Remote maintenance support in virtual service enterprises

This paper discusses a scheme that allows all parties involved in the maintenance of a chemical plant: the plant owner (customer), the engineering company, the equipment vendors, and the maintenance firms, to form a virtual service enterprise (VSE) whenever a maintenance service is necessary, in an attempt to provide required services more timely. This paper also discusses the requirements for knowledge management and risk management in such a VSE environment, and proposes a secure hosting service environment that allows all the parties to share information and applications, and to collaborate during plant operation and service fulfilment. To evaluate and demonstrate the feasibility of this scheme, a prototype of the remote maintenance system developed for a fertiliser plant in Indonesia is presented. Finally, a scenario of how to utilise such a remote maintenance system, the possibility of collaboration among VSE partners, and the advantages of utilising the proposed hosting services in VSE are also discussed.