Track 2 Session 9
8:00 to 9:10 a.m. Friday April 13, 2007

Incorporating Reliability, Availability and Maintainability (RAM) into Process Synthesis

In process industries when a new process needs to be designed, the common approach is to find the optimal design from a superstructure which embeds all feasible options in respect to the objective of minimizing cost or maximizing profit. In this approach, the reliability, availability and maintainability (RAM) is studied after the flowsheet is fixed. It is not uncommon that the optimal flowsheet found in the first step is sub-optimal when considering RAM issues in the second step. The business owner faces a difficult choice: to spend money on modifying the fixed design as the result of the RAM study or to accept the sub-optimal design reluctantly and produce products at a higher cost. This presentation proposes a new approach that can design a new process while considering the RAM issues simultaneously. The optimization procedure can give the minimum cost or maximum profit, and it avoids the profit loss due to an initial non reliability-wise design.

Key Words: Optimisation, Preventive Maintenance, Corrective Maintenance, Weibull Analysis, Reliability, Availability