After-sales services optimisation through dynamic opportunistic maintenance: a wind energy case study

After-sales maintenance services can be a very profitable source of incomes for original equipment manufacturers (OEM) due to the increasing interest of assets’ users on performance-based contracts. However, when it concerns the product value-adding process, OEM have traditionally been more focused on improving their production processes, rather than on complementing their products by offering after-sales services; consequently leading to difficulties in offering them efficiently. Furthermore, both due to the high uncertainty of the assets’ behaviour and the inherent challenges of managing the maintenance process (e.g. maintenance strategy to be followed or resources to be deployed), it is complex to make business out of the provision of after-sales services. With the aim of helping the business and maintenance decision makers at this point, this paper proposes a framework for optimising the incomes of after-sales maintenance services through: 1) implementing advanced multi-objective opportunistic maintenance strategies that sistematically consider the assets’ operational context in order to perform preventive maintenance during most favourable conditions, 2) considering the specific OEMs’ and users’ needs, and 3) assessing both internal and external uncertainties that might condition the after-sales services’ success. The developed case study for the wind energy sector demonstrates the suitability of the presented framework for optimising the after-sales services.EU Framework Programme Horizon 2020, MSCA-RISE-2014: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research and Innovation Staff Exchange (RISE) (grant agreement number 645733- Sustain-Owner-H2020-MSCA-RISE-2014) and the EmaitekPlus 2016-2017 Program of the Basque Government

A dynamic opportunistic maintenance model to maximize energy-based availability while reducing the life cycle cost of wind farms

Operations and maintenance costs of the wind power generation systems can be reduced through the implementation of opportunistic maintenance policies at suitable indenture and maintenance levels. These maintenance policies take advantage of the economic dependence among the wind turbines and their systems, performing preventive maintenance tasks in running systems when some other maintenance tasks have to be undertaken in the wind farm. The existing opportunistic maintenance models for the wind energy sector follow a static decision making process, regardless of the operational and environmental context. At the same time, on some occasions policies do not refer to practical indenture and maintenance levels. In this paper, a maintenance policy based on variable reliability thresholds is presented. This dynamic nature of the reliability thresholds, which vary according to the weather conditions, provides flexibility to the decision making process. Within the presented model, multi-level maintenance, capacity constraints and multiple failure modes per system have been considered. A comparative study, based on real operation, maintenance and weather data, demonstrates that the dynamic opportunistic maintenance policy significantly outperforms traditional corrective and static opportunistic maintenance strategies, both in terms of the overall wind farm energy production and the Life Cycle Cost.Unión Europea H2020-MSCA-RISE-2014 64573

Comprehensive clustering approach for managing maintenance in large fleet of assets

Proceedings of the 29th European Safety and Reliability Conference (ESREL), 22 – 26 September 2019, Hannover, Germany. Editors, Michael Beer and Enrico ZioThe maintenance management of large fleets of assets which include several technical solutions operating in different operational contexts has been a recurrent research topic in the literature. Current approaches to establishing fleet maintenance plans are primarily criticality-based, considering failures consequences and assets reliability; the reliability model is often supported by the idea of pooling data from similar pieces of equipment. In spite of the capability to reduce the population offered by data-pooling, its criteria may still lead to a quite large number of segments. Therefore, it results in an equally large amount of maintenance plans along with their inherent operational and administrative difficulties. It is the purpose of the paper to introduce a novel and comprehensive approach; it integrates statistical methods and clustering algorithms to render a fleet segmentation which allows better customization of maintenance plans involving fewer efforts. The approach is summarized in a decision chart which collects the logic behind the use of every algorithm, tool and technique

A management framework for enhancing asset management decisions in service-oriented business models

