Annual maintenance budget estimation for a plant system: Digraph model and matrix approach

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose a methodology to evaluate the annual maintenance budget (AMB) for a plant system as a percentage of its asset replacement value (ARV). Design/methodology/approach – Variables influencing the budget for the plant system are identified and modeled in terms of a plant maintenance Budget digraph. The nodes in the digraph represent the function of budget influencing variables and edges represent the degree of influence among these. The plant maintenance budget function is derived from the equivalent matrix of the plant maintenance budget digraph and is used to evaluate the AMB for the plant system as a percentage of its ARV. The presented model is illustrated with an example. Findings – The proposed methodology enables the maintenance managers and practicing engineers to evaluate the AMB for maintenance tasks based on plant specific variables that can vary from one plant to another, without resorting to general rules-of-thumb method of budgeting or to expert ju...