3.06 Reliability Engineering

Often organizations order recommended spare parts as part of a capital project. While well-intentioned, organizations often end up with many parts that are not needed, while not having enough of the right parts to support commissioning and operation. So, if organizations can’t rely strictly on recommended spare parts form the vendor, how should the required spare parts be identified? A reliability engineering analysis should be conducted to understand the specific failure modes that the asset will experience during it’s commissioning and during operation. The analysis should also identify the likelihood or frequency in which the failure will occur. This analysis can then be used to specify which parts should be purchased, at which quantities. There are a few different analysis tools that can be used to assist with the decision, such as a Failure Mode Effects Analysis or a Maintenance Task Analysis. A Failure Mode Effect Analysis (FMEA) is the process of reviewing as many components, assemblies, and subsystems as possible to identify potential failure modes in a system and their causes and effects. Using this information, the analyst can recommend the specific parts to stock. A Maintenance Task Analysis (MTA) is the identification of the steps, spares, and materials, tools, support equipment, personnel skill levels, and facility issues that must be considered for a given repair task. Often is completed after the FMEA has been completed, but further refines the ability of the organization to plan for maintenance activities. Once the specific parts needed have been identified with one of the reliability analysis, there is another analysis required to determine the right level of parts to stock. Stocking parts cost money, not having parts costs money, so the analysis of the spare parts enables organizations to find the right balance. This presentation will walk the audience through the process of using the reliability engineering tools to identify the likely failures to evaluating stocking levels of spare parts. This will ensure that the organization can support the asset throughout its life at an optimized cost.Originally presented at MainTrain 2021

A guide to pump maintenance and how advances in monitoring can enable predictive maintenance to be forecast up to 12 months in advance.             In this guide we explore 3 types of maintenance practice and how users can look to automate inspection, save time unnecessarily dismantling and inspecting pumps, and further explore in detail what features of remote monitoring users should look to utilize for accurate predictive pump maintenance.

Reliability keeps things going, Asset management delivers value with managed risksPEMAC Now Magazine Fall 2019

How does your organization differentiate between asset management, and maintenance and reliability?

"Reliability Engineering is an established science with rigorous concepts involving mathematical and statistical methods and those can often appear daunting for some Maintenance or Risk Practitioners. It is the role of the Reliability Engineer to master, explain and apply those concepts as well as work with peers to make the correct decision(s) regarding the maintenance of operating assets or future design capabilities. Those decisions are crucial especially when it comes to the safety of frontline workers, capital investments or the preservation of the environment. This presentation essentially defines the role of the Reliability Engineer mainly in an Owner/Operator environment but also helps non-Reliability practitioners understand some of the basic tools used in this field.The term “Reliability” is often generalized and not fully understood so this presentation helps clarify its definition and intent. Misinterpretation or incorrect calculations involving equipment life characteristics such as mean time to failure, bath tub curves or failure probabilities just to name few are covered in the presentation. Also explained, will be some of the most commonly used concepts in Reliability Engineering calculations as well as potential pitfalls encountered such as oversimplification, applying incorrect analytical approaches or mixing terms such as Availability and Reliability. The presentation will also define the “true” and “value-added” role of Reliability Engineering in an industrial environment and how it productively interfaces with other teams involving Maintenance Engineering, Risk Management or Spare Parts Management.       Originally presented at  AB Chapter Online Symposium (Part 2 of 7)    Presented MainTrain 2020  09/15/2020

How can we be sure our efforts to correct deficiencies are going to derive value for our organization? How many times have we carried out a root cause analysis only for the same problem to pop up somewhere else—obviously, we didn’t address all of the causes. The physical ones, we’re pretty good at, but when it comes to systemic problems, we consistently miss out. Even worse is when we spend a lot of effort solving an issue only to find that it didn’t amount to much. Do we fully understand that our area of focus is the right one? Why is it many times we deal with symptoms and wonder why the problems recur. What is preventing us from dealing with the true causes of our problems? In this session we’ll look at tools that will point us in the right direction and figure out how we can develop them. We’ll look at the standard approaches to arriving at root cause and some that don’t work. Identifying systemic causes seems to provide the best results—why, and why don’t we bother to reach them? Finally, we’ll find the link between a horse’s rear end and the Space Shuttle Challenger, because if we can’t understand the links right in front of us, adding value may be impossible.

Asset management processes are becoming more widely adopted across industrial facilities. In this presentation, we’ll examine an essential aspect of the overall process—asset health—to understand the value of using data-centric models and how asset health enables fact-based decision-making at the asset and asset class levels across the enterprise. As a part of Intelligent Operations—a new approach to achieve Operational Excellence—asset health today uses digital transformation to optimize production, minimize equipment downtime, enhance human performance, and manage operational risks. We’ll examine the key asset-related aspects of Intelligent Operations and explore an asset health strategy based on the principles of interoperability and real-time decision support. Outcomes supported include reduced maintenance costs, enhanced asset availability, changes to predictive repair and capital replacement strategies, improved production, and reduced risk.

New technologies regularly enter the world of asset management (AM), often leveraging new inventions, which, in turn, are driven or supported by other advances such as computing power and big data handling. Such is the case for Motion Amplification, a new technology impacting crucial aspects of vibration analysis, machinery and structural troubleshooting, root cause analysis, and communications. This presentation will outline which areas of AM are impacted so we can have a road map facilitating the integration of the new tool into a global strategy and get an overall picture of the impacts it will have. We’ll also provide a brief technical introduction and some practical illustrations.Originally presented at MainTrain 2020