Upon completion of this course, participants will recognize the practical use of Reliability Engineering as it pertains to process plant equipment maintenance. Participants will gain an understanding of the importance of equipment failure and/or repair data collecting. They will learn to apply statistical techniques for the analysis of this data enabling them to formulate maintenance and operating strategies designed to increase their plant equipment availability. Participants will be able to perform maintenance cost saving Failure Mode and Effect Analyses (FMEA) and understand the principles of Fault Tree Analysis (FTA). Everyone will leave with several techniques that they could apply to improve equipment maintenance, operating, commissioning, installation, and purchase.
This practical course is for maintenance and equipment reliability professionals, supervisors, and technicians involved in machinery reliability and availability management. Personnel from process industries such as refining, petrochemical, chemical, mining, pharmaceutical, fertilizer, pulp and paper manufacturing, food processing, and utilities will profit.
The course is designed to bridge the gap between the rather theoretical subject of "Reliability Engineering" (RE) and day-to-day equipment maintenance practice by emphasizing the common goals of RE and Maintenance.
It will be shown how various indices allow reliability performance tracking but are of little use when it comes to the identification of reliability improvement strategies. Here is where statistical techniques based on RE principles for analyzing equipment failure data will help. By using practical, real world examples, it will be demonstrated that the application of these techniques will provide a basis for improved equipment management and reduced maintenance costs. Participants are encouraged to bring their failure statistics (motors, pumps, machinery components, etc.) for manual (plotting) or computerized analysis. Similarly, equipment replacement decisions based on RE principles will be examined together with practical operating and maintenance strategies leading to the improvement of plant reliability.
The course explores reliability assessment techniques such as Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) and Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) of the equipment presently installed in the participants' plants. It will be shown how the results of these analyses can provide input into maintenance strategies and operating procedures and thus increase overall equipment availability. Through examples dealing with compression equipment, guidance is given on reliability assurance pertaining to new equipment purchases by means of design audits, reviews and checklists.
Finally, generating and using equipment availability indices will be investigate and discussed.
An Introduction to Machinery Reliability Assessment; H.P. Bloch and F.K. Geitner; Gulf Publishing Company; 1994.