Non-periodic Inspection Intervals for Condition Based Maintenance

To mitigate failures of large assets, companies sometimes practice condition-based maintenance. This involves inspecting a machine, gathering information on its health, and deciding whether it is more cost effective to perform some preventative maintenance on it, or to leave it alone until the next inspection. Condition-based maintenance is centered around the inspections that are made, and these inspections are often made on regular intervals. However, records can show that many of these inspections return a “do nothing” decision. I aim to research a method to return information about the next best time to inspect, along with a current “do nothing” or “perform preventive maintenance” result. This is, to return “do nothing, and inspect again in 100 machine hours,” for example. Condition-based inspection planning has yet to be researched in this field. The cost of regular inspections can accumulate to a significant amount, and cause downtime. This new method may reduce the number of inspections necessary and change the paradigm of inspections in the field of maintenance.

Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. Andrew Jardine

Student:

Janet Sung

Partner:

Ontario Clean Water Agency

Discipline:

Engineering - mechanical

Sector:

Environmental industry

University:

University of Toronto