Impact of innovation in the process industry

“Optimization of maintenance strategies could deliver serious profits for the process industry.”

Maintenance is an expensive business in the process industry. The cost of maintenance and service logistics is often higher than that of the initial purchase price of capital goods. The sector could really benefit from performing maintenance more often on the basis of necessity rather than periodically or correctively. ORTEC advises on and supplies optimization solutions for maintenance strategies and develops mathematical decision models for this purpose. Within CAMPI, they build solutions with which the value of the subprojects is uncovered. ORTEC focuses most especially on timing. A Quick Scan has been developed that can quickly evaluate maintenance strategies.

Subtitle From data to decisions
Data is required in order to determine the correct moment for maintenance. Gerolf de Boer: “Collating and making data available is always my first challenge. The question that follows is how best to use this data ‘intelligently’.” ORTEC developed the Optimization Model that simulates the wear and tear process based on sensor measurements. “This provides a more realistic result than a model based on expected life cycle or manufacturers’ claims. It can be applied to countless machines and takes the interaction between machine components into account. Consequently, the Optimization Model offers quantifiable support for maintenance decisions.”

Subtitle Clustering Maintenance
The optimization model is also employed for comparing the traditional, corrective approach with modern preventative strategies. De Boer: “We need to find a balance between, on the one hand, putting off the maintenance for as long as possible and, on the other, clustering of multiple maintenance activities. From this, it appears that condition-driven maintenance offers the lowest costs and guarantees the highest reliability in almost all the cases.”

Subtitle Forward together
De Boer: “The model demonstrates that optimization of maintenance strategies can deliver real wins, especially in the process industry. The knowledge about timing maintenance can be used in the future for streamlining corresponding logistics processes. Although knowledge sharing and cooperation between the parties involved is required in order to transform the opportunities into results. This is what we will be focusing on in the follow-up of the CAMPI project.”

Quote “Maintenance based on necessity.”

Project partners:
University of Groningen (RUG), University of Tilburg (KUB), Eindhoven University of Technology, BP, Gasunie, Oliveira, ORTEC, SABIC, Sitech, SPIE, Stork, DI-WCM, Dinalog

An interview with:
Gerolf de Boer, OR Consultant with ORTEC

For more information Sophie Zijp, zijp@dinalog.nl.