
Liliane PintelonKU Leuven | ku leuven · Department of Mechanical Engineering
Liliane Pintelon
PhD
About
150
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7,223
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October 1984 - present
Publications
Publications (150)
Safety plays a key role when implementing collaborative robots (cobots) in human-shared workspace scenarios. Nevertheless, the significance and understanding of safety-related aspects may significantly vary with different stakeholders’ perspectives. In particular, there is often a misconception that cobots are inherently safe with the result of sig...
Globally, the health sector has advanced in provision of quality healthcare services to the patient with minimum delays in service provision, and at the lowest cost possible. However, public hospitals in Kenya have not redesigned their processes according to the patient preferences and needs. The study therefore, evaluated the different types of wa...
Lean management implies the use of lean tools for optimizing the delivery of diagnostic and treatment healthcare services to patients, and extends to offering quality services to dependents and practitioners at healthcare facilities. Lean management and associated strategies are derived from the manufacturing sectors, with origins from the Toyota C...
Collaborative robots are an emerging technology falling within the scope of Industry 4.0 and based on the concept of Human‐Robot Collaboration (HRC). Unlike traditional industrial robots, collaborative robots are used in shared workspaces with no safety fences. Hence, prospective hazardous contacts need to be avoided or mitigated through a risk ass...
This paper sets up a framework to assess co-agency in human-robot interactions, and applies it specifically to the socio-technical safety analysis of collaborative robots. We also examine to what extent the concept of Situation Awareness can be applied to assess collaborative robots as efficient team members in socio-technical systems. We explain s...
Despite their undisputed potential, the uptake of collaborative robots remains below expectations. Collaborative robots (cobots) are used differently from conventional industrial robots. The current safety focus of collaborative workspaces is predominantly on the technological design; additional factors also need to be considered to cope with the e...
Collaborative robots (cobots) are important accelerators of industrial growth. Their potential is undisputed, yet cobot adoption remains low. Safety is one of the factors that influence cobot adoption. This paper examines safety in particular as an adoption factor and argues that the system-wide nature of safety for cobots results in a paradoxical...
Industry 4.0 systems in general and advanced manufacturing systems such as collaborative robots, in particular, are characterized by a high level of complexity leading to new safety concerns. Safety, specifically for collaborative robots, has been mainly addressed from a technical perspective, to safeguard the physical safety of the operator. Conce...
The lack of an empirical analysis of the maintenance practices under Asset Performance Management (APM) in the Belgian industries is addressed. The presentation provides insights to researchers and practitioners in addressing challenges in the articulation of imperative effective maintenance strategies and data management, benchmarking and challeng...
Providing home hemodialysis (HHD) therapy is a complex process that not only requires the use of a complex technology but also involves a diverse group of stakeholders, and each stakeholder has their requirements and may not share a common interest. Bringing them together will require the alignment of their interests. A process management perspecti...
Complexity is ubiquitous in modern engineering and project management. It is traditionally associated with failure. Also, complexity works! It delivers functionality, creativity, innovation. Complexity management contributes to the success of high-risk IT projects, helps better project understanding, allows for better prioritization and planning of...
Objectives
The main objectives of this article are 2-fold. First, we explore the application of multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) methods in different areas of health care, particularly the adoption of various MCDA methods across health care decision making problems. Second, we report on the publication trends on the application of MCDA method...
The decision for remanufacturing as a life extension solution for ageing equipment approaching their end of life (EOL), has marginalized the active role of the end-users and maintenance functions, by predominantly considering the remanufacturers (OEM/R) context. However, the decisions influencing the immediate core (used item/part of its component)...
Purpose
The present study empirically compares maintenance practices under asset performance management (APM), employed by firms in developed and developing countries (Belgium and Kenya, respectively).
Design/methodology/approach
Empirical observations and theoretical interpretations on maintenance practices under APM are delineated. A comparative...
Effective inventory control policies for maintenance spare parts necessitates criticality evaluation, which is predominantly done using historical data. This approach disregards uncertainty and risks like changes in reliability and failure rate that maintenance-intensive facilities experience. Therefore, incorporating these anticipated variabilitie...
Despite the benefits that digital wayfinding systems offer hospital visitors and patients as well as the hospitals themselves, their actual presence in hospitals is low. This study, carried out in twenty hospitals, presents an evaluation of these systems. Interviews with hospital managers (with and without systems) indicate considerations and evide...
This paper develops a simulation-based model to derive critical maintenance parameters towards optimizing a deep drilling rig availability and maintenance costs. Full factorial analysis is performed to derive the effects and interactions of the derived parameters, based on which ones with a significant effect on the availability and maintenance cos...
