Operation Costs Of Facilities Research Articles

Reducing maintenance burden on established facilities through a targeted risk review of safety critical equipment

Traditionally, safety critical equipment is identified in the computerised maintenance management system, at a whole- or subsystem level, during detailed design. Once the computerised maintenance management system is commissioned, thousands of equipment tags are identified as safety critical, and the categorisation is rarely looked at holistically again. As an industry, we are constantly working to reduce the maintenance and operating costs of our facilities without compromising safety. A change in operating risk profile of a facility presents an often-overlooked opportunity to achieve this. A risk-based review of safety critical equipment identified in the computerised maintenance management system can allow for reduction of the critical maintenance burden and facility operating costs. For established facilities, a detailed review of safety critical elements and equipment is generally limited to life extension projects or major brownfields modifications. However, over the operating life of a facility the risk profile and risk tolerances may change. This paper considers three potential causes of change and the opportunities that arise. These causes of change include: (i) change in risk profile due to changing operating conditions, e.g. reservoir depletion; (ii) change of operator resulting in a different operational risk appetite; and (iii) changing in industry risk data or methodologies. Applying a targeted risk-based review to the high-value or high-risk safety critical equipment affected by these changes can provide justification of changes to their safety criticality rating. This paper presents a methodology for providing a transparent, risk-based approach to re-classifying safety criticality which aligns with regulatory requirements and stakeholder expectations.

ESCOs and In–house Energy Managers: A Winning Team

ABSTRACT Over past 25+ years, energy service companies (ESCOs) have emerged as a successful way of carrying out energy efficiency improvements in industrial and institutional facilities. At the same time, facilities are entrusting their energy manager (EM) with the responsibility of reducing energy costs without fail However, this is often not accompanied by investment capital or people support from management, or at least not in proportion to the task assignment. One channel of supporting the EM is through use of ESCOs in forming a “partnering” arrangement to reduce both facility operating costs as well as provide for infrastructure needs without new capital outlay approvals by the corporation, and doing this rapidly. To make this partnership a success, EMs and ESCOs need to complement each other by bringing their respective strengths to bear on a potential energy cost savings project. The EMs can help in optimizing project planning and the swift corporate approval process, and the ESCO can bring focused expertise at practical energy efficiency opportunities suited to the client, and a keen focus on swiftly completing measures for the mutual benefit of the owner and the ESCO. This article addresses the EM/ESCO partnership, along with a recent successful case study.

Economie d'énergie en trigénération

Trigeneration is defined as the production of three useful forms of energy—heat, cold and power—from a primary source of energy such as natural gas or oil. For instance, trigeneration systems typically produce electrical power via a reciprocating engine or gas turbine and recover a large percentage of the heat energy retained in the lubricating oil, exhaust gas and coolant water systems to maximize the utilization of the primary fuel. The heat produced can be totally or partially used to fuel absorption refrigerators. Therefore, trigeneration systems enjoy an inherently high efficiency and have the potential to significantly reduce the energy-related operation costs of facilities. In this paper, we describe a model of characterization of trigeneration systems trough the condition of primary energy saving and the quality index, compared to the separate production of heat, cold and power. The study highlights the importance of the choice of the separate production reference system on the level of primary energy saving and emissions reduction.

Reducing Facility Operating Costs through On-site Generation of Electricity

ABSTRACT The following article provides an overview of on-site generation of electricity as a cost reduction measure for manufacturing facilities. It discusses what technological options are available, the advantages of on-site generation, and its major obstacles. A case study is conducted to evaluate the financial performance of four of the most readily available technologies. Finally, a sensitivity analysis is performed for all the major variables affecting the financial performance to determine their importance to a financially successful installation.

Reducing Facility Operating Costs through On-site Generation of Electricity

ABSTRACT The following article provides an overview of on-site generation of electricity as a cost reduction measure for manufacturing facilities. It discusses what technological options are available, the advantages of on-site generation, and its major obstacles. A case study is conducted to evaluate the financial performance of four of the most readily available technologies. Finally, a sensitivity analysis is performed for all the major variables affecting the financial performance to determine their importance to a financially successful installation.

Plant location and procurement planning in knockdown production systems

We consider an integrated problem of plant location and capacity planning for components procurement in knockdown production systems. The problem is that of determining the schedule of opening components manufacturing plants, plans for acquisition of capacities in opened components manufacturing plants, and plans for components procurement in final assembly plants with the objective of minimizing the sum of fixed costs for opening plants, acquisition and operation costs of facilities, and delivery and subcontracting costs of components. The problem is formulated as a mixed integer linear program and solved by a two-stage solution procedure. In the solution procedure, the problem is decomposed into two tractable subproblems and these subproblems are solved sequentially. In the first stage, a dynamic plant location problem is solved using a cut and branch algorithm based on Gomory cuts, while a multiperiod capacity planning problem is solved in the second stage by a heuristic algorithm that uses a cut and branch algorithm and a variable reduction scheme. The solution procedure is tested on problems of a practical size and results show that the procedure gives reasonably good solutions.

An integrated approach to dynamic plant location and capacity planning

We consider a dynamic capacitated plant location problem in which capacities of opened plants are determined by acquisition and/or disposal of multiple types of facilities. We determine the opening schedule of plants, allocations of customers' demands and plans for acquisition and/or disposal of plant capacities that minimise the sum of discounted fixed costs for opening plants, delivery costs of products, and acquisition and operation costs of facilities. The dynamic capacitated plant location problem is formulated as a mixed integer linear program and solved by a heuristic algorithm based on Lagrangian relaxation and a cut and branch algorithm which uses Gomory cuts. Several solution properties of the relaxed problem are found and used to develop efficient solution procedures for the relaxed problem. A subgradient optimisation method is employed to obtain better lower bounds. The heuristic algorithm is tested on randomly generated test problems and results show that the algorithm finds good solutions in a reasonable amount of computation time.