Asset Management Evaluation: Extended Pilot Case Studies

The long term management of a production asset raises several major issues among which rank the technical management of the plant, its economics and the fleet level perspective one has to adopt. Decision makers are therefore faced with the need to define long term policies (up to the end of asset operation) which take into account multiple criteria including safety (which is paramount) and performance. In this paper we first remind the reader of the EDF three-level methodology for asset management. As introduced in PVP 03 [1] and PVP 04 [2], this methodology addresses the component/technical level (how to safely operate daily and invest for the future), the plant level (how to translate technical decisions into plant-wide consequences including economic performance) and the fleet level (how to manage a large number of similar assets). We then focus on the software tools — introduced in PVP 04 [2] and PVP 05 [4] — that implement this methodology in order to allow decision makers to define, evaluate and analyze long term plant operation and maintenance policies. Lastly we show how the methodology and the software tool were used, in 2006, on two pilot case studies. Examples of technical and economic results obtained at the plant level are described as well as the conclusions one can draw from them in order to help decision makers evaluate and analyze long term asset management strategies or compare different plants. We also analyze the added value of probabilistic evaluations and of our “rolling-up” process that allows to take into account interactions existing between the components of the plant. Finally, we introduce some of the possible uses of our methodology and tools.