Methods for the financial optimisation of plant management

TWI Industrial Member Report Summary 783/2003

A T M Iravani, A Muhammed, J B Speck and R Gray

Background

Plant operators are under growing pressure to minimise life cycle costs whilst maintaining reliability or availability targets, as well as safety and environmental compliance. By defining risks and through the introduction of risk mitigation measures (eg improved inspection, timely repair, etc), it is possible to extend the lifetime of ageing plant with optimal deferred replacement expenditures.

Objectives

The primary objectives are to:

• Introduce risk-based maintenance and inspection planning
• Introduce cost-risk optimisation analysis, with a calculation example
• Review financial appraisal methods, with examples
• Review methods for deriving failure probability for time-dependent damage mechanisms
• Extend the application of a financially-based optimisation technique to pipelines
• Demonstrate probabilistic financial-based plant life management through an example