8 - Special Case: Maintenance Planning and Scheduling for Maintenance Outages — The Plant Shutdown

Abstract

This chapter discusses maintenance planning and scheduling for maintenance outages, and plant shutdown. The majority of preventive and planned maintenance work is performed while the manufacturing plant is in operation. Major maintenance work that is required at some point cannot be performed while the plant is operating. Entire production lines need to be shut down for major equipment overhaul or even replacement. This shutdown is referred to as a maintenance outage. The maintenance outage involves a total plant shutdown. It is less expensive to simultaneously shutdown all plant operations to perform major maintenance work on all plant equipment needing it than it is to conduct more frequent shutdowns in separate areas of the plant. This is referred to as a plant maintenance shutdown or plant shutdown. Plant shutdowns can be complex, not only due to the nature of the work to be performed, but also because of the pressure to try to force as much work as possible into as short a shutdown period as possible. As the volume of work increases, the complexity of the maintenance outage increases, rendering the shutdown even more costly and more difficult to manage.