Available online at www.sciencedirect.

com

ScienceDirect
Procedia CIRP 15 (2014) 343 348

21st CIRP Conference on Life Cycle Engineering

Economic and environmental aware maintenance optimization

Adriaan Van Horenbeeka, Karel Kellensa*, Liliane Pintelona, Joost R. Dufloua
a

Centre for Industrial Management, Department of Mechanical Engineering, KU Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 300A, 3001 Heverlee, Belgium

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +32 16 3 22499; fax: +32 16 32 2986. E-mail address: Karel.Kellens@cib.kuleuven.be

Abstract
The increasing awareness of environmental impacts along with the possible ecological impact reductions due to good maintenance leads to a
demand for research about integration of ecological aspects in maintenance management. This paper investigates this by developing a
framework that integrates ecological aspects in maintenance management. As such, an economic and ecological analysis tool, covering several
maintenance policies, is developed. Based on the presented models it is possible to determine the optimal maintenance interval considering an
economic, ecological and integrated optimum. Finally, the developed model is verified and validated by application to a case study of a cutting
tool of a turning machine.

Authors.
byopen
Elsevier
B.V.article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
2014
2014The
Elsevier
B.V.Published
This is an
access
Selection
and peer-review under responsibility of the International Scientific Committee of the 21st CIRP Conference on Life Cycle
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).
Engineering
in peer-review
the person of under
the Conference
Chairof
Prof.
K. Lien. Scientific Committee of the 21st CIRP Conference on Life Cycle
Selection and
responsibility
the Terje
International

Engineering in the person of the Conference Chair Prof. Terje K. Lien

Keywords: maintenance optimization; environmental impact; economic cost; integration

1. Introduction
Within traditional maintenance management, the
implementation and optimization of specific maintenance
policies and strategies is mainly based on cost and availability
criteria [1]. However, maintenance actions often have a nonnegligible impact on energy and resource consumption and
related environmental impacts [2]. The last decade, a green
image became more important which resulted in an increasing
awareness of the importance of ecological impacts. Therefore,
it becomes centrally relevant to take ecological aspects into
account in maintenance management. The major objective of
the research presented in this paper is to make an initial
contribution towards the development of a model that
integrates ecological aspects in maintenance decision making
and optimization.
1.1. Related research
Many research contributions have been made with regard
to ecological studies (LCA analysis) on production machine
tools [3,4]. Even more studies on maintenance management
and economic optimization of maintenance policies appeared

in literature [1,5,6,7]. However, the number of studies which

contain the combination of both is relatively small. A
distinction between the different models can be made based
on the level of integration. As such, the available publications
on the integration of ecological aspects in maintenance
management can be subdivided into four major groups.
Firstly, basic integration is considered in several publications
[8,9,10]. Herein the economic cost and ecological impact are
calculated in parallel without actual integration of the results.
Secondly, compared integration, where every possible
scenario is compared to a base case, is discussed in
[11,12,13]. Thirdly, partial integration is defined as a
complete integration for one or more specific items (i.e.
energy consumption, used resources) [1,9,11,14]. Finally,
complete integration can be considered, however no
publications presenting this type of model are available in the
literature due to several shortcomings. The most frequent
shortcomings can be summarized as follows:
x The effect of lubricants or cooling fluids on the component
aging speed or deterioration is not taken into account.
x The influence of maintenance on the energy consumption
during production is not investigated.

2212-8271 2014 Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the International Scientific Committee of the 21st CIRP Conference on Life Cycle
Engineering in the person of the Conference Chair Prof. Terje K. Lien
doi:10.1016/j.procir.2014.06.048

344

Adriaan Van Horenbeek et al. / Procedia CIRP 15 (2014) 343 348

x The ecological impact of maintenance activities is omitted.

