Vicente González-Prida Díaz

Life Cycle Cost Analysis

The chapter presents a generic model for assets maintenance management. This model integrates other models found in the literature for built and in-use assets, and consists of sequential management building blocks. More precisely we want to show the reader the importance of selecting an appropriate method when considering the estimation of the non-reliability cost of an asset. By doing so, we show the impact of maintenance in life cycle costing and provide arguments to claim about the needs for proper assets maintenance control.

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.

Contractual and quality aspects on warranty

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a brief summary of quality and contractual aspects for the improvement of the warranty management. Together with this, the present work will show also some of the best practices followed by companies in order to manage properly those kinds of issues related to warranty, as well as some indications to assess the implementation degree of such practices in the whole organization. Basically, the global objective of the study is to present to the reader and in few words the importance of taking into account legal and quality aspects, when a company offers a technical service for the warranty assistance of any of its products, together with the maturity level that this company achieves applying some best practices currently available.Design/methodology/approach – The study starts by mentioning some antecedents related to warranty, in order to summarize a reference framework, proposed for proper warranty management, and how the information exchange should be perf...

Reliability Stochastic Modeling for Repairable Physical Assets

The reliability modeling, calculating, and projecting for industrial equipment and systems are today a basic and fundamental task for reliability and maintenance engineers, regardless of the nature or genetics of those industrial assets. In this paper, the stochastic models Perfect Renewal Process (PRP), Nonhomogeneous Processes of Poison (NHPP), and GRP are explained in detail with the corresponding conceptual, mathematical, and stochastic development. For each model, the respective conceptualization and parameterization is analyzed in detail. The practical application is developed for a real case in the mining industry, which shows step by step the appropriate stochastic and mathematical development. Finally, this research becomes an analytical and explanatory procedure on the definition, calculation, methodology, and criteria to be considered for industrial assets parameterization with partial or null post maintenance degradation.

Influence of the Input Load on the Reliability of the Grinding Line

The management of physical resources in an organization involves several processes related to innovation and continuous improvement. For this reason, the proper study of the reliability and maintainability analysis is considered essential and is treated as one of the main pillars for decision-making at the tactical and operational levels. This paper proposes a useful support tool for decision-making in the field of maintenance management and reliability analysis, so that such decisions remain aligned with the vision, strategy and economic indicators of the business or industrial organization. This research clearly shows how the variability of different load levels (inflows) on the grinding lines, affects the reliability of a specific sulphur plant (located in Chile), determining after that, what the optimum load should be. The paper identifies the relationship between each line load ranges and the corresponding reliability, all through the development of a real case study conducted in a mining company located in northern Chile.

On the Assessment and Control

The reliability and availability of a system depends, first of all, on its design and its installation quality. Also, the reliability and availability conservation will depend on the maintenance to be performed. A good maintenance plan has to be able to analyze all possible failures and has to be designed to avoid them. This means it is necessary to elaborate a detailed failure analysis of all those components that make up the system.

Researching the After-sales Services and Warranty Management

The first part of this chapter is an introduction to the book and describes the context and the purpose of the work. An introductory material to the process followed for the elaboration of the book is also provided. The second part presents the fundamental issues and current research topics in warranty management and after-sales services. A literature review illustrates current state-of-the-art including main international research contributions and best practices. Case studies are presented to illustrate these issues accordingly. This second part is structured in the following chapters.

Economic Impact of a Failure Using Life-Cycle Cost Analysis

This chapter aims to investigate technical and economic factors related to failure costs (non reliability costs) within the life-cycle cost analysis (LCCA) of a production asset. Life-cycle costing is a well-established method used to evaluate alternative asset options. It is a structured approach that addresses all the elements of this cost and can be used to produce a spend profile of the assets over its anticipated life span. The results of an LCC analysis can be used to assist management in the decision-making process where there is a choice of options. The main costs can be classified as the ‘capital expenditure’ (CAPEX) incurred when the asset is purchased, and the ‘operating expenditure’ (OPEX) incurred throughout the asset’s life. This chapter will explore different aspects related to the “failure costs” within the LCCA, and will describe the most important aspects of the stochastic model called: Non-homogeneous Poisson Process (NHPP). This model will be used to estimate the frequency of failures and the impact that could cause diverse failures in the total costs of a production asset. This paper also contains a case study for the Rail Freight Industry (Chile) and in the Oil Industry (PETRONOX, Venezuela) where the above-mentioned model and concepts will be applied, and respectively compared in terms of results. Finally, the model presented provides maintenance managers with a decision tool that optimizes the LCCA of an asset and will increase the efficiency of the decision-making process related to the control of failures.

Intellectual Capital in the Technical Assistance

Warranty assistance is characterized by a complex field that involves different disciplines: Management, Organization, Human Resources, Business Economics, Safety, and Environmental Management and, of course, a good knowledge of the product helpful for the customer.

An Initial Case Study. Understanding Warranty Management Issues

This section presents a case study to illustrate a range of typical circumstances in the management of warranty claims, such as spare parts management, inter-departmental decision-making processes, and cost-related issues.