AUTOMATED SYSTEM TO PRIORITIZE REPAIR OF PLANT EQUIPMENT

摘要

The system of the present invention uses the history and experience concerning the importance of an outage associated with a piece of equipment, the rate of damage caused by the continuing malfunction (the severity) and the confidence level in a malfunction diagnosis to determine the priority of repair of the piece of equipment by obtaining the product (46) of the confidence level (CF),importance (IMP) and severity (SEV). The confidence level, importance and severity are determined by rules of an expert system. The severity is generally the reciprocal (88) of the time until the equipment fails. The importance (44) is generally the cost to repair the maximum consequential damage when the malfunction is allowed to continue. A malfunction can affect several pieces of equipment in combination, the severity and importance associated with each piece of equipment is combined (70) with the confidence level in the malfunction and used to determine the repair priority. When the diagnosis of a malfunction is being performed by malfunctioning sensors, the expected life of the equipment (40) and the availability (86) of sensors that provide a partial backup to the malfunctioning sensors are considered in prioritizing sensor as well as monitored equipment repair. When a primary piece of equipment is backed up (100), the effect of both pieces of equipment failing (106) is considered in prioritizing the repair. The result is a system that ranks the repair of all possible malfunctions on a common scale even when disparate malfunctions are occurring. The system gives a complete repair priority picture of a complex system and allows the cost effectiveness of the system being monitored to be maximized.