x The effect of a maintenance policy on the component
lifetimes is not taken into account. These differences in
lifetime are important because they influence the material
usage, resource consumption etc.
x The loss of resources and/or materials due to component
failure is not considered.
1.2. Objective
The objective of this paper is to make an initial
contribution towards the development of a framework that
integrates ecological aspects in maintenance management. As
such, an economic and ecological analysis tool, covering
several maintenance policies (i.e. failure-based, block-based
and use-based maintenance) is developed. Based on the
presented models it is possible to determine the optimal
maintenance interval considering an economic, ecological and
integrated optimum. Finally, the developed model is verified
and validated by application to a case study of a cutting tool
of a turning machine.
The structure of the paper is as follows. Section 2 describes
the developed framework and model. The developed model is
validated by application to a case study of a cutting tool of a
turning machine in Section 3. Finally, Section 4 states the
major conclusions and future work.
2. Developed integration framework and model
The presented integration framework consists of three
major parts (i.e. inputs, processing and outputs) as shown in
Figure 1. In the processing part, the input data is processed
based on both an economic and ecological study. Afterwards,
these two results are combined based on an integration step.
The three parts are discussed into more detail in the following
sections.

INPUT

PROCESSING
Economic study

Direct &
Indirect inputs

Ecological study

OUTPUT

Economic analysis (LCC)

Economic

Integration economic
and ecological results

Integrated

Ecological analysis (LCA)

Ecological

Fig. 1. Integration framework.

2.1. Input
The necessary inputs can be subdivided into four
categories: maintenance data, company specific data,
databases, and data obtained by experiments or expert
knowledge.

2.1.1. Maintenance data

The maintenance data consists of the used maintenance
policy and historical data on the maintenance activities (i.e.
duration, effectiveness, corrective or preventive). In this
paper, three types of maintenance policies are considered:
failure-based, block-based and use-based maintenance.
Failure-based maintenance is a purely reactive policy where
maintenance is carried out only after a component or system
failure. A block-based maintenance policy is considered when
a component is maintained every Tb time units, independent
of the failure history of the component [15]. Under a usebased maintenance policy a component is always maintained
after usage Tu or failure, whichever occurs first, where Tu is a
constant [15]. Next to the maintenance policy, the failure
distribution function of the components needs to be
determined. This can be done based on historical data of
preventive and corrective maintenance actions. The mostly
used time to failure distribution is the Weibull distribution.
Hence, in this paper we adopt a two parameter Weibull
reliability function, with probability density function:
D

D D 1  O
f (t )
t e
; for t , D , O  ! 0
OD

(1)

Where is the shape parameter and is the scale

parameter.
2.1.2. Company specific data
The information which depends on the specific situation of
the enterprise is categorized as company specific data.
Examples of company specific data are: the interest rate used
for investment decisions, maintenance staff wages, production
rate, profit rates, used materials (e.g. quantity, composition,
price, distance to supplier), used maintenance equipment,
price of electricity and failure impact.
2.1.3. Databases
The ecological impact assessment is performed using the
Europe ReCiPe H/A Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA)
method [17]. The required Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) data
(e.g. materials, processes, end-of-life treatments) is taken
from the ecoinvent database [21]. However, the tool allows
the use of other LCIA methods and/or LCI databases.
2.1.4. Data obtained by experiments or expert knowledge
This category includes all essential data which cannot be
obtained within one of the three previous data sources. This
data cannot be specified for a standard case and depends on
the application. The missing data can be obtained with
experiments and test procedures, analytical or numerical
models or expert knowledge. In most cases an example of
unavailable data is the energy consumption during production
in function of the wear of the equipment or component.

345

Adriaan Van Horenbeek et al. / Procedia CIRP 15 (2014) 343 348

Processing
Economic analysis

Economic
Direct maintenance
aspects

Direct & indirect

maintenance aspects

Maintenance
Maintenance
equipment
equipment and
and
procedures
procedures

Material
Material consumption
consumption

Indirecte
onderhoudsaspecten

LCC
LCC

Optimal
Optimal interval
interval and
and
comparison
comparison study
study
Sensitivity
ensitivity analysis
analysis

Losses
Losses due
due to
to failure
failure
Staff
Staff

Integration
ntegration of economic and ecological results

Energy
Energy consumption
consumption

Downtime
Downtime losses
losses
End-of-life
End-of-life materials
materials

Weighing method
Standard
Standard factors
factors
Company
Company specific
specific
factors
factors

