10.5 Asset Reliability Improvements

Electrical reliability requirements for facilities vary based on their criticality to the organization. Unplanned outages can cost millions of dollars in damages, directly and indirectly. Furthermore, it impacts the performance and compensation of a facility’s engineers, operators and plant managers. Although poorly understood among stakeholders, electrical system reliability is directly tied to productivity and operating cost. This presentation will demonstrate that by quantifying the statistical probability of an electrical system failure, maintenance resources can be prioritized to address the critical components of your system and therefore minimize maintenance costs. Participants will see that by understanding the type of inherent failure modes of your equipment, recommendations can be made to improve preventative maintenance programs, to implement on‐line and off‐line predictive maintenance programs and to eliminate ‘single points of failure’ all of which will contribute to minimizing downtime in the event of an unplanned outage.

​Fully understanding the maintenance and reliability strengths and weaknesses within a facility can be a huge undertaking.  Traditionally, a study to understand reliability is performed by either calculating, tracking, and comparing key performance indicators, or through a qualitative approach, observing compliance with best practices of maintenance and reliability activities to determine perceived strengths and weaknesses. Both approaches have downsides.  In this session, participants will learn about a more effective and repeatable reliability assessment that includes a quantitative assessment using plant CMMS work history to develop trends, key performance indicators, and comparisons that will either validate or invalidate strengths and weaknesses as determined in a qualitative assessment with plant personnel.  See how the ability to reliably gather and assess historical CMMS data will depend on determining a set of requirements or data signatures which can be used to validate strengths and weaknesses.  Additionally, the quantitative cost information can be effectively used to justify projects, programs, and personnel required to improve maintenance and reliability activities. Learn how a reliability assessment can most efficiently and effectively be administered in this way; the use of a qualitative assessment to better focus a quantitative analysis provides the best combination of overall understanding from personnel with the accuracy and reliability of historical data. 

Over the last few years at Toronto Pearson Airport there has been a significant increase in the number of travellers and subsequently a number of new retail food establishments have been added to cater and meet the demand. This session will highlight the challenges of this growth and the increased strain it put on the airport's mechanical systems infrastructure causing service interruptions which affected travellers, tenants and internal operations. In this session participants will see the process Toronto Pearson underwent to assess and diagnose the problems using a Root Cause Analysis (RCA) model, and how we developed and implemented solutions.  Participants will see that the reliability initiative was not only able to identify and assist us with technology improvements but helped Toronto Pearson develop new internal standards which have propelled us to a new phase in "water sustainability". Toronto Pearson was the first airport in North America to receive the ISO 14001 certification. These initiatives will help us to meet our commitments to the environment and sustainability into the future.

"Uptime - Strategies for Excellence in Maintenance Management" has been a best-seller since 1995. It's 3rd edition includes a number of significant changes from the earlier editions reflecting changes in successful practices, the emerging field of Asset Management and the new imperative that any changes become sustainable. This workshop will provide an overview of the new Uptime "Model of Excellence," introduce the book's new material, explain how it all works and fits within the broader asset management framework.

In early 2014 a large Canadian owned mine approached Toyo looking for input on reducing down time and operating costs at one of their primary slurry feed stations.  Existing slurry pumps were lasting three weeks. Annual operating costs exceeded $400,000 on this one pumping application. This session shares Toyo's assessment methodology and the resulting custom built pump with a patent applied for pressurized sealing system. The pump was put on trial and ran for 26 weeks - an 800 % improvement in operating time and estimated annual operating costs reduced by a factor of six. Learn more about how the pressurized seal system helps ensure clean oil across the mechanical seal faces extending pump life and maintenance requirements dramatically. 

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.

In 2012, Union Gas – Storage & Transmission Operations (STO) engaged in an improvement initiative called Maintenance Excellence. The motive for engaging in this initiative was the desire to identify and address underlying workforce productivity and reliability issues as well as concerns which remained transparent as STO continued to meet customer demands. This presentation is about Union Gas’ journey from its beginnings in 2012 to its current state today as they continue to pursue Maintenance Excellence. During this session we will discuss Union Gas Storage and Transmission Operations’ journey into Maintenance Excellence. Learn to move from an organization with little documented process and heavy reliance on tribal knowledge to one organized around strong work management processes with the structure to support this. This session will discuss key transformation considerations related to structure, change management and performance measurement.

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.