Fuzzy dynamic risk-based maintenance investment optimization for offshore process facilities

A methodology for maintenance planning is developed which helps in improving the reliability of the components and safety performance in process facilities. This methodology helps design an optimum safety maintenance investment plan by integrating the optimization techniques and a fuzzy dynamic risk-based method. Intuitionistic Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (IFAHP) is applied to deal with uncertain data. The proposed approach employs multi-experts’ knowledge which helps to optimize the maintenance investments. A separator system in an offshore process facility platform is selected as a case study to demonstrate the application of the proposed methodology. A practical example in the separator system is surveyed and potential failures and Basic Events (BEs) are identified. Finally, a risk-based maintenance plan is provided for future safety investment analysis. The results indicate that the developed methodology estimates the risk more accurately, which enhances the reliability of future process operations.     

Developing a risk-based maintenance model for a Natural Gas Regulating and Metering Station using Bayesian Network

During the last decades, the vital role of maintenance activities in industries including natural gas distribution system has cleared up progressively. High costs may induce to reduced maintenance and, in turn, lead to a lower availability and high risk of undesired events. Therefore, a probabilistic model, based on an acceptable level of risk, is required to avoid under and over estimation of maintenance time interval. This paper presents an advanced Risk-based Maintenance (RBM) methodology to optimize maintenance time schedule. Bayesian Network (BN) is applied to model the risk and the associated uncertainty. The developed method can assist the asset managers to work out the exact maintenance time for each component according to the risk level. To demonstrate and discuss the applicability of the methodology, a case study of Natural Gas Reduction and Measuring Station in Italy is considered. Results prove that the most critical components are the calculator and pilots, while the most reliable one is the odorization. Furthermore, the pressure and temperature gauge (PTG), the remote control system (RCS) and the meter are predicted as the components that require less time to transit from minor risk to catastrophic risk.     

Development of a risk-based maintenance (RBM) strategy for a power-generating plant

The unexpected failures, the down time associated with such failures, the loss of production and, the higher maintenance costs are major problems in any process plant. Risk-based maintenance (RBM) approach helps in designing an alternative strategy to minimize the risk resulting from breakdowns or failures. Adapting a risk-based maintenance strategy is essential in developing cost-effective maintenance policies.The RBM methodology is comprised of four modules: identification of the scope, risk assessment, risk evaluation, and maintenance planning. Using this methodology, one is able to estimate risk caused by the unexpected failure as a function of the probability and the consequence of failure. Critical equipment can be identified based on the level of risk and a pre-selected acceptable level of risk. Maintenance of equipment is prioritized based on the risk, which helps in reducing the overall risk of the plant.The case study of a power-generating unit in the Holyrood thermal power generation plant is used to illustrate the methodology. Results indicate that the methodology is successful in identifying the critical equipment and in reducing the risk of resulting from the failure of the equipment. Risk reduction is achieved through the adoption of a maintenance plan which not only increases the reliability of the equipment but also reduces the cost of maintenance including the cost of failure.     

Risk-based maintenance (RBM): a quantitative approach for maintenance/inspection scheduling and planning

The overall objective of the maintenance process is to increase the profitability of the operation and optimize the total life cycle cost without compromising safety or environmental issues. Risk assessment integrates reliability with safety and environmental issues and therefore can be used as a decision tool for preventive maintenance planning. Maintenance planning based on risk analysis minimizes the probability of system failure and its consequences (related to safety, economic, and environment). It helps management in making correct decisions concerning investment in maintenance or related field. This will, in turn, result in better asset and capital utilization.

This paper presents a new methodology for risk-based maintenance. The proposed methodology is comprehensive and quantitative. It comprises three main modules: risk estimation module, risk evaluation module, and maintenance planning module. Details of the three modules are given. A case study, which exemplifies the use of methodology to a heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) system, is also discussed.     