Ecological
Direct maintenance
aspects

Direct & indirect

maintenance aspects

Indirect maintenance
aspects

Maintenance
Maintenance
equipment
equipment and
and
procedures
procedures

Material
Material consumption
consumption

Losses
Losses due
due to
to failure
failure

Downtime
Downtime losses
losses

End-of-life
End-of-life materials
materials

Energy
Energy consumption
consumption

Optimal
Optimal interval
interval and
and
comparison
comparison study
study
Sensitivity
ensitivity analysis
analysis

Pareto
Pareto analyse
analyse

Ecological analysis
LCI
LCIA
CI
LCIA
(Ecoinvent)
(Ecoinvent) (ReCiPe,
(ReCiPe, ...)
...)

Optimal
Optimal interval
interval and
and
comparison
comparison study
study
Sensitivity
ensitivity analysis
analysis

Fig. 2. Processing module of integration framework.

2.2. Processing
A detailed overview of the processing module is
presented in Figure 2. The first step is the conversion or
translation of the gathered data into relevant information for
both the economic and ecological study. The conversion
can be divided in direct maintenance aspects, indirect
maintenance aspects and a combination of both. Direct
maintenance aspects are all the aspects directly related to
the performed maintenance actions. Some examples of
these are used spare parts, lubricants used during
maintenance, end-of-life treatment of the replaced
components and production losses during maintenance.
Indirect maintenance aspects are the ones that are indirectly
influenced by maintenance. An important indirect aspect is
for example the energy consumption during production in
relation to the component deterioration. After this
preparatory step, the actual economic and ecological
analysis can be performed.
The economic analysis is performed by adopting a Life
Cycle Costing Analysis (LCCA) to combine all the
economic costs and revenues. LCCA is an economic
method for project evaluation in which all costs arising
from design, production, operation, maintenance and
eventually disposal of a product are considered to be
potentially important to that decision [16]. Hence, different
maintenance policies lead to a specific life cycle cost
(LCC).
The environmental impacts are determined using the
Europe ReCiPe H/A LCIA method [17] and ecoinvent LCI
database [21].

After composing the inventory of costs and

environmental impacts of maintenance, the average longterm cost and ecological impact per time unit can be
determined for the three considered maintenance policies.
In order to calculate these costs and impacts the concept of
renewal theory is used [15]. As such the average long term
cost (Equation 2) and impact (Equation 3) per time unit for
failure based maintenance becomes:

CF

f

Cc

(2)

R(t )dt  t c

IF

Ic
f

(3)

R(t )dt  t c

Where CF is the average long-term cost per time unit and

IF is the average long-term impact per time unit for the
failure-based maintenance policy. Cc and Ic are respectively
the cost and impact of a failure of the component. tc is the
downtime due to a corrective maintenance action. R(t) is the
component reliability function.
The average long term cost and environmental impact
per time unit as function of the preventive maintenance time
for block-based maintenance (Equations 4 and 5) and usebased maintenance (Equations 6 and 7) are defined as
follows:

346

C (Tb )

I (Tb )

C (Tu )

Adriaan Van Horenbeek et al. / Procedia CIRP 15 (2014) 343 348

C p (Tb )  C c (TP ,b ) M (Tb )

Tb  t p
I p (Tb )  I c (TP ,b ) M (Tb )
Tb  t p

C p (Tu ) R(Tu )  C c (TP ,u ) F (Tu )

Tu

(4)

(5)

(6)

R(t )dt  t p R(Tu )  t c F (Tu )

I (Tu )

I p (Tu ) R(Tu )  I c (TP ,u ) F (Tu )

Tu

(7)

R(t )dt  t p R(Tu )  t c F (Tu )