Complexity is ubiquitous in modern IT engineering and project management. It is traditionally associated with risk and failure. But complexity also works: it delivers functionality, creativity, innovation. This paper proposes a conceptual framework to support IT Project Complexity Management in a structured, systematic way, consisting of the follow...
The technology for collaborative robots and the way these technologies are used in current socio-technical work systems are rapidly evolving in industrial applications. In the absence of prescribed safety assessment methods from normative standards, this paper explores the capabilities of an STPA analysis for the socio-technical behaviour of collab...
Despite the benefits that digital wayfinding systems offer hospital visitors and patients as well as the hospitals themselves, their actual presence in hospitals is low. This study, carried out in twenty hospitals, presents an evaluation of these systems. Interviews with hospital managers (with and without systems) indicate considerations and evide...
Close interactions with a human operator are an important safety concern for collaborative robot systems. For safety assurance, robot integrators are required to demonstrate that they have taken steps to identify potential hazards, which may be embedded in collaborative tasks, or embedded within the collaborative workspace. Consequently, design saf...
Dialysis processes within the home care context is associated with risk factors which are not very prominent in the hospital context. This includes risk factors such as unanticipated device malfunction, or erroneous operation of the equipment, which exposes the patient to injury while undergoing dialysis. Importantly, the mentioned risk factors are...
The high acquisition cost retained by replacement of ageing and deteriorating assets triggers operational life-extension for the systems. Subsequently, ageing effects like compromised performance and wear are introduced, adversely affecting system economics and performance. An integrated maintenance and spares strategy incorporating lubricant condi...
Performance management of operating rooms is of great importance in hospital management. From the patients' point of view, operating room capacity management ensures available capacity when needed and thus ensuring short (er) waiting time. From the hospital point of view, efficiently and effectively managing these expensive resources is a major con...
The purpose of this paper is to develop a maintenance decision support system (DSS) framework using in-service lubricant data for fault diagnosis. The DSS reveals embedded patterns in the data (knowledge discovery), automatically quantifies the influence of lubricant parameters on the unhealthy state of the machine using alternative classifiers. Th...
Ensuring cost containment while providing high quality patient care is of paramount concern to hospitals. The operating theater in particular is a major cost driver for any hospital, and is among the most critical resources in terms of both capacity and patient care. Effective inventory and distribution systems are a prerequisite for realizing effi...
As the world of IT engineering becomes more complex every day, the formal study of project complexity becomes more and more important for managing projects effectively, to avoid poor performance and failure. Complexity is not yet clearly understood nor sufficiently defined, the terminology itself being overloaded and over-used. This paper is a syst...
The recent trend is towards value-based healthcare, which is characterized by the relationship between quality of care and the associated costs. However, value in healthcare is a largely unmeasured and misunderstood concept. In particular, a definition of multi-stakeholder value in healthcare decision-making is missing. In this case study, we revie...
Planned and unplanned downtime emanating from maintenance, production, and operational function adversely affects the performance of manufacturing plants. This paper develops joint maintenance, production and process/operations control policies integrating Opportunistic Maintenance (OM), which takes advantage of external (operational-related downti...
Safety is an important concern for critical assets, such as aircrafts. E-maintenance strategies have long been explored for maintenance decision support and optimizing the operational availability of aircraft assets. Data-driven tools are an important influencer of day-to-day maintenance processes, which if optimally used may support practitioners...
IT project complexity increases continuously, in synchrony with technological complexity, making projects difficult to manage and control. Despite a growing importance and priority in research, there is still a strong need for solutions to the significant challenges posed by complexity. This paper presents an exploratory qualitative research proces...
Manufacturing and maintenance processes significantly benefit from effective and integrated Supply Chain Management (SCM). Recently, hospitals start to recognize the importance of these logistics initiatives to improve their operational performance while also maintaining high quality of patient care. Patient care processes are supported by a range...
The manufacturing industry is increasingly regarded as an essential ingredient of an ecosystem of production of goods and services. Key enabling technologies are considered to be the motors behind the ongoing digital transformation of industry. Given that there are still a number of open questions that need to be addressed in order to develop succe...
With the introduction of Industry 4.0, occupational health and safety finds itself confronted with new types of hazards. Many Industry 4.0 innovations involve increased machine intelligence. These properties make socio-technical work in Industry 4.0 applications inherently more complex. At the same time, system failure can become more opaque to its...
The failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) employing the risk priority numbers (RPN) have been used extensively for identifying and prioritizing failure modes with a view of mitigating their impact on equipment failure. However, in its traditional form, the prioritization approach through the RPN lacks the objectivity required for robust risk asse...
Maintenance optimization is applied by organizations to develop robust maintenance programs while attempting to establish a trade-off between competing maintenance requirements and resources. For this reason, maintenance decisions derived from maintenance optimization models are adversely affected, if (a) the maintenance objective(s) applied as inp...
