Risk and Reliability Engineering for Operational Excellence

Asset / maintenance managers are increasingly faced with situations in which they have to comply with specified risk and reliability targets or have to demonstrate a cost – benefit analysis of their activities. Governments and regulatory bodies are the main actors in setting such levels of the first type in public private partnerships; the current shareholder interests drive the second. Many companies are involved with ISO 5500 Asset management programmes.

Reliability Engineering (RE), a sub-branch of Operational Research, then is advocated to be an appropriate tool. However, experience shows that the mathematical background of RE in many cases fails to recognise practical situations, assuming information and operational conditions to be known to such extent that precise, in-depth analysis is possible. Practical engineers, generally being risk-aversive, thus have an easy excuse of shying away from such “advanced scientific techniques” , relying more on technical insight, in many cases “gut feeling”. However, the RE framework, if properly used, has proved to be an effective tool in decision support.
This workshop aims at such decision makers in the petrochemical area. It will provide the attendants with a substantiated opinion on system characteristics and analysis, balancing technical insight with theoretical analysis.

Key Learning Objectives
•    Transform the vision of your organisation from maintenance support to Asset Management
•    Deal with decisions requiring a proper understanding of chance and risk
•    Analyse system configurations in terms of potential production in relation with reliability and maintenance characteristics
•    To select and apply appropriate Reliability and Maintenance engineering methods (FMECA, RBD, FTA, RCM, RBM, CBM) given available information
•    Select and store field information to steer and secure this management process
•    Understand the methods that contribute to asset performance, and that interact with and support each other