Profit optimization in an industrial installation through investments that increase its operational availability

Abstract

In this work, an analysis is carried out of the importance of minimizing the uncertainty of the availability of the equipment in plants in operation in relation to the operating failures of the plant, which is solved by the inclusion of reliability in the procedure for evaluate investment alternatives to increase the profit of the plant in operation, an aspect that has not been sufficiently addressed in the Cuban oil industry, previously. The proposed methodology is based on a mathematical procedure that made it possible to use software that allows determining the distribution function to which the failures are adjusted, the preparation and optimization of the mathematical model to obtain the number of equipment in each of the stages and finally, compare the gains currently obtained with those that will be obtained when making the necessary redundancies. The validation of this methodology is achieved through an example, which opportunely demonstrates the importance of these new concepts in investment analysis. The example used for methodology validation was the “Sergio Soto” oil refinery in Cabaiguán. The annual availability of the technological system increases with the recommended investments from 0,58 to 0,79 and this implies going up from a feasible annual profit of $ 4,237 206,8 to $ 6,460 933,94. The Excel Solver tools was used.