Abstract—Proper maintenance of plant equipment can significantly reduce the overall operating cost, while boosting the productivity of the plant. Therefore Maintenance planning is carried out in a area where the frequent failure occurs. The raw mill section is chosen due to its critical failure nature. The various subsystems of the raw mill system are: air slide, conveyor assembly, impact crusher, separator, elevator and gear assembly. The objective is to determine the optimal maintenance policy by means of Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and it is combined with Goal Programming (GP) to minimize the total maintenance cost.

Index Terms—Optimization, Maintenance, Reliability, Priority, Goals

Cite: Godwin Barnabas, Maran M, Nixon G S, and I Ambrose Edward, "Maintenance Cost Optimization for the Process Industry," International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Research, Vol.1, No.3, pp. 81-90, October 2012.