Where C(Tb) is the average long-term cost per time unit

and I(Tb) is the average long-term impact per time unit for
the block-based maintenance policy when maintenance is
performed every Tb time units. C(Tu) is the average longterm cost per time unit and I(Tu) is the average long-term
impact per time unit for the block-based maintenance policy
when maintenance is performed every Tu time units of
usage. Cp and Ip are respectively the cost and impact of a
preventive maintenance action. tp is the downtime due to a
preventive maintenance action. F(t) is the component
cumulative failure distribution. M(Tb) is the renewal
function as defined in [15].
Based on Equations 2 to 7, both an economic and
ecological optimum can be determined for the three
considered maintenance policies.
To integrate both the economic and ecological results
into an integrated score, a weighing factor can be used. The
standard weighing factor, w, used in this paper is 0.11
/eco-point. This factor is based on the equivalent amount
of eco-points for a unit CO2 and the price of CO2. The
integrated cost becomes:

study. This can be based on economic, ecological or

integrated motives. Furthermore, a thorough sensitivity
analysis is possible based on the extracted results.
3. Case study: cutting tool
In this section, the developed integration framework is
validated by application to a case study of a cutting tool of a
turning machine with regard to face turning operations. The
input data are based on face turning operations for the
production of the part shown in Figure 3 [19]. The type of
turning machine used in this case study is the Gildemeister
CTX 420 linear and the used material is SAF2205. The
production time for the given part is 227 seconds. The
cutting power P[W] as a function of the cutting time t[min]
(i.e. and corresponding tool wear) and the material of the
product, which is used to derive the energy consumption, is
shown in Figure 4 [19]. This relation is approximated for
the SAF2205 material by the following function:

P 0.000095918t 3  1301.3

(9)

Fig. 3. Produced part [19].

Integrated cost economic cost  w ecological impact

(8)
Integration of the economic and ecological results is also
possible by using Pareto analysis rather than a weighting
factor. Pareto analysis is a commonly used technique based
on the principle of non-dominated solutions to represent
the results of a multi-objective optimization problem in the
form of a Pareto front. The major advantage of using this
methodology is that there is no need for a weighting factor
between the economic and ecological analysis results. The
interested reader is referred to [18] for more details on this
technique.
2.3. Output
Based on the developed model it is possible to determine
the optimal maintenance policy and its corresponding
optimal preventive maintenance interval for a specific case

Fig. 4. Cutting power as a function of the cutting time [19].

Some assumptions are made:

x A constant production rate is assumed, independent of
the wear of the cutting tool.
x Maintenance is perfect, which means that components
are as good as new after maintenance.
x A single-component (i.e. cutting tool) system is
considered.
A short description on the used data for this case study is
provided below. A more detailed description of the
incorporated costs, impacts and calculations can be found in

347

Adriaan Van Horenbeek et al. / Procedia CIRP 15 (2014) 343 348

Table 1. Results block-based maintenance.

Economic
optimum

Ecological
optimum

Integrated
optimum

Tb

180

68

180

Cost (/min)

0.1657

0.3113

0.1657

Impact (millipoints/min)

0.1527

0.0328

0.1527

Integrated cost (/min)

0.1657

0.3114

0.1657

Integrated cost (/min)

0.1240

0.2992

0.1240

2.5

Economic cost [/min]

UBM
BBM
2
1.5
1
0.5
0

50

100
150
200
Maintenance interval [min]

250

300

Ecological impact [ecopoints/min]

Fig. 5. Economic cost in function of the maintenance interval for the

block-based (BBM) and use-based maintenance (UBM) policy.

x 10

-4

UBM
BBM

7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
0

50

100
150
200
Maintenance interval [min]

250

300

Fig. 6. Ecological impact in function of the maintenance interval for the

block-based (BBM) and use-based maintenance (UBM) policy.