Industrial facilities frequently experience significant production losses due to unanticipated failures, sub-optimal maintenance, operational and spare parts logistics challenges. These among other factors directly affect the plant’s performance measures such as availability, repair time and costs. Consequently, optimization addresses such challeng...
Collaborative robots, or cobots, can improve the working conditions of human operators by decreasing their workload. By assisting the operator both mentally and physically , the overall performance and human wellbeing can be enhanced. The use of cobots in factories introduces new challenges. In this paper, we briefly highlight our contributions to...
Collaborative robots (cobots) have a strong po-
tential to improve both productivity as well as the working
conditions of assembly operators by assisting in their tasks
and by decreasing their physical and cognitive stress. The use
of cobots in factories however introduces multiple challenges:
how should the overall assembly architecture look like...
Analyzing the causes of human error and related failures in maintenance work can assist in mitigating such consequences as: lower productivity; and workforce over exposure to safety risks. However, despite the importance of such analyses, research is generally confined to industries with established criteria for managing error analysis. In developi...
Lubrication Condition monitoring (LCM) is not only utilized as an early warning system in machinery but also, for fault diagnosis and prognosis under condition-based maintenance (CBM). LCM is considered as an important condition monitoring technique, due to the ample information derived from lubricant testing, which demonstrates an introspective re...
Maintenance of similar multiple equipment is challenged by the complexities brought by respective maintenance needs and intervals for each equipment. Therefore, maintenance scheduling and planning becomes expensive and time intense, affecting productivity and profitability of the plant. Organizations are embracing the need to enhance maintenance pl...
The risk assessment process performs an important role in maintenance decision making, through structuring the process of identifying, prioritizing, and thereafter formulating effective maintenance strategies. However, the effectiveness of the implemented strategies is influenced by the extent to which asset failure dependencies are taken into acco...
Use of radiology medical devices in hospitals pose a risk to the patients and medical practitioners. The device risks may be as a result of technical, operational, logistical or maintenance reasons. It for this reason, risk management practices should be employed in healthcare systems to ensure that risks hazards inherent in medical devices and tho...
Contamination via fuel dilution can result in degradation of the engine oil which could lead to increased engine wear and/or engine failure. Exposing lubricant contamination by fuel dilution can involve a multi-parametric evaluation while undertaking lubricant condition monitoring also known as used oil analysis (UOA). We utilize hierarchical clust...
Lubricant condition monitoring (LCM), part of condition monitoring techniques under Condition Based Maintenance, monitors the condition and state of the lubricant which reveal the condition and state of the equipment. LCM has proved and evidenced to represent a key concept driving maintenance decision making involving sizeable number of parameter (...
Industrial facilities such as power plants often experience significant production losses due to unanticipated failures, suboptimal maintenance, operational activities and challenges in spare parts logistics. Furthermore, they portend loss of reputation, significant societal disruptions and poor manpower utilization. Critical performance measures f...
The availability of specialized medical equipment plays a critical role in the delivery of healthcare services. This becomes even more critical in developing countries where few medical devices are available in public hospitals, hence do not commensurate with demand, which leads to their overutilization. This often results in frequent failure of th...
The patient care processes in hospitals are supported by a range of operational activities including inventory management and distribution of supplies to point-of-care locations. Hospitals carry large amounts and a great variety of items, and the issues of storing and distributing these items throughout the hospital supply chain are of great import...
Lubricant condition monitoring is a Condition Based Maintenance (CBM) technique which indicates the state or condition of the equipment, the lubricant and any contamination noted within the lubricant. Failure of the various lubricant parameters translates to loss of lubrication capability which consequently leads to wear of the equipment and catast...
In this paper a novel approach is presented for maintenance planning by considering grouping strategy and human factors. The proposed approach describes various steps from system configuration to maintenance plan review. In previous studies, it has been shown that grouping maintenance activities would reduce total maintenance cost by saving set-up...
This paper proposes a novel maintenance planning approach by considering grouping strategy as well as human factors. The proposed approach describes various steps from boundary definition to execution of maintenance plan. Positive and negative economic dependencies are considered for series and parallel components, respectively. In this work, a spe...
Background
Wayfinding in hospitals is a complex problem since patients, who are likely to be under stress, may have to navigate their way to multiple locations in the course of a single visit. While good wayfinding design can reduce stress, poor wayfinding not only can increase anxiety on an individual basis but also generate additional costs for...
The Blood Service at the Belgian Red Cross-Flanders is responsible for blood collection in Flanders (Belgium). One of their missions is guaranteeing a constant and sufficient supply of safe blood products. This is a critical public health need, since the blood products can save lives of victims from traffic accidents or in the event of major blood...
