3.06 Reliability Engineering

Today, leaders of organizations are stretched to do more with less. They are asked to cover more areas with fewer resources, with less time and smaller budgets. Given these constraints, how can we continue to drive improvement and achieve success? We must focus tactically to drive improvement and eliminate issues that impact our ability to perform. In this session participants will see how focused improvement efforts can provide significant bottom line impacts and be sustained after the project. Learn how chronic and persistent reliability issues can be solved using a targeted Process Performance OptimizationSM (PPO) approach that integrates best practices in change management, lean and asset management. In order to effectively drive PPO, organizations should focus on this four-step approach along with weaving in an appropriate level of change management to sustain the gains.

The evolution of Preventive Maintenance (PM) is based on analyzing equipment operating conditions, its criticality to production and maintenance cost. In this case study, participants will see the journey starts with setting safe PM schedule and parts stock to sustain production. Then root causes of failures are analysed, and plans for improvement are launched. Learn how plans-in-action should be supported by motivating everyone to the expected achievement. Ahmed will share that implementation is not the end of journey - it is where we need to evaluate whether we landed on the right solution from all aspects. He will also show that sometimes, touch ups are needed. Participants will see the real journey of RajhiSteel, started with a greenfield mini mill 8 years ago. See real examples of doing more than PM in the harsh environment of steel melting Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) and its specific equipment as Water Cooled Cables (WCC).

This session explains the importance of optimizing material selection during the design phase of a new operating facility in order to minimize failures due to corrosion during their operating life, thereby ensuring increased safety and reliability at a lower cost. See the successful journey of a team who implemented this change in one of Suncor Energy’s new In-Situ Projects, and the value it provided to Suncor. You will learn how the total life-cycle cost can be reduced by involving key people from Operations, Maintenance, Reliability and Inspection.

Based on past experiences where over 50% of mechanical failures on Toronto Transit subway rail vehicles were related to misapplication of fasteners, this presentation is an overview of training currently provided to rail mechanics. Beginning with an explanation on application of fasteners emphasizing terminology, preload, elastic elongation and friction/lubricant, it follows with a review of experiences over the past 20 years and the resultant current best practices with respect to control of quality, hardened washers, mechanical top locknuts, lubricated installations, fatigue failures, etc. The presentation includes demonstrations using a Skidmore Wilhelm bolt tensioning machine that dramatically shows effect of lubricant on preload.

The Sheerness Generating Station, a large power plant, has process and machine health data feeding into the DCS and plant historian database continuously from thousands of field sensing elements. This session is a case study of project at the plant that utilized ‘cloud’ technology to stream data about plant performance and initial equipment failures not yet notified by the Alarm Management System, to technical experts, who analyzed the information and communicated the findings back to the plant for further troubleshooting, validation and correction. The session will describe the data security and connectivity issues, the communication protocols and the benefits observed. If you are considering changes in the collection, analysis, and reporting of your own plant performance and equipment health, this session will be useful.

Are you rolling the dice when it comes to managing Operational Risks? In an industrial setting, physical plant systems are the primary revenue generators and where the consequences of failure can be catastrophic - reliability is serious business. A standard practice for minimizing the overall risk exposure associated with system failure is to apply a redundancy philosophy — or a Duty/Standby Philosophy. Does your organization have a duty/standby philosophy? How does it address risks, safety and optimum life cycle costs associated with plant systems? In this presentation learn about the well-known 50:50 philosophy used in industry. This will be followed by a case for higher reliability by providing a qualitative argument for moving away from the conventional 50:50 practice of managing systems in such an arrangement.

Starting with a basic description of the multiple causes of failures, this workshop will emphasize the physical causes and explain how over 85% of all mechanical failures can be solved in the field with minimum complex testing. After a discussion of the metallurgy of common motor and equipment shafts, we will discuss the difference between brittle and ductile materials and how to diagnose whether the failure force was from overload or fatigue. We will delve into diagnosing the specific causes of the failures and look at a series of examples, both with slides and with hands-on pieces. In addition, a series of fastener failures will be reviewed.

In today’s climate of steadily increasing energy prices, poor control of motor efficiency has significant costs that are often “invisible” and uncontrolled. A motor management plan that has buy-in from all affected stakeholders will help realize the full value of your motor asset while saving energy, reducing downtime, lowering operating cost and lessening your “anxiety costs”. In this session review the evolution of motor efficiency and discuss why operating cost needs to be the basis for selecting a new motor versus only the initial purchase price. Learn from cases that illustrate the significant benefits of higher efficiency motors and motor selection tools available.

The decision making grid (DMG) is a model that classifies maintenance approaches and then help in the selection of the maintenance strategy based on evidence produced from the data collected in Computerised Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS) or Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)Systems. In this paper we demonstrate three phases for a successful implementation of the DMG model.