Safety culture in railway maintenance

This paper discusses the practical problems of understanding and addressing unsafe behaviour and negative safety culture in rail maintenance. A well grounded qualitative approach informed the research methodology. Analysis of interviews with staff enabled identification of forty main factors that influence safe behaviour and safe culture. These factors ranged in proximity of their connection to the unsafe event, from those that could be found at trackside and which directly influence the behaviour of the track workers on the day (e.g. weather), to more medium term and distanced factors (e.g. supervisors’ style of management), to those at considerable distance in terms of where they emanate and can be changed, such as contradictory rules. As a result of this deep, structured qualitative enquiry, the maintenance company most concerned has disseminated findings throughout the organisation and has set a strategy to improve both safety systems and behaviour.     

An evaluation of maintenance strategy using risk based inspection

Risk based inspection (RBI) methodology was proposed to evaluate the maintenance strategy in industrial process which was constructed in one of the units of Fujian Oil Refinery ISOMAX unit. Using classic definition of risk, both the probability and consequence of accident or failure were investigated respectively under the support of risk-specific code. All equipment in this unit were evaluated and categorized into five risk zone based on the RBI result which covered five levels. In addition, an application of the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) to select the most practicable maintenance strategy for equipment which was located in each risk rating scale was described. To arrange the hierarchic structure and evaluation, four main criteria were defined for pairwise judgments. Finally, four possible alternative strategies were proposed for administrators on the site.     

组织因素对民航维修人员安全行为的影响

为了减少民航维修人员不安全行为,探讨组织因素对民航维修人员安全行为的影响机理。基于组织行为学理论并结合民航维修人员的访谈分析,确定了影响民航维修人员安全行为的4个组织因素——安全氛围、工作压力、风险感知和安全管理,在此基础上,构建了组织因素与民航维修人员安全行为关系的假设模型。选取国内航空公司维修基地的一线机务维修人员进行问卷调查,采用结构方程模型对假设模型进行验证。结果表明,安全氛围、工作压力、风险感知和安全管理4个维度与安全参与行为、安全服从行为显著相关,其中,安全氛围对安全参与行为的影响最大。风险感知对安全服从行为的影响最小。     

Determination of human error probabilities in maintenance procedures of a pump

The “human factor” constitutes an important role in the prediction of safe operation of a facility. Hence, information about human capacities and behaviours should be applied methodically to increase the safety of a systematic process. This paper provides an analysis of human factors in pre- and post-maintenance operations. For possible failure scenarios, this paper considers the procedures for removing process equipment from service (pre-maintenance) and returning the component to service (post-maintenance). In this study, a pump is used as the test example. For each scenario, the human error probability (HEP) is calculated for each activity, using the Human Error Assessment and Reduction Technique (HEART) which is commonly implemented technique in industry, can also be applied in the analyses of safety cases. HEART is a reliable technique for comparing HEP and its approach is based on the degree of error recovery. Consequences are also assessed for each activity in this methodology. The final value of risk for each activity is assigned by combining error likelihood and related consequences. When the calculated risk is beyond acceptable levels, risk management strategies are provided to increase the safety of the maintenance procedures. The most probable human errors for a considered case study are related to the activities of “draining lines” and “open valves”. These two activities have high HEPs, which are 9.57E−01 and 9.62E−01, respectively.     

Continuous performance assessment and improvement of integrated HSE and maintenance systems by multivariate analysis in gas transmission units

In this study, an integrated “Health, Safety, and Environment (HSE)” and maintenance systems are presented. Multivariate analysis is used for continuous performance assessment and improvement of these systems. The two subjects of “Maintenance System” and “HSE” have been individually investigated several times in different studies. However, few studies have been done to integrate these two systems and provide an integrated system for their implementation. This study evaluates current maintenance and HSE systems of a Gas Transmission Unit by Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA). Moreover, decision making units (DMUs) are examined and ranked. Employees are considered as DMUs. This is done through investigating and measuring their efficiencies and identifying the inefficient and less-efficient units. Since an increase in the number of inputs does not lead to an increase in the number of outputs with the same scale, an output-oriented DEA with a Variable Returns to Scale (VRS) is used. The Fuzzy DEA (FDEA) is also used in this research to decrease uncertainty existing in qualitative indicators and human error. Finally, suggestions are given to improve those DMUs. The managers and employees of the gas transmission unit constitute the statistical population of the study. To achieve the objectives of this study, standard questionnaires with respect to HSE and Maintenance system are completed by operators. The proposed approach would help policy makers and top managers of Gas Transmission Company to have a more comprehensive and thorough understanding the working conditions with respect to the maintenance and HSE features.     