Dada la cada vez más difícil tarea de competir en términos de calidad y precio en el mercado internacional de equipos industriales, los modelos de negocio centrados en producto están perdiendo su atractivo en detrimento de los modelos de negocio centrados en servicio. En estos últimos, generalmente basados en sistemas de producto y servicio donde ambos conforman una única oferta valor, los clientes compran típicamente el uso o el resultado de los equipos por un determinado tiempo, mientras que la propiedad de los equipos permanece en manos de los proveedores. Esta particularidad conlleva que los proveedores de equipos tengan que asumir la responsabilidad de gestionar los equipos vendidos como si fueran propios, lo cual presenta una importante serie de desafíos y barreras técnicas a la hora de adoptar este tipo de modelos de negocio. En este sentido, la gestión de activos, a través de su capacidad para tomar decisiones destinadas a mejorar el desempeño técnico y organizacional de los mismos, se presenta como una rama de investigación clave para ayudar a los proveedores a superar dichos desafíos; y por tanto para diseñar e implementar de forma exitosa una oferta conformada por sistemas de producto y servicio. Por este motivo, la tesis que se presenta profundiza, tanto a nivel teórico como práctico en las capacidades que aporta la gestión de activos en el contexto de la servitización, contribuyendo en tres aspectos clave al estado del arte. En primer lugar, la tesis propone un marco de gestión que formaliza los pasos que los proveedores de equipos deberían dar para optimizar la gestión de activos en función de los servicios que desean ofrecer. Este marco de gestión incluye los principales trabajos de investigación y desarrollo realizados durante la tesis, entre los que se destacan: herramientas de análisis de datos, para tomar decisiones fundamentadas en la fiabilidad de los equipos; mecanismos de optimización basados en simulación, para tomar decisiones óptimas de gestión de activos bajo el paraguas del sistema de producto y servicio seleccionado; y análisis estadísticos, para tomar decisiones con un enfoque basado en el riesgo. Como segunda aportación a la literatura, se ha complementado este marco de gestión con el desarrollo de soluciones que facilitan la gestión del mantenimiento, ya que es considerado un proceso clave dentro de la gestión de activos y un instrumento crucial para optimizar la explotación de los mismos. En este sentido, la tesis propone un nuevo enfoque para modelar la optimización de las estrategias de mantenimiento de los activos a lo largo de su ciclo de vida, basándose en variables de decisión dinámicas. Este dinamismo posibilita considerar y aprovechar la información cortoplacista del contexto operacional para lanzar las actividades de mantenimiento en escenarios de negocio más favorables. Así, se consigue mejorar tanto el desempeño técnico como organizacional de los activos y, por tanto, se asegura el alineamiento de las estrategias de mantenimiento con las estrategias globales de la organización. Por último, debido a que los proveedores de equipos centrados en una estrategia de servitización se ven obligados a absorber un alto grado de riesgo, con el objetivo de mitigarlo y gestionarlo se propone un enfoque estructurado para facilitar la toma de decisiones en base a riesgo. Este enfoque asegura el éxito en la toma de decisiones con un determinado nivel de confianza, para lo cual incluye dos pilares fundamentales. Por un lado, se evalúan las distintas fuentes de incertidumbre que afectan a los servicios a través de la adaptación y particularización del marco propuesto por De Rocquigny et al. [33]. Por otro lado, se cuantifica el impacto de las fuentes de incertidumbre en los objetivos finales, para lo cual se ha desarrolla do un mecanismo de coste-riesgo-beneficio. Cada uno de los desarrollos mencionados se ha aplicado con éxito tanto al sector eólico como al ferroviario, validando así su idoneidad. En particular, estas aplicaciones analizan algunas de las decisiones más complejas en el contexto de la gestión de activos y la servitización, como son la definición de los contratos, la definición de la estrategia de mantenimiento, la evaluación de la incertidumbre o el análisis de inversiones. En este sentido, y a pesar de la diversidad de las decisiones analizadas, los resultados obtenidos tanto a nivel cuantitativo como a nivel de gestión son satisfactorios. Así, se demuestra la utilidad de las soluciones propuestas a la hora de acompañar a los proveedores de equipos en su estrategia de servitización, ayudándoles a avanzar en la cadena de valor.Shifting from product-oriented to service-oriented business models is critical for manufacturers aiming at moving up the value chain. As a consequence, business models based on the concept of product-service systems, where both product and services are a single offer, have drawn attention of both researchers and practitioners. On these business models, customers effectively purchase the service of products for a defined use period, whilst the ownership of the product remains at manufacturers’ side, who have to assume the responsibility of managing such products as their own assets. This responsibility entails dealing with several technical challenges which are the source of many barriers that hinder the actual adoption of product-service systems. To this respect, asset management research area presents itself as strategic to face such challenges, especially when it is focused on facilitating decisions concerning the assets in order to enhance their technical and business performance. In this context, the present thesis provides theoretical and practical insights regarding the exploitation of asset management capabilities in the context of servitization, making three major contributions. The main contribution of the thesis is the proposed management framework, which comprehensively considers the different researches and developments performed along it. This management framework formalizes the steps to be adopted by manufacturers in order to optimize their asset management decisions in service-oriented business models, helping manufacturers overcome aforementioned technical challenges and barriers. To this aim, the management framework includes solutions such as data analysis tools, for making decisions based on the reliability of the assets; simulation-based optimisation mechanisms, for making optimal asset management decisions within the boundaries of the product-service system selected; and statistical analyses, for making decisions adopting a cost-risk-benefit approach. Secondly, being maintenance management a key process to be considered within asset management and a pivotal instrument for optimising assets’ exploitation, a novel dynamic opportunistic maintenance optimisation modeling approach is presented. This maintenance strategy ensures that maintenance and organizational strategies are aligned, further enhancing their technical and business performance. In particular, the proposed opportunistic maintenance strategy is based on dynamic reliability thresholds and it allows considering and taking advantage of short-term information in order to trigger maintenance activities at more favourable business contexts. Finally, seeking to mitigate and manage the significant risks absorbed by manufacturers when they turn to an offer based on product-service systems, the thesis proposes a structured riskbased decision-making approach. To this aim, the framework for assessing the uncertainty in industrial practices proposed by De Rocquigny et al. [33] is adopted and particularised for the after-sales services design. Likewise, a specific cost-risk-benefit mechanism which quantifies the uncertainty propagation until the quantities of interest has been developed. This contribution enhances the capabilities of the management framework when facilitating risk-based decisions, further ensuring the success of made decisions with a certain confidence level. The contributions proposed in the thesis have been proven useful and valuable in their application to the railway and wind energy industries; therefore confirming their suitability.Within these applications some of the most challenging decisions to be made in the context of servitization and asset management are analyzed and discussed, such as contracts’ pricing, maintenance strategy definition, uncertainty assessment or investment analysis. These results, as well as the managerial insights provided, demonstrate the usefulness of the contributions for supporting service-oriented business models decisions, despite the diverse nature that such decisions might have; therefore helping manufacturers move up the value chain

