Asset Management Evaluation: A Pilot Case Study

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) that 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 2003 and PVP 2004, 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 tool that implements 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 on a pilot case study. The 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.