Designing for Reliability and Maintenance
Bruce Dean, CMRP
Manager, Design Engineering
Ramesh C. Gulati, PE, CMRP
Manager, Asset Mgmt. & Reliability Planning
AEDC / ATA
Arnold Air Force Base, TN 37389
Abstract
One of the key factors in asset/system performance is its reliability- “inherent reliability” or designed in reliability. Are we designing the system with reliability and maintenance in mind? The O&M cost, which is typically about 80% of the total life cycle cost of the system, becomes fixed –whether intentionally or not- during the early design phase. Are we specifying the reliability and maintenance needs in our requirements document before the design phase begins? The reliability & maintainability are design attributes that should be designed into the assets to minimize maintenance needs by using reliable components, simpler replacements and easier inspections.
Introduction
Having high reliability of assets /plants is essential to the success of any organization, particularly with respect to its overall operations and maintenance cost. Understanding reliability and maintenance and how they’re interrelated is important.
Reliability focuses on the ability of an asset to perform its intended function to support manufacturing a product or providing a service. Reliability terminates with a failure —i.e., when unreliability occurs. Unreliability results in high cost to the organization.
Maintenance is an act of maintaining, or the work of keeping the asset in proper –operational condition. Maintenance is a “field” action and may consist of performing maintenance inspection and repair to keep assets operating in a safe manner to produce or provide the designed capabilities. So maintenance is to keep assets in an acceptable working condition, to prevent them from failing, and if they fail, bring them back to their operational level effectively and as quickly as needed.
A New And Powerful Tool For Improving Reliability And Maintenance