Industrial Asset Management and Maintenance Policies

Abstract

Industrial asset management (AM) is defined as a continuous process of planning and controlling physical assets to minimize the cost, while maximizing the reliability and availability of assets. An AM strategy consists of policies to maintain the assets regularly throughout their lifetime as well as activities that should be performed after a failure happens. Traditional AM activities were limited to a fixed interval maintenance schedule plus service activities, as needed.

Internet of Things (IoT) and smart connected systems principles have turned the definition of AM from a cost evil to a competitive advantage for companies. An IoT-based AM strategy can be devised through solving a multi-criteria optimization problem. The decisions that should be made in this optimization problem include the optimum maintenance dispatches with respect to the priority and risk of the failure for each asset. The outputs of the optimization problem can highly affect the high-level decisions, which mainly seek to minimize the costs and maximize the reliability in a component, unit, or system.

Industries with an IoT network can use smart assets with connection capabilities to send real-time data on the health condition of an asset to a control center. The control center can collect the data, which are gathered from assets, calculate the key performance indicators (KPIs), and use the artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to capture the information by finding patterns and abnormalities in the data. Finally, more optimal decisions can be made on the priority and maintenance schedule of the assets by adopting a smart connected system framework. This chapter presents an important literature on AM strategies and defines different traditional and modern maintenance policies. The relationship between IoT networks and AM strategies is also discussed in detail.