Reliability Maintenance Management is a set of interrelated activities that includes the design for reliability, operability, maintainability, safety and inspectability (ROMSI), the development and revision of maintenance and calibration plans, considering the criticality and condition of the asset and criteria for creating effective maintenance and calibration plans on the EAMS/ CMMS that allows the coordination, follow-up and tracking of functions that maintain the equipment, tools and related assets to ensure their availability for manufacturing and ensure scheduling for reactive, periodic, preventive, or proactive maintenance, involving the balancing of costs, resources, opportunities and risks against the desired performance to achieve an organization’s objectives.
Reliability maintenance management should provide right decisions to optimize the delivery of value with the objective to ensure the optimized balance between reliability, availability, maintainability and safety (RAMS) of all assets at optimal cost and under satisfactory conditions of quality, safety and protection of the environment, maintaining the resources of the company so that operation proceeds effectively and that no money is wasted on inefficiency.
A common objective of a reliability maintenance transformation plan is to minimize the whole asset life cost, although there may be other critical factors such as risk or business continuity to be considered objectively in this decision making.
Aligned with the Strategic Maintenance Management Plan, a reliability maintenance transformation plan will bring together maintenance, operations, and engineering to develop and implement the required processes, technology and organization, using the best practices for reliability, maintenance work, spares, contracts and maintenance cost management, to continuously improve the value returned with a lower risk to the Business and Stakeholders using the processes and digital transformation using wisely the digital technologies available and data to improve the way things are done.
Reliability Management supports the asset reliability optimization, considering the design for ROMSI, criticality and condition of the assets by using the most appropriate tools and techniques for supporting the development and revision of maintenance plans.
Reliability engineering integrates the study, evaluation, and life-cycle management of reliability: the ability of a system or component to perform its required functions under stated conditions for a specified period of time.
Design a process that encompasses tools and procedures to ensure that an asset meets its reliability, operability, maintainability, safety and inspectability requirements, under its use environment, for the duration of its lifetime.
implemented in the design stage of an asset to proactively improve reliability, operability, maintainability, safety and conditions for inspection. Designing reliable equipment and plants requires risk assessment, clear knowledge of the operating context, involvement from operations, maintenance and engineering domain experts, and a focus on optimizing the life-cycle cost.
In relation to physical assets, hierarchy is the relationship between the highest level of equipment, subcomponents and components, detailed on the level where you can perform maintenance – Maintenance Significant Item.
The hierarchical asset structure process will clarify the parent-child relationships between the assets and these relationships help to identify which assets you can perform maintenance on, and which assets are connected. This is a major benefit for data collection and further analysis on the asset performance for an accurate decision making and for improvement on asset management.
Not utilizing analysis tools and information to manage plant assets also results in wasted time and money. Criticality analysis is the tool to use if you want to improve reliability and manage plant assets based on risk instead of perception.
An accurate criticality ranking enables reliability leaders to:
- Identify the most critical assets – usually 10 to 20% – for further analysis using Failure Modes and Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA);
- Determine maintenance strategy;
- Prioritize work orders;
- Provide information to define escalation processes to reduce risk for all plant assets;
- Make better overall risk management decisions;
- Optimize maintenance costs by focusing on the most critical assets;
- Decide the priority to replace an asset.
Criticality ranking provides cross-functional benefits for all parts of the organization: it adds value to Operations in terms of turnarounds, shutdowns, and job orders; Quality, Compliance, Environmental, Health, and Safety can identify the priorities for plant and project planning; and better decisions can be made with regard to capital expenditure and future budgeting.
Asset condition is a measure of the health of an asset. Asset Condition is a key parameter in determining remaining useful life, and can be used to predict how long it will be before an asset needs to be repaired, renewed or replaced. Asset condition is also an indicator of how well it is able to perform its function.
Evaluating the status of asset life-cycle based on condition and reliability data, with a scientific approach and integrated data, will support your reliability program review, contributing to the reduction of the asset management costs and business risk mitigation.
Maintenance strategy it’s a decision process that will ensure most effective maintenance approach to ensure your assets are able to perform according to their function, when required with the lower risk and cost.
Therefore, the team will decide based on risk assessment, available information and objectives established by the organization what activities might increase reliability, productivity and overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) and reduce failure.
Unfortunately, some organizations wait until a component fails before they take action to repair or replace it. All assets require periodic maintenance to continue running efficiently. Finding the appropriate balance of maintenance approaches is key to minimizing asset downtime and repair costs while maintaining a safe environment for workers.
The Zero-Based Budget (ZBB) approach allows top-level strategic goals to be implemented into budgeting process by tying them to specific functional areas of the organization, where costs can be first grouped, then measured against previous results and current expectations.
Should be developed upon a thorough analysis of projected workload and costs, activity based and not developed exclusively from historical expenditure or to meet any imposed financial requirements and should be prepared at the level of each cost center.
Following the budget, the organization have to follow-up the maintenance costs:
- To ensure costs are within original plan
- To identify where costs can be reduced
- Provide value for money
- To remain competitive – Optimum cost per unit of throughput
Maintenance Work Management describes all main steps to properly manage work orders, including: planning, scheduling, execution of planned and unplanned work and record of all activities performed by all involved technical staff.
The main purpose is to increase asset availability and optimize cost of materials, resources, tools and services, by proper utilization of the work orders.
Establishing the appropriate work planning, execution and control processes in asset management will help you to improve asset availability and resources usage optimization.
Spare Parts Management purpose is to provide “the right parts, in the right quantity, to the right place, at the right time, with the right level of quality, and at the least total cost to the organization”.
Effective management of maintenance spare parts is a critical contributor to equipment operating performance and to the cost of the maintenance investment.
The scope of Spare Parts Management therefore includes all functions from the supplier through to the point of use. – identification and coding, criticality classification, procurement, quality inspection, stocking policies, links to work planning (kitting, staging), supplier management and internal performance.
Contracts Management purpose is to have strategic service providers, delivering consistent performance and Service Level agreement, at the best price and includes the decision for outsourcing, contract definition, mobilization, execution and control, evaluation, based on the type of contract established.
When deciding to use outsourced services the clear definition of the scope and the control is crucial to ensure that the maintenance strategy results expected are effective
Total productive maintenance (TPM) is a system of maintaining and improving the integrity of production, safety and quality systems through the machines, equipment, processes, and employees that add business value to an organization.
The goal of TPM is the continuous improvement of equipment effectiveness through engaging those that impact on it in small group improvement activities. Total quality management (TQM) and total productive maintenance (TPM) are considered as the key operational activities of the quality management system.
The main objective of TPM is to increase the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) of plant equipment. TPM addresses the causes for accelerated deterioration while creating the correct environment between operators and equipment to create ownership.