Title: Development of an innovative criticality index for turnaround management in an oil refinery

Authors: Maurizio Bevilacqua; Filippo Emanuele Ciarapica; Giancarlo Giacchetta; Barbara Marchetti

Addresses: Dipartimento di Energetica, Università Politecnica delle Marche, Via Brecce Bianche 12, 60131 Ancona, Italy ' Facoltà di Scienze e Tecnologia, Libera Università di Bolzano, Piazza Università 5, 39100 Bolzano, Italy ' Dipartimento di Energetica, Università Politecnica delle Marche, Via Brecce Bianche 12, 60131 Ancona, Italy ' Facoltà di Ingegneria, Università degli Studi eCampus, Via Isimbardi 10, 22060 Novedrate (CO), Italy

Abstract: This research work presents the development and application of a preventive maintenance programme in an oil refinery plant. This study was carried out in a period of three years in one of the main Italian refineries. The research has been focused on the turnaround process that has been analysed by two different approaches: a risk-based method and an innovative criticality index. Both have been used as decision tools for clearly assessing the maintenance tasks and equipment to include in the process. The results have highlighted a clear improvement in terms of resources usage optimisation, outage duration, production loss and total costs reduction and increase of the interval between two shutdowns.

Keywords: preventive maintenance; criticality analysis; criticality index; maintenance costs; turnaround; risk analysis; oil refineries; refinery plant; Italy; risk-based methods; decision tools; task assessment; maintenance tasks; maintenance equipment; resources; usage optimisation; outage duration; production losses; cost reduction; productivity management; quality management.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPQM.2012.047196

International Journal of Productivity and Quality Management, 2012 Vol.9 No.4, pp.519 - 544

Published online: 31 Oct 2014 *

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