Product maintenance management by lifecycle assessment

Environmental responsibility of organizations and green attributes of products are becoming competitive tools to attract customers. In such a context, even though the role of development of innovative products and processes has been widely discussed, maintenance contribution to prevent and reduce environmental impacts seems to be poorly investigated. Nevertheless, the characteristics of the product’s life cycle, strictly related to reliability and maintenance concerns, certainly influence sustainability of both the product and its production processes, especially in the case of “intensive-use” products. For this type of products, changes in maintenance and refurbishment operations can lead to different life cycle scenarios, which have beneficial effects on materials and energy consumption. This paper proposes a framework for the improvement of environmental sustainability by means of product maintenance management, i.e. throughout the management of the product’s life cycles, leading to a product service system approach. The proposed methodology was tested on an industrial case study, i.e. the life cycle modeling of a machine for dialysis therapy. Results show that the adoption of specific changes in the maintenance plan succeeded in reducing negative effects on the environment, optimizing at the same time company’s costs related to customers’ assistance services, without decreasing the level of safety and reliability of the medical equipment. In fact, thanks to the new product maintenance management the environmental impact could be improved up to 23%.