The Intelligent Real-Time Maintenance Management (IRTMM) System: Support for Integrated Value-Based Maintenance Planning

The overall objective of the Intelligent Real-Time Maintenance Management (IRTMM) project is to help process plant owners perform value-based plant maintenance, i.e., to perform maintenance as needed for engineering and business reasons, rather than periodically (i.e., need-it-or-not) or following a breakdown. The system includes three coupled functions, each implemented as on independent software module: Situation Assessment (SA), planning and Value Analysis (VA). Users interact with the system using a graphic user interface that displays interactive Process and Instrumentation Diagrams (P&ID's) and various tables, charts and graphs. The modules share a symbolic plant model that describes plant components, their attributes and their connectivity. Since the plant processes include pumping, steam generation and fluid flow, the process model is general, and the planning and business models are also very general. The system has been tested successfully with test cases provided by power company utilities and from a large process plant.