Analysing maintenance data to gain insight into systems performance

Abstract

The high cost of maintenance in the processing industry implies the need for optimal planning of maintenance strategy. In order to achieve this there is a need to understand the underlying failure processes, which are often very complex. In this paper, a new semi-parametric approach, combining Cox regression with density kernal smoothing, is introduced to estimate the underlying performance. The approach has been applied to several processes and it allowed insight into each process, which would not have been achieved if traditional approaches had been used. Particularly, the refurbishment of processes had a significant impact on the rate failure. This paper concludes by assessing this impact of refurbishment on the maintenance programme.

Keywords:

• maintenance
• repair
• asset life
• semi-parametric methods
• cox regression
• smoothing

Acknowledgements

We thank Mike Baines and John Smith for their helpful comments and insights during the development and application of the techniques. We also thank Kirstie Gardner for her patient computing efforts.