating machines irrespective of their foundation structures and speed differences. Since eMaintenance is concerned with driving maintenance excellence, eVCM can potentially contribute towards its optimisation as it cost-effectively streamlines faults diagnosis. This therefore implies that the simplification of vibration-based CM of rotating machines positively impacts the society with regard to the possibility of reducing how much time is actually spent on the accurate detection and classification of faults.

Although the currently existing body of literature already contains studies that have attempted to show how the combination of measured vibration data from several industrial machines can be used to establish a universal vibration-based faults diagnosis benchmark for incorporation into eMaintenance framework, these studies are limited in the scope of faults, severity and rotational speeds considered. In the current study, the concept of multi-faults, multi-sensor, multi-speed and multi-rotating machine data combination approach using frequency domain data fusion and principal components analysis is presented so that faults diagnosis features for identical rotating machines with different foundations can be shared between industrial plants. Hence, the value of the current study particularly lies in the fact that it significantly highlights a new dimension through which the practical implementation and operation of eMaintenance can be realized using big data management and data combination approaches.

Major maintenance projects are often regarded as maintenance activities regardless of the projects' complexity and scale. Consequently, very scarce research attention has hitherto been paid to the critical skills required when undertaking these projects. More specifically, the body of relevant knowledge is deprived of a study focusing on maintenance projects within the energy sector. In view of this shortcoming, this research aims to examine the critical project management (PM) skills required to deliver major maintenance projects within the energy sector.

Based on a quantitative research strategy, this study addressed the knowledge gap through a cross-sectional survey of professionals involved in the delivery of major maintenance projects in the United Kingdom's (UK) energy sector. Data obtained were analyzed via descriptive (e.g. frequencies, mean and standard deviation [SD]) and inferential statistical analyses (One sample t-test and exploratory factor analysis (EFA)).

Out of the 45 PM skills identified in the literature and examined by the respondents, the results obtained from the One sample t-test (based on p (1-tailed) = 0.05) showed that 37 were considered to be at least “important,” accounting for 80.4% of all the skills identified. EFA revealed a clustering of the PM skills items into seven components: “skills related to work scheduling and coordination”; “communication, risk, safety and stakeholder management skills”; “quality assurance skills”; “people management skills”; “skills related to forecasting scope and duration of outage”; “implementation of processes and time management skills” and “technical/engineering skills and experience pertaining to the outage and local site knowledge.”

This study has identified and contributed to the limited state-of-the-art skills project managers must possess to manage major maintenance projects in the energy sector successfully. The findings would be useful to organizations within the energy sector in ensuring that the organizations have suitable personnel in place to deliver major maintenance projects on the organizations' assets.