This paper proposes a methodical approach for identifying and reducing human error in maintenance activities, the human factors effect and analysis. Human factors effect and analysis presents a roadmap for selecting significant human factors affecting maintenance management as well as the most effective solutions using cost-benefit analysis. Safety...
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to review current literature analyzing human factors in maintenance, and areas in need of further research are suggested.
Design/methodology/approach
– The review applies a novel framework for systematically categorizing human factors in maintenance into three major categories: human error/reliability calcula...
An analytical multiobjective maintenance planning model that maximizes reliability while minimizing cost and human error is proposed. In order to incorporate human error, the model minimizes the maximum human error over the planning horizon. Human Error Assessment and Reduction Technique (HEART) is used to quantify the human error. Maintenance acti...
The failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) is a widely applied technique for prioritizing equipment failures in the maintenance decision-making domain. Recent improvements on the FMEA have largely focussed on addressing the shortcomings of the conventional FMEA of which the risk priority number is incorporated as a measure for prioritizing failure...
The increasing adoption of maintenance information management systems for maintenance decision support by industry has facilitated the collection of large volumes of maintenance data. Apart from enhancing maintenance decision support in aspects such as task planning or resource allocation, the data could assist decision makers identify the focal ro...
Deferring the maintenance activity can often be detrimental to the asset’s operation. This is usually the case where minimal repair actions are performed for severe failures. Here, deferring the maintenance activity ends up accelerating equipment deterioration, thereby resulting in more severe failures. In this paper, a discrete event simulation mo...
The redesign of business processes has a huge potential in terms of reducing costs and throughput times, as well as improving customer satisfaction. Despite rapid developments in the business process management discipline during the last decade, a comprehensive overview of the options to methodologically support a team to move from as-is process in...
In today's industries, optimal spare parts provisioning plays a critical role towards sustaining the asset's operational capabilities. In this context, spare parts pooling is increasingly mentioned as a plausible approach for optimizing spare parts management, more so for repairable systems. In this sense, several frameworks are proposed in literat...
Risk assessment performs a critical decision support role in maintenance decision making. This is through assisting maintenance practitioners systematically identify, analyze, evaluate and mitigate equipment failures. Often, such failures are mitigated through formulating effective maintenance strategies. In asset maintenance, well-known risk asses...
In today's dynamic business environment, organisations are adapting asset management strategies as a means of gaining a competitive advantage. This is achieved through implementing effective maintenance program(s). However, implementing such program(s) is often not straightforward due to lack of a structured decision making framework. This article...
New maintenance policies like condition monitoring and prognostics are developed to predict the remaining useful life (RUL) of components. However, decision making based on these predictions is still an underexplored area of maintenance management. Furthermore, maintenance relies on the availability of spare parts for replacement in order to reduce...
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,...
Hospitals aim at delivering efficient and effective healthcare. This requires high quality medical care, provided by highly trained and motivated professionals. Also the way operations are organized can contribute to a smoother healthcare delivery. An important point here is patient flow and waiting times during the patient trajectory diagnosis-the...
Correlation between the quality degradation of a product and maintenance of a machine is often established by the production engineers. To asses this correlation, some assumptions are made. In most cases it is assumed that the quality of the product degrades after a fixed number of operation cycles of the production machine. Therefore, maintenance...
As surgical procedures become more complex; require higher levels of precision and surgical skill; as patient safety is taking in an increasingly important place and ethical awareness, practicality and cost, rule out more and more training on cadavers or animal models; Virtual Reality (VR) surgical training comes progressively into the picture. Com...
The competitiveness and performance of manufacturing companies depend on the availability, reliability and productivity of their production equipment. This recognition has led to a drastic change of perception on maintenance over the past decades, evolving from a “necessary evil” to a “value adding” activity. In order to ensure a good performance o...
Abstract The use of prognostic methods in maintenance in order to predict remaining useful life is receiving more attention over the past years. The use of these techniques in maintenance decision making and optimization in multi-component systems is however a still underexplored area. The objective of this paper is to optimally plan maintenance fo...
Equipment maintenance and system reliability are important factors affecting the organisation's ability to provide quality and timely services to customer. While maintenance remains an important function to manufacturing, it is only recently that attempts have been made to quantify its impact on equipment performance. In this research, an approach...
This paper considers the effect of fleet size on a joint policy of maintenance and spare parts inventory when spare parts are of varying quality. We consider N identical one-component systems subject to age-based replacement, and with a single echelon periodic review spare-parts policy. The joint policy is optimised with regard to the long-run tota...
The Product–Service System (PSS) concept has been proposed as a promising avenue to achieve sustainable consumption and production patterns and to improve the competitiveness of industrial manufacturers. The adoption of a PSS involves an orientation toward selling product functionality instead of selling products. Two aspects in the available PSS l...