A graphical model for formalizing health maintenance activities in the context of the whole equipment lifecycle

Abstract

Formalizing health maintenance activities for the whole equipment lifecycle is significantly challenging in Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul (MRO). It can support computer-aided managing and tracking maintenance activities, reducing the frequency of equipment failures and ensuring stable production operation, thereby reducing production costs and increasing enterprise profit. There are two problems formalizing health maintenance activities for the equipment lifecycle. The common formalizing modeling approaches, such as the Unified Modeling Language (UML), are readable and writable for computers but not friendly for human beings. There are various maintenance strategies adopted to assure equipment reliability in a real production scenario, and it is complex to formalize massive maintenance activities under different strategies. Thus, the research aims to propose a model for formalizing health maintenance activities that is friendly to both computer and human reading and writing and can manage and track massive maintenance activities under different strategies. In this regard, an event-state triggering mechanism-based graphical model for formalizing health maintenance activities in the context of the whole equipment lifecycle is proposed. First, the meta model of the Maintenance Graphical Model (MGM) based on the event-state triggering mechanism is introduced, clarifying the model unit and lifecycle model. Second, the Bill of Material (BOM) based configuration mechanism of the graphical model for specific equipment is presented. Third, the operation mechanism of the graphical model for managing and tracking the maintenance activities of equipment is illustrated. Finally, a real case of kneader, the production equipment of prebaked anode for aluminum electrolysis, is applied to verify our theory. The case demonstrates that the proposed model can reduce the frequency of equipment failures, maintenance time, and maintenance costs.