One MSc project / two BSc project assignments for Industrial Engineering & Management
Decision Making in Operations and Maintenance and Spare Parts Inventory Planning under Uncertainty for On/Off-Shore Wind Farms
December, 2016
Starting date:
Upon availability of a student.
Target students:
MSc and BSc students (although this is a master project assignment, since it consists of two different tracks it can be studied as two different bachelor project assignments).
Requirements students:
Students are supposed to have at least an introductory level knowledge of failure modelling, maintenance & service logistics; For BSc students, the basics are covered in the minor Aerospace Management and Operations (201500059). For MSc students, relevant course are Maintenance Engineering and Management (201200146), Reliability Engineering and Maintenance Management (191852630), and Reverse Logistics and Remanufacturing (191820180).
Location:
Students can do most work at University of Twente. However at least two multi-day visits to Fraunhofer IWES in Kassel are required.
Context:
With this assignment we aim to start up a collaboration with by Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy and Energy System Technology (IWES) and University of Twente Industrial Engineering and Business Information Systems (IEBIS). The focus is on operational and tactical level maintenance and logistics planning and Operations and Maintenance (O&M) problems in on/off-shore wind farms. The final goal is to reduce life cycle costs of wind turbines by minimizing maintenance and logistics costs such as by (i) reducing time required to do maintenance actions, (ii) decreasing mean down time, (iii) decreasing logistics delay time, (iv) minimizing maintenance costs, (v) minimizing spare parts stocking costs, (vi) minimizing crew and vessel deployment costs.
The particular interest is the planning of spare parts by using the reliability and failure data of wind turbines and also decision making in O&M under uncertainty / risk. Fraunhofer IWES will provide a model and simulation tool for the failure behaviour of wind turbines which may be used in the project.
Assignment(s):
Track 1
Spare parts logistics planning for on- / offshore wind farms
- Description of applied strategies and decision variables in current decision making systems –and its environment
- Create process model of spare part logistics in on- / offshore wind industry
- Add information model for spare part stock keeping and identify relevant reliability information
- Compare spare part modelling in state-of-the-art decision support tools and identify advantages and disadvantages
- Review of fundamental failure functions (exponential, normal, Weibull, bathtub)
- Transfer findings from failure function review into a decision matrix for the spare part supply strategy choice under uncertainty
- Optional: Add spare part process to Fraunhofer Multi-Agent-System for Simulation of wind farm O&M
Track 2
Decision making in O&M under uncertainty / risk for on- / offshore wind farms
- Translate outcome of failure behaviour model into operational risk assessment
- Suggest amendments to the model for better risk descriptions
- Define interface between failure model and decision support system
- Apply decision rules under risk on model risk output
- Compare results to decision making under uncertainty conditions
The project will be assisted by IWES and IEBIS. The student(s) will be based mainly at Twente. Yet there will be at least two multi-day visits to Fraunhofer IWES in Kassel.
Contact person:
Dr. Engin Topan (e.topan@utwente.nl)