Track 2 Session 5
9:10 to 10:10 a.m. Thursday March 27, 2008

Tools and Techniques for the Reliability Engineer in Asset Management

Although reliability engineering techniques have been around for many years, and simple techniques for calculating MTBF and Availability are commonly used, the use of time-dependent data and system (RAM) modelling are not so common in industrial maintenance. The major reasons are that (i) the necessary data is often not available and (ii) it is all too readily assumed that a high level of math may be required.

This presentation introduces the tools and techniques to help asset managers to more effectively manage their assets throughout the life cycle. In particular, we show how reliability data analysis supports an effective Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) study. RCM has been widely adopted for over 15 years in industrial plants what do the MTBF values that they use really mean? Good analysis requires good data. Typically in product manufacturing they have excellent test data but this is not the case in asset management. We show some examples of the data problems preventing effective analysis. Companies have spent big sums to implement sophisticated CMMS systems with failure coding functions to manage their assets but the data collected is often poor and rarely analysed effectively. We will also discuss Root Cause Failure Analysis (RCFA), a key tool to identify the root causes of failure, which is a prerequisite to improving performance.