Enhancing Antifragile Performance of Manufacturing Systems through Predictive Maintenance

Antifragility was introduced as a term no later than 10 years ago. As presented by Taleb, antifragility means that a system becomes more resilient and more robust with every harmful and/or stressful action it is confronted with. This paper is based on a study which aimed to use the concept of antifragility during the design stage of a self-improving system. This way, it is expected to obtain a fast adaptive system capable of functioning at optimal parameters even when it works under adverse conditions or faces unforeseen changes in the environment. Assuming that an antifragile system not only maintains its robust behavior when faced with stressful and harmful events but even benefits from them to optimize its performance, the paper offers a detailed description of the features that must be ensured when designing a self-improving antifragile manufacturing system. By ensuring the property of antifragility, complex manufacturing systems are much safer to exploit under uncertain conditions, which brings major benefits to the process management. Starting from consecrated solutions such as preventive maintenance (PvM) and predictive maintenance (PdM) and using techniques of artificial intelligence, we present the concept of antifragile maintenance (AfM).