Technology Readiness Level Assignment to Industrial Plant System Life Cycle

Abstract

During the industrial plant system life cycle, required technologies are developed and assessed to analyze their performance, risks and costs. The assessment is called technology readiness assessment (TRA) and the measure of readiness is called technology readiness level (TRL). The TRL consists of 9 levels and through the TRL assessment, the technology to be developed and its components are assigned to their appropriate TRL. TRL assessment should be performed in each life cycle stages to monitor the technology readiness and analyze the potential risks and costs. However, even though the concept of TRL has been largely adopted by numerous organizations and industry, direct and clear assignment of target TRL for each life cycle stage has been overlooked. Direct mapping/assignment of target TRL for each life cycle has benefits as follow: (1) the technical risks condition of each life cycle stage can be better understood, (2) cost incurred if the technology development is failed can be analyzed in each life cycle stage, and (3) more effective decision making because the technology readiness achievement for each life cycle stages is agreed beforehand. In this paper, we propose a steel-making plant system life cycle and TRL assignment to each of the system life cycle stage. By directly assigning target TRL for each life cycle stages, we look forward to a more coordinated (in terms of exit criteria) and highly effective (in terms of technical risks identification and eventually prevent project failure) technology development and assessment processes.