reliability engineering for maintenance

IMC-2017 Learning Session - 39:37
by Perry Steele, The Mosaic Company, & Doug Plucknette, Allied Reliability

Have you even been on the receiving end of a large capital project that fell far short of expectations? One that required weeks, months or more to reach "subpar" operation, much less the "optimized" level of operation that justified the project in the first place?

This presentation will outline how Mosaic and Allied Reliability Group improved the Capital Project Management (CPM) Process at Mosaic and then applied those improvements on a major capital project. In 2015, a leadership team with representatives from both companies worked to identify gaps in the existing CPM Process with regard to Reliability and Asset Management Best Practices.

As the Process updates were being developed, a significant capital project for Mosaic was getting underway where these practices could be employed to ensure key project goals would be met or exceeded. The project plan was updated to include the targeted reliability activities, adding additional resources where justified, in an effort to ensure the project definition and execution delivered the expected results. As the project moved forward, subject matter experts from Engineering, Operations and Maintenance were brought in, where their working knowledge and experience would help to not only improve the design but also to ensure the equipment hit the ground running.

The outcome of this project met nearly every project measure in addition to having a "vertical launch" startup in terms of delivering expected production quickly. In addition, the company-wide CPM process has been updated to include the Reliability and Asset Management Best Practices that were identified at the onset. See for yourself the power of using proven tools and methods, as the team presents a look at the process enhancements and the associated project deliverables that helped make the project successful.

IMC-2017 Learning Session - 32:02
by Paul Durko, Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS) Y-12, & Jason Ballentine, ARMS Reliability

Many organizations are faced with trying to develop, document, and execute optimized maintenance strategies for their assets with limited resources. But imagine if this challenge was compounded by constant turnover of leadership, aged assets, and one other small thing – the maintenance budget had to be signed off by the President of the United States.

CNS Y-12, a government entity that maintains the U.S. nuclear stockpile, has certainly had its challenges breaking free from reactive maintenance mode. When it came time to commence a maintenance strategy optimization project it was important for them to do it as effectively and efficiently as possible.

This presentation covers the approach that CNS Y-12 chose to follow to review their strategy, identify gaps, and develop optimized maintenance strategies that can be immediately implemented and easily deployed to their CMMS for execution.

CNS Y-12 is now shifting from a reactive, as-needed maintenance plan to a proactive plan with strategies that will be applicable to all existing and future managed facilities. They can now meet their goal of controlling their assets verses the assets controlling their behavior. Other results include increased safety, decrease risk of unplanned events, efficiency gains, and an improvement in KPIs around maintenance and reliability metrics. CNS Y-12 will also be able to create a maintenance budget that is justified with a sound reliability foundation to present to the United States Government and show the risk/benefit of any additional funding.

IMC-2017 Learning Session - 40:25
by Alejandro Erives & Jason Zielinski, Stepan Company

Stepan is a chemical company producing specialty and intermediate chemicals such as surfactants, polymers, and other specialty products. A broad description of our goals include improving asset utilization, reducing cost, and improving efficiencies.

The P-F Interval is a widely known term / concept in maintenance and reliability circles. The time it takes for a defect to grow from a detectable size to a functional failure (i.e. “the P-F Interval”) is critical in determining condition based monitoring frequencies. Additionally, an understanding of the P-F interval is helpful in determining maintenance planning / scheduling priorities for corrective actions, once a defect is discovered.

Except for special studies or applications, the P-F interval is widely seen as highly subjective. However, through careful analysis of several years of condition monitoring data we have been able to quantify this time interval in our facility. We will show that being armed with a better understanding of the P-F interval at our facility can improve maintenance and planning efficiencies, especially as they relate to work generated from our predictive maintenance (PdM) programs.