Autonomous Maintenance

Autonomous Maintenance (AM) is a central pillar of modern maintenance strategies in manufacturing and aims to place responsibility for routine maintenance tasks directly with machine operators, rather than relegating them exclusively to the maintenance department. Combined with a Manufacturing Execution System (MES), this creates a seamless data loop: operational and quality data are captured, linked with tool and machine data, and fed back into maintenance planning, tool management, and Computer-Aided Quality (CAQ). For MES users, this means that maintenance planning no longer occurs in isolation within a separate department, but becomes an integral part of production control and daily shop floor management.

The Core Idea Behind Autonomous Maintenance

Autonomous Maintenance is a cornerstone of Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) and aims to maintain equipment condition near "like-new" status through regular, standardized activities such as cleaning, lubrication, visual inspections, and simple adjustments. The core concept: operators assume responsibility for defined maintenance and inspection tasks, while the maintenance department concentrates on complex, planned, and strategic interventions—such as overhauls, modifications, or analysis of recurring breakdowns.

For MES users, this means that the system must not only schedule work orders and collect feedback, but also map maintenance schedules, checklists, due dates, and condition information. Modern MES solutions enable the creation of maintenance schedules, management of spare and consumable parts, and delivery of work instructions to operators and maintenance technicians in the form of digital checklists, workflows, or tickets.

The Challenges of Maintenance Planning

In the short term, one of the greatest challenges is scheduling maintenance work in such a way that unplanned downtime is minimized and production bottlenecks are avoided. To accomplish this, the system must consolidate maintenance due dates, planned work orders, setup times, and shift schedules while supporting scenarios in which maintenance can be flexibly shifted to periods of low production activity or combined with setup operations. In the long term, the goal is to derive optimal intervals for preventive and condition-based maintenance from historical operational data, failure reasons, and quality metrics, thereby systematically increasing the lifespan and availability of equipment and tools.

A particularly compelling area is the integration of tool management and CAQ. When an MES captures not only usage times or cycle counts for each tool or auxiliary device, but also scrap reasons and quality data, correlations between tool wear, process parameters, and quality issues become visible. In this way, elevated scrap rates can be traced back to specific tools, cavities, or clamping fixtures, leading in turn to adjusted maintenance intervals, revised release criteria, or design improvements.

The Role of MES in Advancing Autonomous Maintenance

The tetys MES can systematically capture and classify tools and equipment, linking them with work plans, parts, production orders, and machines. Through the tool management module of the tetys MES, usage histories, remaining lifespans, maintenance and repair orders, and storage locations become transparent—particularly valuable for expensive and safety-critical tools, as it expands planning flexibility. In parallel, the CAQ module of the tetys MES connects quality inspections, inspection plans, and fault catalogs with the respective production orders, so that inspection results automatically flow into production and tool histories.

By combining equipment and CAQ data from the tetys MES, key performance indicators such as scrap rate per tool, First-Pass-Yield per line, or frequency of specific fault types per resource can be calculated. When these metrics are linked with maintenance data, maintenance personnel can make data-driven decisions about whether a tool should be resharpened, replaced, or redesigned, rather than relying on rigid intervals or subjective judgment. In this way, Autonomous Maintenance becomes the operational foundation for your individualized continuous improvement program, delivering value across availability, quality, and cost.

Our software solutions support manufacturing companies in creating transparency regarding order progress, machine utilization, downtime, and quality metrics—and in leveraging this information for decisions in planning, maintenance, and quality. For Autonomous Maintenance and maintenance planning, this means that maintenance interventions and maintenance cycles are not defined in isolation, but rather based on real operational data, failure causes, and scrap information from active production.

At the level of tool and auxiliary equipment management, the tetys MES allows you to link tools with orders, machines, and quality data, so that notable scrap clusters can be immediately traced back to specific tools. Combined with integrated CAQ functions or connected external quality systems, inspection plans, inspection lots, and measurement results can be automatically linked with the respective production orders, significantly accelerating root cause analysis for quality issues.

For our users, this creates an integrated control and information space in which production planning, tool management, CAQ, and maintenance operate on a shared, current data foundation. In this way, you can transition from reactive troubleshooting to a proactive, autonomously supported maintenance strategy that engages operators, reduces the burden on maintenance resources, and simultaneously improves quality, delivery reliability, and the cost structure of your manufacturing. We work with our partners to shape this transition collaboratively, step by step, and at a pace that aligns with your operational business.

Next Steps in Your Digitalization Journey

Are you on the path to digitalize or even autonomize maintenance in your manufacturing operation? Perhaps you are initially interested in a specific aspect of these topics: curious about a digitalized quality system or a comprehensive, intelligent tool management solution?

Contact us—we are happy to advise you on these subjects and share our experience as you progress toward your individual digitalization project.