Optimal Maintenance for Degrading Assets in the Context of Asset Fleets-A Case Study

Abstract

Decision-making for maintenance of engineering assets is a common challenge in the process industry due to ongoing degradation. With an increasing company-size, this problem becomes more complex from an operational and computational point of view. This paper introduces a case study to the academic community that represents the problem of optimal decision-making in the context of large asset fleets. The case study poses a large fleet of offshore compressors for gas production with a specific network structure. Two exemplary discrete-time mixed integer linear programming models following the Resource Task Network framework are presented. They address asset deterioration due to effects such as fouling by suggesting specific maintenance actions as a set of different countermeasures. Novel enumerator formulations are a computationally efficient and extendable way to model the various degradation types. Results show the benefit of optimal maintenance in the application to asset fleets. The decision-support that is delivered by the scheduling and planning approach helps to determine which maintenance type should be conducted and at what time. The paper demonstrates the benefits of optimal (long-term) schedules for maintenance, but indicate at the same time the need for efficient algorithms in the context of large asset fleets, in contrast to common industrial case studies that are rather small-scale.