Diseño de líneas mixtas en un entorno Lean. Aplicación a un caso mediante Excel

[ES]Este trabajo tiene como objetivo analizar las soluciones existentes para el diseño de las líneas mixtas. Se trata de un tipo de líneas bastante complejas de diseñar y que por lo general han sido poco estudiadas por la sociedad académica, a pesar de las numerosas ventajas que ofrece en comparación a las líneas simples, mucho más investigadas. Para facilitar la comprensión de su diseño, y antes de su estudio, se realiza un análisis de las características de las líneas mixtas. Posteriormente se introduce una metodología desarrollada por Lluis Cuatrecasas (Presidente del Instituto Lean Management de España), que permite salvar la brecha que existe a su juicio entre los estudios sobre los diseños de este tipo de líneas y su aplicación a la empresa. Finalmente, se ilustra dicha metodología mediante un caso práctico y se evalúan sus fortalezas y debilidades.[EU]Fabrikazio lerro mistoen diseinurako dauden soluzio ezberdinak aztertzea da lan honen helburua. Asko dira lerro hauek aurkezten dituzten aukerak eta abantailak lerro sinpleenekoekin alderatuta, baina, hala ere, adituek ez dute haien diseinu zailetan gehiegi sakondu. Diseinu horien ulerpena errazteko, eta haien ikasketa baino lehen, lerro mistoen ezaugarrien analisia egiten da. Ondoren, Lluis Cuatrecasas-ek (Espainiako Lean Management Institutuaren lehendakaria) garatutako metodologia aurkezten da, bere ustez lerro hauen diseinu teorikoek proposatzen dituzten ebazpenen eta enpresek dauzkaten beharrizanen arteko desadostasunak murrizteko. Amaitzeko, kasu praktiko baten bidez metodologia erakusten da, bere alderdi onak eta txarrak ebaluatuz.[EN]The main objective of this work is to analyse the different solutions suggested for the design of mixed-model lines. This kind of line has not been deeply studied, in spite of the several advantages they provide compared to simple lines, which have been more investigated by far. In order to facilitate the understanding of their design, an analysis of the characteristics of mixed-model lines is done prior to their study. Subsequently, it is introduced a methodology created by Lluis Cuatrecasas (President of the Lean Management Institute of Spain). This methodology tends to overcome the gap that exists between academic studies´ solutions and business necessities. Finally, the methodology is shown with a practical case and its strengths and weaknesses are evaluated

