MAKING RELIABILITY AND MAINTAINABILITY WORK

Machinery reliability and maintainability should be considered an integral part of all facilities and tooling (F&T) purchases. However, the appropriate degree of time and effort dedicated to R&M engineering must be individually applied for each unique application and purchase situation. Each project engineering manager should consider the value proposition of applying varying degrees of R&M engineering for the unique circumstances surrounding each equipment purchase.

For example, we may choose to apply a large amount of R&M engineering resources to a project that includes a large quantity of single design machines. The value proposition would show that investing up-front resources on a single design that can be leveraged beyond a single application would offer a large payoff. We would also consider applying high-level R&M engineering to equipment critical to a continuous operation. On the other hand, we may choose to apply a minimal level of R&M engineering on a purchase of equipment that has a mature design and minimally demonstrated field problems.

Some of the issues to consider when determining appropriate levels of R&M engineering for a project include:

1. Review the availability of existing machines in the organization that may be idle. This is a good opportunity for reusability.

2. How many units are we ordering with identical or leverageable design?

3. What is the condition of the existing machinery that will be rehabilitated?

4. What is the status of the operating conditions? Are they extremely demanding?

5. What is the cycle plan for the machinery? Does it require continuous or intermittent duty? For how many years is the equipment expected to produce?

6. Where is the machinery in the manufacturing process? Is it a constraint (bottleneck) operation?

7. How well documented and complete is the root cause analysis for the design? Will it decrease up-front work?

8. How much data exist to support known design problems?