Integration of Recursive Operability Analysis,FMECA and FTA for the Quantitative Risk Assessment in biogas plants: Role of procedural errors and components failures

With more than 350 GWh per year and thousands of installations around the world, biogas is an appealing strategy in the field of energy production and industrial waste optimization. In this sense, it is of paramount importance to address the risk associated with such plants, as an increasing trend of accidents have been recorded in the last 20 years. In this work, a representative biogas production plant was considered, and a risk assessment was carried out through the combination of Recursive Operability Analysis and Failure Mode and Effects Criticality Analysis. The methodology is rigorous and allows for both the identification and the quantification of accidental scenarios due to procedural errors and equipment failures, which miss in the literature for the case of biogas. The analysis allows the automatic generation of the Fault Trees for the identified Top Events, which can be numerically solved. Results show that the most critical accidental scenario in the biogas plant here considered is the formation of an explosive air-biogas mixture, which can occur in both anaerobic digester and condensate trap. The calculated probabilities agree with the results available in literature on similar plants. Pumps and Distributed Control System were found to be the most critical components.     

Development of a risk-based maintenance strategy using FMEA for a continuous catalytic reforming plant

Petrochemical facilities and plants require essential ongoing maintenance to ensure high levels of reliability and safety. A risk-based maintenance (RBM) strategy is a useful tool to design a cost-effective maintenance schedule; its objective is to reduce overall risk in the operating facility. In risk assessment of a failure scenario, consequences often have three key features: personnel safety effect, environmental threat and economic loss. In this paper, to quantify the severity of personnel injury and environmental pollution, a failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) method is developed using subjective information derived from domain experts. On the basis of failure probability and consequence analysis, the risk is calculated and compared against the known acceptable risk criteria. To facilitate the comparison, a risk index is introduced, and weight factors are determined by an analytic hierarchy process. Finally, the appropriate maintenance tasks are scheduled under the risk constraints. A case study of a continuous catalytic reforming plant is used to illustrate the proposed approach. The results indicate that FMEA is helpful to identify critical facilities; the RBM strategy can increase the reliability of high-risk facilities, and corrective maintenance is the preferred approach for low-risk facilities to reduce maintenance expenditure.     

Significant human risk factors in aircraft maintenance technicians

We examined significant human risk factors in aircraft maintenance technicians (AMTs) in the airline industry. We conducted an empirical study of Taiwan’s airlines to determine these risk factors and to illustrate how a quantifiable evaluation approach integrates experts’ opinions about the relative importance of risk factors. We developed an expert questionnaire and modified the human factors SHELL model to categorize the risk factors that we derived from the literature and the opinions of 107 senior experts. The empirical results showed that there are nine significant risk factors out of 77 preliminary and 46 primary risk factors. The results also provided support for the approach and model presented in this work, demonstrating that they are both strategically effective and practically acceptable. Analyzing and ranking the significant risk factors for AMTs in this fashion may help airlines to better focus on their major operational and managerial weaknesses in order to improve maintenance operations under the condition of limited resources.     

