Preventive Maintenance Optimization of Critical Equipments in Process Plant using Heuristic Algorithms

The rapid growth of industries has complicated the functioning system and has intensified the maintenance process emphasizing the need for effective maintenance planning. Maintenance planning is complex and inherently stochastic, indicating the need for heuristic techniques. In this paper, maintenance planning problem for a process industry is addressed. The problem is formulated to predict which of the two possible actions (viz. imperfect maintenance or component replacement) is to be carried out for each of the components during the planning period. The net present cost for the entire design out period is minimized and furthermore, improvement possibilities during the preventive maintenance action are analyzed in terms of Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) & Mean Time To Repair (MTTR). Two search techniques, Simulated Annealing (SA) and Genetic Algorithms (GAs), are used to solve the problem.

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