2.5
Integrated cost [/min]

[20]. The production volume Q equals 15.9 parts/h as the

production of a single part takes 227s. The profit per part cw
equals 2 and is based on a 30% profit margin on the
production cost of the part. The production cost, which
equals 6.71, consists of the material cost, cost of end-oflife treatment, machine cost and energy cost. The personnel
cost equals 27/h and the energy cost is 0.10/kWh. The
cost of a cutting tool is 15.84. The preventive maintenance
cost Cp consists of the cost of a new cutting tool (15.84),
downtime losses (based on the preventive maintenance
downtime Tp which equals 0.08h), personnel cost (27/h)
and cost of energy consumption (based on Equation 9). The
corrective maintenance cost Cc equals the preventive
maintenance cost plus an additional cost due to the loss of
the produced part (6.71) and an additional downtime cost
(based on the corrective maintenance downtime Tc which
equals 0.18h) due to the failure. The ecological impact of a
preventive maintenance action Ip consists of the impact of
the energy consumption (based on Equation 9 and an
impact of electricity generation of 0.0529 eco-points/kWh),
impact of the cutting tool (0.00146 eco-points based on the
material, processing and transport) and the impact of the
end-of-life treatment of the cutting tool (0.000023 ecopoints). The ecological impact of a corrective maintenance
action Ic equals Ip plus an additional impact of the end-oflife treatment of the lost part (0.0046 eco-points). The
reliability of the cutting tool is modeled by a Weibull
distribution (Equation 1) where the shape parameter
equals 3 and the scale parameter equals 280. For the
failure-based maintenance policy there is no optimization
parameter (i.e. maintenance interval) to consider. Hence,
based on Equations 2 and 3, the economic cost becomes
0.1287 /min, the ecological impact is 0.3563 milli-ecopoints/min and the integrated cost becomes 0.1288 /min.
For the block-based and use-based maintenance policy the
optimum is determined by calculation of the optimal
maintenance interval based on economic, ecological as well
as an integrated analysis (see Equations 4-7). The results
are shown in Tables 1 and 2, and Figures 5-7. As shown in
the results, the age-based maintenance policy is
outperforming the other two policies on all aspects (i.e.
economic, ecological and integrated).

UBM
BBM

2
1.5
1
0.5
0

50

100
150
200
Maintenance interval [min]

250

300

Fig. 7. Integrated cost in function of the maintenance interval for the

block-based (BBM) and use-based maintenance (UBM) policy.
Table 2. Results use-based maintenance.
Economic
optimum

Ecological
optimum

Integrated
optimum

Tu

281

70

281

Cost (/min)

0.1240

0.2992

0.1240

Impact (millipoints/min)

0.3183

0.0325

0.3183

From the results it is clear that the economic optimal

maintenance interval is significantly larger than the
ecological optimal maintenance interval. The major reason
for this is that the ratio of the economic cost of energy
consumption and failure relative to the fixed costs is much
smaller than in the ecological case. In this way the energy

348

Adriaan Van Horenbeek et al. / Procedia CIRP 15 (2014) 343 348

Ecological impact [ecopoints/min]

consumption only has a major impact on the ecological

optimum. Furthermore, the ecological impact on the
integrated results is almost non-existing. Hence, the
integrated cost is determined by the economic cost.
As the integrated results depend on the weighing factor,
a Pareto analysis, shown in Figure 8, is performed to
eliminate the effect of this weighing factor. From this
analysis it is clear that by allowing a small increase in
economic cost, the ecological impact can be reduced
significantly.
8

x 10

-4

UBM
BBM

7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
0

0.5

1
1.5
Economic cost [/min]

2.5

Fig. 8. Pareto analysis for the block-based (BBM) and use-based

maintenance (UBM) policy.

4. Conclusions
This paper develops a framework that integrates
ecological aspects in maintenance management. As such an
economic and ecological analysis tool is developed for
three maintenance policies: failure-based maintenance,
block-based maintenance and use-based maintenance.
Based on the presented models it is possible to determine
the optimal maintenance interval considering an economic,
ecological and integrated optimum. Finally, the developed
model is verified and validated by application to a case
study of a cutting tool of a turning machine. The results
show that the ecological optimal maintenance interval is
significantly shorter than the economic optimal
maintenance interval. The integrated optimum is dominated
by the economic cost and the effect of the ecological impact
is negligible. Furthermore, Pareto analysis indicates that by
allowing a small increase in economic costs by adapting the
preventive maintenance interval, a significant reduction in
ecological impact can be gained. Further research will be on
the inclusion of condition-based maintenance into the
developed framework and the extension to other case
studies.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Kurt Van Calster, graduated
master student at the Department of Mechanical
Engineering, for his contribution to this research. The work
of Adriaan Van Horenbeek has been carried out within the
framework of the Prognostics for Optimal Maintenance
(POM2) project (grantnr.100031) which is financially

