RELIABILITY CENTERED

MAINTENANCE

DR O.A MAMUDU

Chemical Engineering Design

 Maintenance
• Past and Current Maintenance Culture - actions associated with equipment repair
after it is broken

• “the work of keeping something in proper condition; upkeep.”- Dictionary

• ideally, maintenance is performed to keep equipment and systems running efficiently

for at least design life of the component(s)

• National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) introduced Reliability-

Centered Maintenance (RCM) by maintaining the NASA-owned and NASA operated
facilities in safe, environmentally sound, and affordable condition

• Used by Facility Planners, Designers, Equipment Procurement Specialists,

Construction Managers, Commissioning Agents, Maintenance and Operations (M&O)
personnel and Contract Planners

• The goal of this approach is to reduce the Life-Cycle Cost (LCC) of a facility to a
minimum while continuing to allow the facility to function as intended with required
reliability and availability
Chemical Engineering Design
 Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM)
Integrates Preventive
Maintenance (PM), Predictive
Testing & Inspection (PT&I),
Repair (also called reactive
maintenance), and Proactive
Maintenance to increase the
probability that a machine or
component will function in the
required manner over its
design life-cycle with a
minimum amount of
maintenance and downtime
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 Benefits of RCM
• Security/ Safety

• Cost

• Reliability

• Scheduling

• Efficiency

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 Failure
• Failure is the cessation of proper function or performance.

• Failure modes are equipment- and component-specific failures that

result in the functional failure of the system or subsystem.

• Dominant failure modes are those failure modes responsible for a

significant proportion of all the failures of the item. They are the most
common modes of failure

• Reliability (R(t)) is the probability that an item will survive a given

operating period, under specified operating conditions, without failure.

Chemical Engineering Design

 Failure Characteristics
• Type A: Constant or gradually increasing failure
probability, followed by a pronounced wear-out
region. (Typical of reciprocating engines.)

• Type B: Infant mortality, followed by a constant

or slowly increasing failure probability. (Typical
of electronic equipment.)

• Type C: Low failure probability when the item is

new or just overhauled, followed by a quick
increase to a relatively constant level.

• Type D: Relatively constant probability of failure

at all ages.

• Type E: Bathtub curve; i.e., infant mortality

followed by a constant or gradually increasing
failure probability and then a pronounced wear-
out region. Chemical Engineering Design
 Criticality of Occurrence
How important a system function is relative to the identified mission

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 Probability of Occurrence
Likelihood of occurrence

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Failure Modes and Effect Analysis

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 Reactive Maintenance
• Also referred to as breakdown, repair, fix- when- fail, run it till it breaks or
run-to-failure ( RTF) maintenance

• No actions or efforts are taken to maintain the equipment as the designer

originally intended to ensure design life is reached.

• When applying this maintenance technique, maintenance, equipment repair,

or replacement occurs only when the deterioration in the condition of the
equipment causes a total functional failure

• Examples of components where Reactive Maintenance is applicable are

non-critical electric motors less than 7.5 HP, comfort cooling, restroom
exhaust fans, small, low temperature water heaters, and items where the
consequences of failure are negligible.

Chemical Engineering Design

 Reactive Maintenance
Advantages

• Low cost

• Less staff

Disadvantages

• Increased cost due to unplanned downtime of equipment

• Increased labor cost, especially if overtime is needed

• Cost involved with repair or replacement of equipment.

• Possible secondary equipment or process damage from equipment failure

• Inefficient use of staff resources

Chemical Engineering Design

 Preventive Maintenance
• Actions performed on a time- or machine-run-based
schedule that detect, preclude, or mitigate
degradation of a component or system with the aim
of sustaining or extending its useful life through
controlling degradation to an acceptable level.

• It is performed regardless of equipment condition.

• Information mainly gotten from equipment history

Chemical Engineering Design

 Preventive Maintenance
Advantages

• Cost effective in many capital-intensive processes.

• Flexibility allows for the adjustment of maintenance periodicity.

• Increased component life cycle.

• Energy savings.

• Reduced equipment or process failure.

• Estimated 12% to 18% cost savings over reactive maintenance program.

Disadvantages

• Catastrophic failures still likely to occur.

• Labor intensive.

• Includes performance of unneeded maintenance.

• Potential for incidental damage to components in conducting unneeded maintenance.

Chemical Engineering Design

 Predictive Maintenance
• Also known as Predictive Testing & Inspection or continuous
monitoring.

• It uses primarily nonintrusive testing techniques, visual inspection,

and performance data to assess machinery condition

• PT&I replaces arbitrarily timed maintenance tasks with maintenance

that is scheduled only when warranted by equipment condition.

• The PT&I data is collected via trend Vibration Monitoring & Analysis,
Infrared Thermography, Ultrasonic Noise Detection, Lubricant and
Wear Particle Analysis, Electrical Condition Monitoring and Non-
Destructive Testing

Chemical Engineering Design

 Predictive Maintenance
• Advantages Disadvantages

• • Increased component operational • Increased investment in diagnostic

life/availability.
equipment.
• • Allows for preemptive corrective actions.
• Increased investment in staff training.
• • Decrease in equipment or process
downtime.
• Savings potential not readily seen by
• • Decrease in costs for parts and labor. management
• • Better product quality.

• • Improved worker and environmental

safety.

• • Improved worker morale.

• • Energy savings.

• • Estimated 8% to 12% cost savings over

preventive maintenance program.

Chemical Engineering Design

 Pro- Active Maintenance
• Improves maintenance through better design, installation,
maintenance procedures, workmanship, and scheduling.

• The characteristics of proactive maintenance are

• Using feedback and communications to ensure that changes
in design or procedures are rapidly made available to
designers and managers.

• Employing a life-cycle view of maintenance and supporting

functions.

• Employing a continuous process of improvement.

• Using root-cause failure analysis and predictive analysis to

maximize maintenance effectiveness.

Chemical Engineering Design