Abstract
The maintenance cost in K Steelworks has been continuously increased in proportion to the production cost. However, there seems to be a possibility of reducing cost through the optimization of maintenance actions. The failure types of the equipment in steelworks ate various with different failure cost. Thus the failure rate and cost of each type of failures should be considered simultaneously when the optimum maintenance period is to be determined. It is considered that the equipment undergoes periodic replacement and a specified number of incomplete preventive maintenance actions are performed during a replacement period. Assuming that the time to failure follows a Weibull distribution, the parameters of the failure rate are estimated using the maximum likelihood estimation. The optimal replacement period is determined to minimize the average cost per unit time. As the result of analysis it is suggested that the existing maintenance period for a hot-rolling equipment can be extended significantly.
