Anne Johannes Jan Braaksma

A quantitative method for Failure Mode and Effects Analysis

Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is commonly used for designing maintenance routines by analysing potential failures, predicting their effect and facilitating preventive action. It is used to make decisions on operational and capital expenditure. The literature has reported that despite its popularity, the FMEA method lacks transparency, repeatability and the ability to continuously improve maintenance routines. In this paper an enhancement to the FMEA method is proposed, which enables the probability of asset failure to be expressed as a function of explanatory variables, such as age, operating conditions or process measurements. The probability of failure and an estimate of the total costs can be used to determine maintenance routines. The procedure facilitates continuous improvement as the dataset builds up. The proposed method is illustrated through two datasets on failures. The first was based on an operating company exploiting a major gas field in the Netherlands. The second was retrieved from the public record and covers degradation occurrences of nuclear power plants in the United States.

Failure mode and effect analysis in asset maintenance: a multiple case study in the process industry

Failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) is an important method for designing and prioritising preventive maintenance activities and is often used as the basis for preventive maintenance planning. Although FMEA was studied extensively, most of the published work so far covers FMEA concept design. Little detailed comparison to industrial practice regarding the application of FMEA can be found in the literature, which is the contribution of this study. This paper summarises the main descriptions and assumptions found in the literature on FMEA into six postulates, and compares the postulates to industrial practice. This was done in a multiple case study conducted at six companies in the process industry. Some postulates were supported by empirical evidence, whereas for others, limited or no support could be found. The results suggest a fundamental problem in the FMEA procedure, namely, the reliance upon expert judgement in general and the reliance upon design engineering expertise for keeping the FMEA up-to-date in particular. Also, a number of operational and information management problems that companies suffer from when conducting an FMEA were identified. Practitioners can use this paper to assess their potential for implementing FMEA and to learn from the insight into the identified pitfalls. Researchers can use the findings to guide further work on improving and developing the FMEA procedures.

A review of the use of asset information standards for collaboration in the process industry

In this article the use of asset information standards for collaboration in the process industry is reviewed based on a survey of the literature and two case studies. The investigation shows that the process industry appears to have had only limited success in introducing such standards so far, despite significant efforts. Since information hand-over between asset life cycle phases is important, lack of information standardization suggests that collaboration costs are higher than necessary. Reported causes can be grouped into standard related causes (slow development of standards, stability, complexity, cost, quality/ontological problems), organization related causes (lack of direct financial incentives, organizational readiness, resistance to change) and business environment related causes (legal aspects, level of adoption, limited governmental enforcement and a lack of dominant actors in the process industry). It is also shown that initial local configuration of a standard may lead to successful acceptance of the standards, but may hinder later external use. The contribution of this article is insight into the use of asset information standards and the causes for lack of pervasiveness. This is necessary for improving the use of standards in collaboration in the process industry. The article concludes by suggesting future research directions.

On the Initial Spare Parts Assortment for Capital Assets: A Structured Approach Aiding Initial Spare Parts Assortment Decision-Making (SAISAD)

In the capital-intensive industry, maintenance expenditures can add up to several times the initial investment. In order to be competitive in their business, owners and users of these capital goods have to take into account the total life cycle cost at investment (e.g. the lifespan of a capital is often more than several decades), the renewal decisions for their installations and the logistic management of the spare parts. Erroneous or unstructured initial spare parts assortment decision-making part of the logistic management can lead to undesired downtime and increases the risk of obsolete or unavailable components. Decision making is complicated by non-existent data in the early design phase and several information management problems. Based on a case study at Netherlands Railways (the largest maintainer of rolling stock in the Netherlands) and literature review a Decision Support Model to structure and improve the data gathering for more effective initial spare part assortment decision making is proposed.

Service and Life Cycle Management of engineered assets/goods

This article provides an introduction to the special issue dedicated to Service and Life Cycle Management of engineered assets/ goods. Managing engineered assets and goods requires integrative organizational practices to ensure low life cycle costs, high reliability and availability, at maximum safety levels. These integrative practices have always been at the forefront of the research of guest editor dr. Warse Klingenberg. Warse Klingenberg, who was an associate professor of Industrial Engineering, passed away in December 2013. We dedicate the introduction to this special issue to him. We start off with a short in memoriam. Thereafter, we share the vision of dr. Klingenberg on this field which also formed the inspiration for this special issue. Warse Klingenberg, who received his PhD in mechanical engineering, has been active in consulting and conducting research at major engineering and maintenance contractors. The questions driving his professional activities have always been structured around the process improvement of firms engineering, producing and servicing/maintaining engineered assets/goods. In doing so he always had an open eye for questions that were both theoretically and practically grounded. This was underlined by the fact that he received many Dutch research grants for projects driven by industrial reality, targeted towards improved theoretical understanding. Warse established a clear line of thought in terms of teaching as well. The Master course Asset management he developed with colleagues from the University of Groningen now serves as a basis for teaching young professionals the essentials of Service and Lifecycle Management of engineered goods/assets. Warse delighted his colleagues, and his PhD students in particular, with his pragmatic and practical view on researching and teaching asset management. We are very sad to see that his life ended too soon.

The business case for condition-based maintenance: a hybrid (non-) financial approach

Although developing business cases is key for evaluating project success, the costs and benefits of condition-based maintenance (CBM) implementations are often not explicitly defined and evaluated. Using the design science methodology, we developed a hybrid business case approach to help managers evaluate and justify implementing CBM. We conclude that depending on the innovativeness (for the organization) of the applied technique, the business case should have a different goal orientation and be composed of different support elements. We use the proposed hybrid business case approach in an in-depth single case study that focusses on developing engine condition trend monitoring for a military transport aircraft. The case study ex-plores differences in applying innovative maintenance techniques (exploration) or applying well-known tech-niques (exploitation). Using a combination of non-financial (strategic multi-criteria analysis) and financial ele-ments (using Monte Carlo simulation), we compared the investment in CBM with both fixed-interval preventive maintenance and corrective maintenance.

Beyond RAMS Design : Towards an Integral Asset and Process Approach

The lifespan to which assets can be efficiently maintained, upgraded or disposed, heavily depends on the characteristics designed into the asset in the design phase. RAMS analysis is a well-established approach often used to reach this target. This approach is however not adequate for handling the complexity of changes and demands placed on nowadays assets. This can lead to reduced performance and unnecessary risk taking. There is a need for a more integral RAMS(SHEEP) perspective including Supportability, Health, Environment, Economics and Politics. Additionally there is often only focused on the asset itself and not on processes supporting the maintenance of an asset. Therefore this chapter does not only give a historic overview on RAMS evolvement, but also aims at answering how the supporting processes can be designed from an integral RAMSSHEEP perspective. We illustrate this by analysing the functional requirements for the Toilet System (TS) of the Sprinter Light Train (SLT).