Simulating the impact of deferred equipment maintenance

Deferring the maintenance activity can often be detrimental to the asset’s operation. This is usually the case where minimal repair actions are performed for severe failures. Here, deferring the maintenance activity ends up accelerating equipment deterioration, thereby resulting in more severe failures. In this paper, a discrete event simulation model for quantifying the effect of deferred maintenance on system performance such as production loss and observed failure rates is proposed. The simulation study incorporates four maintenance activities proposed in the ISO 14224 that include inspection, modify, extensive repair and corrective replacement. Each maintenance activity is evaluated based on its impact on the remaining useful life of the component. A real life case of a thermal power plant is discussed.