Risk-based maintenance (RbM) helps you determine how to use your maintenance resources in the most economical way. That is the simple version but risk-based management can be a complicated matter. Here is a little more about it in layman’s terms.
What Does Risk Management Involve?
There are two major measurements that make up risk management and those include prevention (Probability of Failure) and recovery (Consequences of Failure).
In probability of failure, the basic premise is knowing the likelihood of a piece of equipment failing. One of the major elements is the age of the equipment but other aspects should be considered. You should also be concerned with working times as well as something as simple as where the asset is located. For instance, equipment in areas where there is moisture or dust may meant that it needs more upkeep and may be prone to breaking down more often.
In consequence of failure, you will want to look at the repair costs should a piece of equipment break down. You’ll want to ask yourself questions like, what does the average repair cost? How much am I losing each year in downtime (production loss) because of this machine isn’t functioning properly? Are there accidents related to this equipment’s failure? Is this machine’s maintenance slowing down other areas of production? Are there safety hazards related to this machine’s maintenance or lack of maintenance?
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Acquiring Data
In order to implement risk-based maintenance, you have to have the proper data and here are a few things you should know:
- How often is the piece of equipment failing? (MTBF)
- How long does it take to restore the equipment to working order? (MTTR)
- What does it cost when this piece of equipment fails? (Interruption in production, parts cost, labor cost etc.)
- How often do you perform maintenance on this piece of equipment?
- How old is this piece of equipment?
Once you have all of that information, you can then choose the assets that need attention and build upon how you want to address each issue.
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