Heinz-Wolfgang Reichl

Partner

dankl+partner L td

h.reichl@dankl.com

Austria

What about the chances? We usually say that higher chances result in higher risks – and lower risks mean lower chances respectively. In physical asset maintenance this means that by increasing the chances for higher output we inevitably increase the downtime risks and this is why risk management of physical assets has become an important issue in maintenance.

In industry we have already got used to high risks by building and running complex machinery to increase our chances for higher output, higher quality and higher availability. In order to use these chances, we have to manage the involved risks and this is why methods like RCM, RBM, FME(C)A etc. are becoming more and more important in modern industrial maintenance. A 2-step risk management approach for industrial maintenance has proven to be reasonable in different projects. The first step is riskassessment to select “high risk” equipment using RCM2 or FMECA.

Step 1: Focus on High-Risk Assets

I use my car to do my job and travel more than 40 000 km a year. If my car breaks down I might lose valuable work time and I have to ask my wife to take me to a railway station. At the destination I probably have to pay for a taxi to go to my customer’s site.

My wife also has a car and she drives about 20 km every day to go from our home to her place to work and back again. If her car breaks down she uses the bus.

In order to optimize the availability of the two cars, would you do the same detailed maintenance analysis for both cars? Certainly not!

For the same reason we have to distinguish between “critical” and “not so critical” assets first. As this is a rough risk-based selection of critical equipment (not yet the development of the maintenance strategy) it should be done quickly and cheaply. In addition this selection process should be repeated every year in order to detect changes in the risk estimation and asset scope, this keeps our house clean and up to date.

The risk assessment should be made in a facilitated workshop and the scale for probability and impact must be defined beforehand and individually for every site or production area. The scaling must be easy (Figure 2) and comprehensible for maintenance and production staff who work in the analyzed production area to enable them to provide a good estimation.

The external consultant will ensure that the analysis is executed efficiently and effectively and that within a few days there is a clear picture for which assets it is worth to do a detailed elaboration of the maintenance strategies.

Figure 1. We have to distinguish between “critical” and “not so critical” assets.

Table 1. Advantages and disadvantages on applying RCM2.

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Table 2. Advantages and disadvantages on applying FMECA.

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Step 2: Work Out the Maintenance Strategies

The second step is to focus on the assets in the orange area in the risk matrix as there is the highest risk of losing productivity and/ or quality and/or safety. It is often seen that the work on a RCM or FME(C)A analysis is experienced as excessive and boring so it is important to stress that the time and energy spent on a comprehensible maintenance strategy there is really worth the effort. A single unexpected breakdown of one of these risky assets exceeds the cost of the analysis by many times.

There are advantages and disadvantages on applying RCM2 and FMECA and the SWOTs in table 1 and 2 help to evaluate which method best fit your organization.

Finally the results must be transferred and interlinked to the maintenance plan. There are standard software tools available for RCM to do that, but also MS-Excel can be used. Interlinking makes sure that you are always able to confirm why and how often you do certain maintenance work.

Figure 2. A simple risk matrix.

In some industries (e.g. in pharmaceutical industry) it is mandatory to be able to describe actions to avoid certain equipment risks. If you have a documented and maintained linkage between maintenance strategy development and your maintenance plan you are always on the safe side.

Conclusion

The “must do” is the analysis described in Step 1. The result will be that you and your staff are aware of the assets with high risk, but of course this does not change any risk yet. Step 2 will change maintenance strategy, which results (if executed) in an improved OEE of the equipment involved. There are different methods to improve the maintenance strategies; two of them that are suitable for critical assets have been compared here. There are others such as weak point analysis which can be used for less critical assets, but it is your task (or a consultant’s) to find and execute a procedure which suits you best.

Finally the two things that should be kept in mind:

1. No matter which procedure you select – do not just talk about it, install and standardize the related processes and execute them!
2. No result of a RCM or FMECA will be perfect from the beginning. Install a process to review the results once a year and keep integrating your experiences. This way your maintenance strategy will become better and better over time.

»»Who is the author? Heinz-Wolfgang Reichl is partner of dankl+partner L td. in Austria. He supports national and international projects in different industries and is an experienced expert in risk-based maintenance. He has been a certified RCM2 Facilitator for more than 10 years in the German Aladon N etwork and he facilitates specific FMECA’s in the pharmaceutical industry.