Author : T.Sahoo, P.K.Sarkar and A.K.Sarkar

The effective maintenance activities, at relevant frequencies, are designed to maintain functionality and prevent catastrophic failure of process plant equipments thus ensuring that the risk associated with it are limited. To diagnose the unreliable aspects of the machine, root cause failure analysis (RCFA) of the component failure , as a system is carried out by listing all the possible causes related to the machine units . The ability to predict and prevent failures and to make informed decisions based on consolidated equipment health and performance data becomes critical. However such advanced, complex and integrated systems result in complex failure modes, which are more difficult to diagnose and repair, and becoming more complex to operate and maintain. The paper focuses on developing an integrated maintenance management framework to establish „just-in-time‟ maintenance and to ensure continuous improvements based on maintenance domain experts as well as operational and historic data. To do this, true degradation of components must be identified. True level of degradation often cannot be inferred by the mere trending of condition indicator’s level (CBM), because condition indicator levels are modulated under the influence of the diverse operating context. Besides, the maintenance domain expert does not have a precise knowledge about the correlation of the diverse operating context and level of degradation for a given level of condition indicator on specific equipment. Efforts have been made in here to identify the true degradation pattern of a component by analyzing these vagueness and imprecise knowledge. Key question for researchers to address such challenges should be “What is the optimum preventive maintenance time interval?” Too short intervals would lead to unnecessary prevention costs; no preventive maintenance would lead to breakdowns, which may affect production, and inflict money losses on the firm as discussed previously; and too long intervals would result in both inconveniences, as they will involve preventive maintenance actions and would lead to uncontrolled breakdowns. A comprehensive overview helps to overcome unforeseen events and incidents that might lead to catastrophe.

Keywords: Fuzzy Logic, Maintenance etc.