Pedro Moreu de León

A practical method for the maintainability assessment in industrial devices using indicators and specific attributes

Abstract The objective of this paper is to describe a procedure to obtain maintainability indicators for industrial devices. This analysis can be helpful, among other cases, to compare systems, to achieve a better design regarding maintainability requirements, to improve this maintainability under specific industrial environment and to foresee maintainability problems due to eventual changes in a device operation conditions. This maintainability assessment can be carried out at any stage of the industrial asset life cycle. With this purpose, this work first introduces the notion of maintainability and the implementation of assessment indicators, including some important requirements to perform that. Then, a brief literature review is presented, including the definition of the main concepts, which are later used in the paper. After studying the maintenance levels and the maintainability attributes, both terms are linked, leading all this analysis to the assessment of the maintainability indicators. It follows a discussion about the information obtained through the maintainability assessment process and its computation into several maintainability indicators. The paper includes a case study, which implements the defined assessment into a practical scenario. Finally, the work concludes summarizing the more significant aspects and suggesting future researches.

Criticality Analysis for Maintenance Purposes: A Study for Complex In-service Engineering Assets

The purpose of this paper is to establish a basis for a criticality analysis, considered here as a prerequisite, a first required step to review the current maintenance programs, of complex in-service engineering assets. Review is understood as a reality check, a testing of whether the current maintenance activities are well aligned to actual business objectives and needs. This paper describes an efficient and rational working process and a model resulting in a hierarchy of assets, based on risk analysis and cost–benefit principles, which will be ranked according to their importance for the business to meet specific goals. Starting from a multicriteria analysis, the proposed model converts relevant criteria impacting equipment criticality into a single score presenting the criticality level. Although detailed implementation of techniques like Root Cause Failure Analysis and Reliability Centered Maintenance will be recommended for further optimization of the maintenance activities, the reasons why criticality analysis deserves the attention of engineers and maintenance and reliability managers are precisely explained here. A case study is presented to help the reader understand the process and to operationalize the model. Copyright

Criticality Analysis for Maintenance Purposes

The purpose of this paper is to establish a basis for a criticality analysis, considered here as a prerequisite, a first required step to review the current maintenance programs, of complex in-service engineering assets. Review is understood as a reality check, a testing of whether the current maintenance activities are well aligned to actual business objectives and needs. This paper describes an efficient and rational working process and a model resulting in a hierarchy of assets, based on risk analysis and cost–benefit principles, which will be ranked according to their importance for the business to meet specific goals. Starting from a multi-criteria analysis, the proposed model converts relevant criteria impacting equipment criticality into a single score presenting the criticality level. Although detailed implementation of techniques like root cause failure analysis (RCFA) and reliability centered maintenance (RCM) will be recommended for further optimization of the maintenance activities, the reasons why criticality analysis deserves the attention of the engineers, maintenance and reliability managers are here precisely explained. A case study is presented to help the reader to understand the process and to operationalize the model.

Online Reliability and Risk to Schedule the Preventive Maintenance in Network Utilities

This paper presents a methodology and a case study where the proportional hazard model is used to determine reliability and risk of existing repairable systems in a distribution network utility. After introducing different issues relating to conditioning maintenance management in these companies, we discuss the modeling possibilities to obtain online values for systems reliability and risk. In this case we try to model reliability considering current operating time of the equipment, the number of maintenance interventions, and the value of specific monitored parameters. Reliability is then used to calculate equipment risk for a given failure mode during a certain period, and in order to do so, failure mode affection to the network is estimated from historical data. Finally, the paper presents a possible business process to schedule preventive maintenance activities according to previous findings and a case study.