Development of condition-based maintenance for sugar mill assets

The highly competitive international market is challenging the Australian sugar industry with volatile sugar prices particularly when prices are low. The need to be sustainable during periods of low global sugar prices is driving the industry to seek ways to reduce maintenance costs. Generally, the current maintenance decision making is based on traditional experience-based practices despite high maintenance expenditure. This study has proposed a general framework for the implementation of condition-based maintenance in sugar mills. The structure of the framework has been discussed, including the equipment condition assessment tools, the operation and maintenance cost models, and the maintenance optimisation approach. Subsequently, a case study on the condition assessment of boiler station components in an Australian sugar mill has been presented. The main function of the condition assessment tool is to generate a set of reliable condition indicators based on multiple data sources (e.g. work orders, process data).