机务维修风险管理研究

机务维修是影响飞行安全的重要环节,随着我国民航业的不断发展,机务维修能力不足的问题日益严重,急需进行风险管理研究。首先选择SHELL模型进行风险因素识别,从人员(L)、人员与人员(L-L)、人员与软件(L-S)、人员与硬件(L-H)、人员与环境(L-E)方面系统的识别出机务维修风险因素;在此基础上,针对机务维修风险因素相互影响的特点,选择模糊网络分析法进行风险评价,得出权重排序;针对评价结果,提出相应的风险控制措施:加强维修资源管理、建立良好的安全文化、强化维修队伍建设、改善维修工作条件。最终结果表明,此研究有助于系统全面的进行机务维修风险因素识别,科学的评价风险因素,合理的制定风险控制措施,对机务维修风险管理提供了一定的借鉴意义。     

HAZID方法浅析

结合实际工程建设项目开展危险源辨识（HAZID）分析的情况,介绍了HAZID分析方法的广义和狭义概念内涵,主要分析步骤、每步主要工作内容、典型引导词、分析形式和特点,并将HA-ZID方法与常用的过程危险源方法、尤其是HAZOP分析方法进行了对比,以帮助读者更好地理解、运用此方法。本文拟推荐的HAZID分析方法将危险化学品行业的风险管理向前延伸到项目的早期阶段（如项目论证、可行性研究、基础工程设计或初步设计阶段）,可以帮助项目组在项目建设早期认识与项目有关的健康、安全、环境（HSE）各方面问题的重要性和相关性,所辨识出的关键危险源及其危险,为下一步有重点、有目的地开展项目HSE风险管理确定了关注重点。在早期阶段进行HAZID分析,还可以有机会以最小的代价实现对项目厂址和总图布置的调整、工艺方案和设计原则的优化,可以避免后期再发现HSE隐患、必须整改时可能存在的不可实施性,或对项目费用、进度等产生严重负面影响。     

基于FAHP的航空维修安全风险管理研究

航空维修对于保障飞行安全至关重要,如何进行航空维修安全风险管理是需要研究的问题.为此应用模糊层次分析法(FAHP),基于"人-机-环-管-接口"的理论,研究了影响航空维修安全的各种影响因素.利用三角模糊数并通过专家判断来构建三角模糊互补判断矩阵.按照层次结构模型和模糊层次分析法的步骤,对各影响因素进行了层次单排序和总排序,并把结果进行了分级和排序.结果表明,影响维修安全的主要因素为企业的规章制度、安全文化和维修人员的惯性违章等航空维修应该重点改善这3个因素并兼顾其他影响因素.研究表明,模糊层次分析法有助于确定安全风险管理的重点.     

Study and application of Reliability-centered Maintenance considering Radical Maintenance

Radical Maintenance (RM) takes the root causes of failures as executive objects to make maintenance decisions. A Root Cause Analysis (RCA) is carried out on the function failure of equipment to perform RM and to create a maintenance plan using the combined methods of Failure Mode, Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA), and Fault Tree Analysis (FTA). Evaluation criteria and matrixes of criticality are used to evaluate the criticality level of failure modes. Moreover, Minimum Cut Sets (MCS) and importance calculation are applied to analyze the fault tree quantitatively. Based on our research, the concept and the analysis process of Reliability-centered Maintenance (RCM) considering RM are proposed and then applied to an actual engineering project in the petrochemical industry. The results of the application are presented through a maintenance strategy based on the project analysis by establishing the evaluation criteria and matrixes of criticality for petrochemical rotating machines and a fault tree of compressor vibrations. The direct causes of the induction of vibration faults in rotating machinery are classified according to the fault mechanism and frequency domain features in this paper. The research shows that using RM in the traditional RCM can help assign maintenance resources rationally and improve the quality of maintenance strategies.     