supported by the Institute for the Promotion of Innovation

through Science and Technology in Flanders (IWTVlaanderen). Karel Kellens acknowledges the support of
the Institute for the Promotion of Innovation through
Science and Technology in Flanders (IWT-Vlaanderen)
through its PhD grant N091232.
References
[1] Van Horenbeek A, Pintelon L, Muchiri P. Maintenance optimization
models and criteria. International Journal of Systems Assurance
Engineering and Management 2010; 1: 189-200.
[2] Knowles M. The role of maintenance in energy saving in commercial
refigeration. Journal of Quality in Maintenance Engineering 2012; 18:
282-94.
[3] Duflou JR, Sutherland JW, Dornfeld D, Herrmann C, Jeswiet J, Kara S,
Hauschild M, Kellens K. Towards energy and resource efficient
manufacturing: A processes and systems approach. CIRP Annals Manufacturing Technology 2012; 61: 587-609.
[4] uek L, Kleme JJ, Kravanja Z. A Review of Footprint analysis tools
for monitoring impacts on sustainability. Journal of Cleaner Production
2012; 34: 9-20.
[5] Dekker R. Applications of maintenance optimization models: a review
and analysis. Reliability Engineering & System Safety 1996; 51: 22940.
[6] Scarf PA. On the application of mathematical models in maintenance.
European Journal of Operational Research 1997; 99: 493-506.
[7] Wang H. A survey of maintenance policies of deteriorating systems.
European Journal of Operational Research 2002; 139: 469-89.
[8] Ciroth A. Cost data quality considerations for eco-efficiency measures.
Ecological Economics 2009; 68: 1583-90.
[9] Rdenauer I, Gensch C-O, Griehammer R., Bunke D. Integrated
environmental and economic assessment of products and processes.
Journal of Industrial Ecology 2005; 9: 105-16.
[10] Horvath A. Life-cycle environmental and economic assessment of
using recycled materials for asphalt pavements. University of
California Transportation Center, UC Berkeley. 2003.
[11] Dellagia S, Rezga N, Xieb X. Preventive maintenance of
manufacturing systems under environmental constraints. International
Journal of Production Research 2007; 45: 1233-54.
[12] Hong T, Ji C, Park H. Integrated model for assessing the cost and
CO2 emission (IMACC) for sustainable structural design in ready-mix
concrete. Journal of Environmental Management 2012; 103: 1-8.
[13] Giustozzi F, Crispino M, Flintsch G. Multi-attribute life cycle
assessment of preventive maintenance treatments on road pavements
for achieving environmental sustainability. The International Journal of
Life Cycle Assessment 2012; 17: 409-19.
[14] Yan J, Hua D. Energy consumption modeling for machine tools after
preventive maintenance. IEEE International Conference on Industrial
Engineering and Engineering Management (IEEM) 2010; 2201-05.
[15] Barlow RE, Proschan F. Comparison of replacement policies, and
renewal theory implications. The Annals of mathematical statistics
1964; 35: 577-89.
[16] Asiedu Y. Product life cycle cost analysis: state of the art review.
International Journal of Production Research 1998; 36: 883-908.
[17] Goedkoop, M., Heijungs, R., Huijbregts, M., De Schryver, A., Struijs,
J., Van Zelm, R., 2013, ReCiPe 2008: A life cycle impact assessment
method which comprises harmonised category indicators at the
midpoint and the endpoint level, First edition (revised) Report I:
Characterisation
[18] Deb K. Multiobjective optimization using evolutionary algorithms,
2000: Wiley.
[19] Braun S, Heisel U. Simulation and prediction of process-oriented
energy consumption of machine tools. Leveraging Technology for a
Sustainable World 2012; LCE2012 Conference, Berkeley, 245-50.
[20] Van Calster K. Integration of ecological aspects in maintenance
management. Master thesis, KU Leuven, 2013.
[21] Ecoinvent Centre, Swiss Centre for Life Cycle Inventories, 2013,
ecoinvent database v2.2, available online, http://www.ecoinvent.ch.