On the importance of assessing the operational context impact on maintenance management for life cycle cost of wind energy projects

Versión postprint. Embargo 24 meses, por requerimientos del editor ElsevierThe increasing demand for energy from renewable sources is entailing the development of technologies oriented to increase the profitability of such projects and thus the attractiveness for potential investors. Wind power constitutes one of the most relevant renewable energy sources; however, the costs of the wind farms associated with Operations & Maintenance are prominent along the life-cycle. This paper proposes an approach intended to reduce these costs and lower the Levelized Cost of Energy. In this context, it is presented an opportunistic maintenance policy based on more accurate reliability estimates of the wind turbines components. The reliability of the components is estimated through a model based on Artificial Neural Networks that dynamically calculates the impact of operational conditions on the failures of the wind turbines. The approach has been validated through a case study based on real field data which proposes a multi-objective optimization of the maintenance strategy for the life-cycle of a wind farm. The obtained results provide interesting findings from the perspective of wind farms investors, operators, and owners.Gobierno Vasco EmaitekPlus 2019-202

Framework for Managing Maintenance of Wind Farms Based on a Clustering Approach and Dynamic Opportunistic Maintenance

The growth in the wind energy sector is demanding projects in which profitability must be ensured. To fulfil such aim, the levelized cost of energy should be reduced, and this can be done by enhancing the Operational Expenditure through excellence in Operations & Maintenance. There is a considerable amount of work in the literature that deals with several aspects regarding the maintenance of wind farms. Among the related works, several focus on describing the reliability of wind turbines and many set the spotlight on defining the optimal maintenance strategy. It is in this context where the presented work intends to contribute. In the paper a technical framework is proposed that considers the data and information requisites, integrated in a novel approach a clustering-based reliability model with a dynamic opportunistic maintenance policy. The technical framework is validated through a case study in which simulation mechanisms allow the implementation of a multi-objective optimization of the maintenance strategy for the lifecycle of a wind farm. The proposed approach is presented under a comprehensive perspective which enables the discovery an optimal trade-off among competing objectives in the Operations & Maintenance of wind energy projects

Asset management framework and tools for facing challenges in the adoption of Product Service Systems

Se mantiene embargado porque aún no se ha publicado definitivamente el artículo original (Early access article)Servitization is recognized as a key business strategy for original equipment manufacturers willing to move up the value chain. However, several barriers have to be overcome in order to successfully integrate products and services. Many of these barriers are caused by the technical challenges associated with the design and management of the product-service systems (PSSs), such as life cycle service level and cost estimation, risk management, or the system design and pricing. Asset management (AM) presents itself as a key research area in order to overcome these barriers as well as to integrate PSSs within the manufacturers’ operations management. It is the scope of this article to provide theoretical and practical insights with regards to the alignment of AM and PSS research areas. To support the alignment between both areas, a management framework which gathers specific technologies, including reliability analysis, simulation modeling, and multiobjective optimization algorithms, is presented. The purpose of the framework is to provide manufacturers with a decision-support tool that facilitates the main managerial challenges faced when implementing a servitization strategy. The article contributions are successfully applied to case studies in the railway and wind energy sectors based on real field data, thereby demonstrating their suitability for both facilitating manufacturer’s decision-making process and better satisfying stakeholders’ interestsBasque Government EmaitekPlus 2018-201