Machine learning for prognostics and health management of industrial mechanical systems and equipment: A systematic literature review

In the last decade, the adoption of technological tools in manufacturing industry, such as the use of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine Learning (ML), has led to the advent of the industry 4.0 (I4.0). In this scenario, intelligent devices can generate large volumes of data about industrial machinery and equipment that can be used to make maintenance more efficient. Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) is an emerging maintenance strategy that uses systems’ Condition Monitoring through IoT sensors installed on machinery to diagnose their faults or estimate their Remaining Useful Life (RUL). This study aims to conduct a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) on the use of ML techniques in the field of PHM of industrial mechanical systems and equipment. 50 studies resulted eligible for the above-mentioned SLR. Diagnostics and prognostics approach and the ML algorithm types used in the 50 analyzed papers have been analyzed together with the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) used for their validation. From the analyses, it was found that Shallow Learning and Deep Learning (DL) algorithms are the most applied ones, while KPIs are used differently according to the type of task classification or regression. Moreover, results highlighted that many authors still use artificial datasets to test their algorithms, instead of datasets based on real data retrieved by their components. For the last type of datasets, this paper also introduces a schematic framework to standardize the step-by-step diagnostics and prognostics process carried out by the authors.