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Maintainability and Design For Reliability

This document discusses the importance of defining reliability and focusing on long-term goals rather than short-term cost reductions. It provides examples of how reliability is not well defined in many organizations and how a focus on short-term cost savings can negatively impact long-term costs of ownership. The document advocates measuring overall production reliability to jointly track equipment, process and manufacturing reliability. It also stresses the importance of including maintainability and reliability considerations early in project design to reduce long-term costs.

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أحمد دعبس
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66 views

Maintainability and Design For Reliability

This document discusses the importance of defining reliability and focusing on long-term goals rather than short-term cost reductions. It provides examples of how reliability is not well defined in many organizations and how a focus on short-term cost savings can negatively impact long-term costs of ownership. The document advocates measuring overall production reliability to jointly track equipment, process and manufacturing reliability. It also stresses the importance of including maintainability and reliability considerations early in project design to reduce long-term costs.

Uploaded by

أحمد دعبس
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Maintainability and Design for Reliability

LCC Life Cycle Cost


by Christer Idhammar
Many reliability and maintenance improvement initiatives are successful, but most do not
deliver the results that are possible to reach. I have observed that the rate of success is
higher in many other countries than USA. Some common denominators I have observed
in very successful organizations include;

They are long term focused.

They have stuck to the concepts they believe in for a long period of
time.

They have a constancy of leadership.

Their beliefs and missions are well documented and communicated.

People changes in plant leadership do not change their beliefs.

They execute what they believe in.

In a discussion many years ago with the president of a European manufacturer of


stainless steel, he told me that Scandinavian pulp mills use five times more stainless steel
in their designs then we do in USA. To me it explains the difference in mindset, we are
short term focused in USA, and many other countries are more long term focused. This
can be driven by taxation rules, climate and other factors.
The concept of Life Cycle Cost (LCC) is not well practiced in many organizations
because we are driven by shortsightedness and a focus on short term cost reductions
instead of a focus on what drives cost. For example a good preventive maintenance
program drives down cost, but it costs money to implement and run. Good returns are
produced within a year, but break-through results are seen after three to five years. At that
time the same management team that took the cost to implement has moved and can not
claim the results. Selection of equipment based on Life Cycle Cost is another example.
The right equipment might cost more, but cost of ownership is lower.

The graph below illustrates this.

The green line illustrates that at the point when 50% of the project phase is used, 5% of
cost has been used and decisions that impact 80% of future cost of ownership has been
taken. At that point in time equipment and system design is specified and procurement
starts with requests for proposals. Much of this has to do with equipment, material,
process design etc. Here I like to take an example on technical documentation, which is
very important for cost of ownership. If a specification is developed to include all
original parts, material, corrective and preventive maintenance descriptions (with
pictures), trouble shooting and root cause diagram etc is documented and part of requests
for proposals we can assume the cost of developing this document is 1 if done early in
project. If done later the cost is 10. If done when contract is signed as an add on to
specifications, the cost escalates to 100 and if it is not done at all the cost to do it five
years later will be 1000. If you find that equipment is not performing as expected,
modifications can be done to extend technical life and this is also very expensive
compared to doing it in the specification phase.
To include maintainability and reliability designs early in the project can be a very good
investment. Why is this not done in majority of organizations? The project manager is
driven by budget and time. Someone else will take future costs of ownership. This can be
changed, but then we must think long term and reward long term actions.

Maintenance Management - Defining, Clarifying "Reliability"


by Torbjrn Idhammar
The purpose of this column is to raise questions and challenge plant leadership on
strategy, vision and execution of reliability and maintenance management. Since the
name of this magazine is Reliable Plant, I think it would be interesting for my first
column to challenge you on the meaning of the term reliability.

Reliability is often used by plants to define future


improvement efforts and set expectations for employees and managers. In several
recently written mission statements, Ive seen expressions such as to increase
profitability through increased reliability. But when companies are asked to define what
the words mean, what reliability is and how its measured, its unusual to get a
comprehensive answer.
The manufacturing and process industry may not have defined the meaning of the word
reliability, but you would think the service sector would have done so by now. It has not.
Consultants start the trends and use these words in order to sell the industry a new
concept. We sometimes, however, fail to define the meaning of the terms we invent.
The goal for any plant is to increase overall production reliability, meaning the
maximization of output with current resources by reducing waste in equipment reliability
and process reliability (the latter is often used in process industry; it may be called
manufacturing reliability in discrete manufacturing). Equipment and process reliability
jointly create reliable production.
This can be measured using overall production reliability (OPR). Traditionally, this
measurement is called overall equipment effectiveness (OEE). OEE and OPR refer to the
same measurement, but I use the name OPR since it better describes what is actually

measured. It should be called OPR because it includes all possible production-related


waste, not only equipment-related waste.
OPR is calculated as:
OPR = Quality (%) x Speed (%) x Time Availability (%)
Speed, Time Availability and Quality describe all losses in a production or process line.
OPR is, therefore, an excellent measurement to use when setting reliability goals jointly
for operations, maintenance and engineering.
Operations primary responsibility is process reliability, where the process, or
manufacturing, is operating with as little waste as possible. Examples of process waste
are quality and production losses due to operating parameters such as setting of pressures,
machine speeds, cutting tool selection or concentration of chemicals.
Maintenances primary responsibility is equipment reliability. Lack of equipment
reliability creates waste due to failing components, quality losses for the reason of
equipment problems, or speed losses because of component wear or breakdowns.
Engineering should focus on supporting equipment and process reliability through life
cycle cost (LCC) design. LCC is used to consider the cost of buying and owning
equipment. Its common that engineering departments only focus on making sure a new
installation is on time and under budget. Reliability and maintainability aspects of the
equipment design are forgotten. For example, why would someone buy a motor or
gearbox without jacking bolts (pushbolts used when aligning equipment) installed?
We know world-class shaft alignment is virtually impossible to do with a sledgehammer,
so why dont we specify jacking bolts as part of the design?
In conclusion, most companies need to better specify the term reliability. It will help
employees understand what the goal is when we refer to, for example, production
reliability.
In maintenance management, we primarily focus on equipment reliability. In my next
column, well discuss how plant maintenance management can set goals by clarifying
equipment reliability for their co-workers.
For pdf-version (123 KB)

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