Reliability Availability and Maintainability RAM Analysis of an Industrial Process

Abstract

The contribution made in this thesis is helpful to manufacturing industries for studying the performance of industrial process. The design of manufacturing process, its maintenance and satisfactory performance play vital role in order to produce reliable product. In order to analyse the performance of industry, a methodical scheme based on theory of Boolean algebra and Markov model has been developed in the present work. In addition, this thesis introduces a new numerical approach for evaluating transient computation of Markovian system of equations that are obtained by using supplementary variable technique. This approach incorporates different numerical methods including Finite Difference Methods, Lagrange s interpolation method and Simpson s one-third method. Further, an optimal maintenance-scheduling model has been developed by giving constraints on availability and cost of maintenance to find the optimal maintenance rates of industrial manufacturing machines or system when they underwent through preventive and corrective maintenance action. The proposed methodology is demonstrated on a fabric industry. From this application, it is concluded that mixer and slasher modules are sensitive towards the performance of industry. Further, systems of these modules have been analyzed by using the maintenance model in order to study maintenance rates of units of these systems. This research work started with following three research objectives for studying the performance of the manufacturing process: 1. To conceptualize a RAM model for the selected industrial process/system 2. To transform the conceptualized RAM model into a quantitative and simulation ready model 3. To assess the influence of maintenance on the industrial process/system s reliability and availability through simulation Keeping these objectives in view, the research work has been carried out. The whole research work is divided into seven chapters. The chapter wise summary of the thesis is as follows: Chapter 1 Chapter 1 is introductory.