The establishment of a replacement strategy
for all critical industrial assets is of vital necessity since it
guides into proactive measures of asset management.
Asset management is of vital necessity to industrialists as
it guides them into decision making concerning
management of industrial assets in a proper way that
yields maximum productivity and minimum operational
expenditures. Replacement frame works are time based
as they enable timely maintenance of an asset so as to
maintain or increase its remaining useful time.
Replacement strategies are a measure of predictive and
preventive maintenance. The failure to carry out
predictive and preventive maintenance will escalate
degradation of an asset and shorten its remaining useful
life. This study compared three replacement models for
predicting optimal replacement time of industrial circuit
breaker replacement namely: the Weibull Analytical
Model (WAM), Markov Analytical Model (MAM) and
Equipment Inspection Method (EIM). The comparison
of the models was to achieve the most accurate estimates
of expected time of replacement. The optimal time of
replacement was determined for ten condition based
factors that determined CB reliability. These factors
included: insulation integrity, Moisture, Dust, ambient
temperature, inaccurate sizing, mechanical failure due to
switching of the MCB, MCCB, and ACB, premature
failure of the thermal magnetic trip mechanism and
arcing of contacts. The EIM was discovered to be the
most accurate model due to its high level of genuineness
as its values of optimal replacement time were the
earliest in value. Additionally, the EIM displayed a high
level of reliability and criterion validity compared to
other methods such as the WAM and MAM.
Keywords :
Asset Management, Industrial Consumers, Reliability, Replacement time.