Maintenance Optimization

Maintenance can be defined as the combination of all technical and associated administrative actions intended to retain an item or system in, or restore it to, a state in which it can perform its required function. The maintenance objectives can be summarized under four headings: (i) ensuring system function (availability, efficiency and product quality); (ii) ensuring system life (asset management); (iii) ensuring safety; (iv) ensuring human well-being. Costs of maintenance have to be minimized while keeping the risks within strict limits and meeting statutory requirements.

Maintenance Optimization
The goal of the maintenance optimization process is to select the appropriate maintenance technique for each piece of equipment within a system and identifying the periodicity that the maintenance technique should be conducted to achieve regulatory requirements, maintenance targets concerning safety, equipment reliability, and system availability/costs. When maintenance optimization is effectively implemented it will: (1) improve system availability, (2) reduce overall maintenance costs, (3) improve equipment and plant reliability, and (4) improve system safety.

The maintenance optimization process will allow the systems maintenance program to move from a reactive approach or a preventive approach to a planned approach. The planned approach conducts maintenance at the most optimum time, which is often before the equipment fails, whereas the reactive Approach performs maintenance as a result of unexpected failures and the preventive approach performs maintenance strictly on a scheduled basis.

Maintenance Optimization
A true maintenance optimization process continually monitors and optimizes the current maintenance program to improve its overall efficiency and effectiveness. The system Reliability Center (SRC) staff has the ability to assess maintenance and reliability data to determine the optimum time for replacement of components before failure. Maintenance should start in the design phase of systems. The type of equipment, the level of redundancy and the accessibility will then strongly effect the maintainability. When purchasing systems, future maintenance costs should be taken into account as well. Maintenance concept or strategy describes what events (e.g., failure) trigger what type of maintenance (inspection repair, replacement); it can be determined both after the design phase and in the operations phase.

Maintenance Optimization
Once a system is in operation, maintenance has to be planned and scheduled. Finally, there is maintenance control, which consists of comparing actuality with plans, indicating to management where problems are.

Optimization Fundamentals
MAINTENANCE OPTIMIZATION MODELS : Maintenance optimization models are defined as those mathematical models whose aim is to find the optimum balance between the costs and benefits of maintenance, while taking all kinds of constraints into account. In almost all cases, maintenance benefits consist of savings on costs which would be incurred otherwise (e.g., less failure costs). maintenance optimization models cover four aspects: (i) a description of a technical system, its function and its importance, (ii) a modeling of the deterioration of the system in time and possible consequences for the system, (iii) a description of the available information about the system and the actions open to management and (iv) an objective function and an optimization technique which helps in finding the best balance.

Maintenance Optimization
There are several areas and industries in which the models have been applied; popular areas are equipment and vehicle replacements, inspection optimization, road maintenance and scheduling of maintenance of electric power stations.

Tougher competition in the energy markets has forced power plants to become more cost-effective: they must produce power, process steam and district heating at ever decreasing costs. As a result, production and maintenance personnel must increasingly be able to identify which maintenance operations are truly necessary and how to schedule them without significant production disturbances.
Larger maintenance jobs, for example, should be planned according to need rather than at pre-determined intervals. And spare parts inventories should be kept low but also sufficiently large to ensure the right parts are available when needed.