Interactions of maintenance and production planning for multipurpose process plants - A system effectiveness approach

Process design and operations are typically concerned with the optimal sele ction, design, and efficient utilization of assets and resources over a tim e-horizon of interest. The degree of utilization of process plant component s critically depends on the availability level of equipment components. The se availability levels are mainly associated with equipment reliability, fa ilure characteristics, and maintenance policies. This paper presents a syst em effectiveness optimization framework for multipurpose plants that involv es a novel preventive maintenance model coupled with a multiperiod planning model. This provides the basis for simultaneously identifying production a nd maintenance policies by exploiting (i) opportunities to perform preventi ve maintenance during equipment idle time and (ii) flexibility in selecting different production routes to potentially mitigate the adverse effects of equipment failure on the production plan. Extensions to include design dec isions are also discussed. All problems are formulated as mixed integer lin ear programming (MILP) models, and their applicability is demonstrated by a number of illustrative examples.