Opportunistic predictive maintenance for complex multi-component systems based on DBN-HAZOP model

Predictive maintenance (PdM) focuses on failure prediction in order to prevent failure in advance and offer sufficient information to improve inherent safety and maintenance planning. A novel opportunistic predictive maintenance-decision (OPM) method integrating of machinery prognostic and opportunistic maintenance model is proposed in this paper to indicate the optimal maintenance time with minimal cost and safety constrains. DBN-HAZOP model quantifies hazard and operability analysis by dynamic Bayesian networks to provide prospective degradation trends of each component and the overall system for maintenance decision making. It is developed by integrating the prior knowledge of the interactions and dependencies among components and also the external environment, while the online condition monitoring data which is further to update the parameters of the model. Based on the future degradation trends given by DBN-HAZOP model, a local optimal proactive maintenance practice can be determined for each component by minimizing the expected maintenance cost per time unit. Understanding that for a complex system, whenever one of the components stops to perform a predictive maintenance action, the whole complex system must be stopped, at this moment, PdM opportunities arise for the other degraded components in the system at a reduced additional cost. Therefore, this paper further proposes an opportunistic PdM strategy for global cost optimization of predictive maintenance for the whole system, which considers failure probabilities, repair costs, down time cost and set-up cost. Case studies are given throughout to show how this approach works, and the sensitivity of the results to some of the driving cost parameters has also been examined.     

Developing an expert prognosis system of the reciprocating compressor based on associations among monitoring parameters and maintenance records

The reciprocating compressor is, in general, a critical equipment in a process plant. For certain ultra-high-pressure process, if the reciprocating compressor fails, often it will cause serious impact to not just the compressor itself, but also the process surrounds it. To prevent compressors from failures, an expert diagnosis system is needed. However, the traditional rule-based expert system is quite inefficient and difficult to create.For an expert prognosis system that is customized to meet needs of a specific process, one needs to refer to plant maintenance history, which is hard to come by due to the fact that most maintenance was poorly documented. This research attempt to demonstrate the feasibility of developing an expert prognosis system through implementation of association rules. Rather than mining from maintenance history, records of failure cases were collected from technical journal articles by extracting information containing failure symptoms and causes on failed components, that mimicking repair history. In total, 115 failure information out from 41 journal articles were gathered. Applications of this approach to practical use in a process plant is easy by replacing the failure information table with that from datamining the repair history. The failure information was first tabulated and then put through association analysis for support, confidence, and lift between two parameters. The demonstration program has been successful with 1-to-1, many-to-1, and many-to-many analysis among failed components, failure modes, and operation parameters.     

Assessing the maintenance unit of a nuclear power plant – identifying the cultural conceptions concerning the maintenance work and the maintenance organization

Various organizational accidents have indicated that the shared interpretations and experiences of the personnel concerning the work, the organization, and the associated risks are of crucial importance for the safety and effectiveness of the operations. These conceptions are an element of the organizational culture. The cultural conceptions should thus be studied and their contribution to the organizational safety and effectiveness should be assessed proactively. Nevertheless, organizational assessments often focus on either the general safety attitudes and/or values of the personnel, or formal organizational structures and the official practices. In this article a case study is reported that was carried out in a Nordic nuclear power plant maintenance unit. We will illustrate how the employees in the organization construct their work, their organization and the demands of the maintenance task. We focus on explicating and assessing the cultural conceptions prevalent in the maintenance organization. Our aim is to illustrate how the cultural conceptions and organizational practices, tools and the organizing of the work and the organizational climate influence each other, and how they relate to the demands of the maintenance work. The principal methods utilized in the case study were organizational culture questionnaire (CULTURE), semi-structured interviews, group working, and personnel development seminars.     

基于模糊网络分析的民航机务安全评价

机务维修是保障航空器安全运行的重要工作.针对现行航空公司机务维修系统的安全评估方法不完备性问题,通过对机务工作业务模块的分析,结合天津某航空公司机务维修部门近7年来的不安全事件统计,从人-机-环-管四个方面筛选并建立了19个评价指标,运用ANP(analysis net process)方法结合三角模糊函数对机务系统的安全水平进行定量分析,得出影响机务维修安全的前8位指标——检查监督,维修态度,操作技能,文化建设、价值观,硬件软件技术,性能标准,人际关系.最终提出相关的可行性建议.