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  • 1.  Instrument Air Compressor Maintenance Cost

    Posted 08-21-2022 02:01 AM
    Hello Members

    Recently, I received a proposal from plant engineers that they need to change the compressor because of the high maintenance cost which considered not reliable in their opinion. I need some a methodology to reach a decision in this case. Preliminary, i am thinking of requesting the normal maintenance plan and cost of the compressor for the sake of comparison.

    Also, we do not want the same issue to be happened again.

    Thanks and Regards
    Mustafa Alhamad


  • 2.  RE: Instrument Air Compressor Maintenance Cost

    Posted 08-21-2022 07:54 PM

    Hello Mustafa,
    Your write-up did not state how long the Compressor has been in service.  This plays an important part in the decision to change the compressor.  If the compressor is a bad actor interms of availability/reliability and has not reached its life EOL(End of life).  You may want to do a root cause failure analysis.?  Discuss the result with the OEM.  I will also like to ask the following questions
    * Does the current Maintenance strategy suit the Compressor?  
    * Are the current preventative maintenance plans effective?
    * Can you predict the failure? What can you predictively monitor - Temperature, pressure, etc.



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    Vincent Okojie CMRP, CAMP, MMP
    Superintendent, Reliability
    Vale
    Sudbury ON
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    Original Message


  • 3.  RE: Instrument Air Compressor Maintenance Cost

    Posted 09-04-2022 06:36 PM
    Hi Mustafa, a good way to approach this would be to do a discounted cash flow analysis of both scenarios:

    Scenario #1 - you keep the existing compressor and continue to incur high maintenance costs for the next 2, 5, 10 years (you have to decide the time horizon you want to use) and you discount the costs using a discount rate that is in use in your company (talk to the finance/economics team or just use an open book rate of 10%). If air compressor availability/reliability impacts your production you should consider including a reasonable assumption for the impact of lost revenue as a result of that.

    Scenario #2 - you buy a new compressor and spend capital now to reduce maintenance costs over future years. Create a discount cash flow for this scenario over the same time horizon as you used for Scenario #1 and use the same discount rate.

    When you compare the two that will​ give you an economic view on what decision would be better, you need to add in any other factors that might influence your decision, but this is an analysis I think that should always be made for major equipment replacements. And it is important to be able to present an economic analysis like this to management to support your final decision.​​

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    Erik Hupje
    http://www.roadtoreliability.com
    https://www.linkedin.com/in/erikhupje/
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    Original Message


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