|
The concept of viewing plant maintenance as an expense
is rapidly changing to view maintenance as a profit
center. Proper maintenance of plant equipment can
significantly increase the plant availability and profit
of the organization.
TCQ TRIANGLE offers wide range of maintenance and
reliability consulting and training services. We are
dedicated to improving the maintenance and reliability
contribution to our clients' organizational performance
by implementing the best practices in equipment
management, improving the equipment performance and
enhancing the effectiveness of maintenance management.
Asset Management Audit & Planning Process
TCQ TRIANGLE brings together process, technology
and competency improvement, and links business
challenges to asset management improvements. It is
vitally important to understand the key business goals
of the organization and the supporting overall business
plan. The contribution of the asset contribution
strategy has to be in alignment and support of this
overall business strategy.
Our process uses a set of structured interventions,
which map the business goals to contribution from asset
management to achieve clarity. The overall policies are
then translated into the tactical elements of an
operational plan, which drive out the optimal benefits.
The benefits are estimated and measured.
Improvements in productivity are among the benefits
experienced by organizations adopting our Process.
Benchmarking
Best Practice Benchmarking is the process of seeking out
and studying the best practices that produce superior
performance within peer organizations. We analyze our
clients data with our dynamic benchmarking data in order
to help them understand their strengths and weaknesses -
and give them a road map for improvement. The
determination of benchmarks allows one to make a direct
comparison, where any identified gaps are improvement
areas. We add value through defining whether the various
practices are relevant to the organization, and if so,
how does the organization develop a plan to achieve the
desired level of performance.
Total Productive Maintenance
Provides assistance and guidance to aid clients in
developing or enhancing a high-involvement process for
equipment care and improvements. Three key parameters
are measured, which are combined together to produce a
measure of equipment effectiveness know as Overall
Equipment Effectiveness (OEE). They are:
-
Equipment Availability - this monitors how long a
machine is actually available to operate measured
against the total net available time.
-
Machine Efficiency - this records the production rate
or speed of the production process versus the design
or ideal rate
-
Quality - a measure of the percentage of defects
produced by the process
PM Optimization
Performing too much PM or ineffectively performing PM
can be costly. PM Optimization utilizes RCM principles
to quickly improve performance of existing assets by
eliminating unnecessary, redundant, and ineffective PMs;
costs are reduced, maintenance is more effective,
equipment performance is increased.
The problems usually start in the design or acquisition
phase where the definition or consideration of
maintenance programs is poorly funded. Equipment is
often delivered and commissioned without a formal
maintenance program at all. In some cases one is
provided, but it has been done in an inappropriate
fashion and is worthless. During the following years of
operation, the maintenance program develops. This often
happens in an "ad hoc" manner and results in a program
that lacks focus and is inefficient. Without some means
of reviewing this situation, organizations can find
themselves uncompetitive either because maintenance
costs are too high, or the plant is unreliable.
The review of maintenance programs and failure history
is an activity that most organizations undertake and no
doubt have undertaken since formal maintenance was first
performed. Some organizations do this continuously
whilst others do so in large chunks as needs arise.
Unfortunately, some organizations do not perform any
reviews whatsoever. The problems of most attempts at
review are that the review is done in an informal manner
with little or no set procedure and an absence of useful
decision logic.
Six Sigma/Lean Maintenance
We have developed cutting edge approaches to the
integration of six sigma tools and techniques into
maintenance. We have begun to integrate the emphasis of
process flow and waste elimination from Lean
Manufacturing with the emphasis on preventing process
variation from Quality Improvement and the high
involvement emphasis of defect elimination for equipment
reliability and efficiency improvement from Total
Productive Maintenance.
Criticality Analysis
Any asset has a number of ways of failing and depending
upon the use to which each asset is put relates to the
consequences of that failure. This is based on
establishing the consequence of reasonable worst case
and potential cost scenarios to the business in the
following areas:
-
Operational impact
-
Potential environmental costs / fines
-
Consequential Health and Safety Costs
-
Cost of maintenance / likelihood of failure
Within the process, the following stages are undertaken:
-
Establish the failure consequence
-
Establish the criticality algorithm
-
Establish failure consequence banding
-
Review and calculate criticality
The output of the criticality process is a mapping of
the business risk that each of the assets is operating
under, so as to focus and align the resources in support
of what matters most. The outputs of the criticality
review, has enabled the clients to realign their asset
management and reliability efforts immediately. It has
provided significant short term benefits, together with
a more strategic view of the future.
Reliability Centred Maintenance
Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) is a structured
maintenance decision-making tool that allows for mainly
planned maintenance activities. The result is a shift in
maintenance resources to areas of greatest effect in
ensuring maintenance productivity. The strength of RCM
analysis is that it produces extraordinarily robust and
effective planned maintenance programs, even in
situations where the development team have access to
little or no historical data. The benefits are:
-
Required safety and environmental protection levels
are met or exceeded
-
Equipment availability is maximized
-
Cost is minimized (including the cost of maintenance
and repair and the cost of lost operations due to
scheduled and unscheduled down time).
-
Asset life is increased
Condition Monitoring
Condition monitoring is the measurement of parameters
which may indicate a fault condition either by an
increase or decrease in overall measured value or by
some other change to a characteristic value. The use of
condition monitoring enables the operation of a
predictive maintenance policy and provides major
improvements in productivity.
Condition monitoring depends on selecting the right mix
of parameters that match expected faults and using the
correct measurement technique, location interval and
processing, it is also important to record enough
information in order to be able to carry out monitoring
and diagnosis. Considerations include: Type of
measurement, Measurement interval, Accuracy of
measurement and Repeatability.
Condition monitoring falls into two distinct classes,
Monitoring which can be carried out without interruption
to the operation of the machine and Monitoring which
requires the shutdown of the unit, or at least the
releases of the machine from its prime duty. The range
of methods in use is very wide, from simple techniques
such as visual surface inspections to more complicated
procedures like spectral vibration analysis.
Predictive Maintenance
Predictive maintenance is often the most attractive
concept, since action is only undertaken when knowledge
of the asset indicates that failure or underperformance
is imminent, making it a cost effective asset
management.
We believe predictive maintenance is a process that
requires clear roles and responsibilities. As such we
develop company appropriate predictive maintenance
processes, supported by definitions of responsibilities,
and communication paths, which integrate into the
Reliability effort as a whole.
Condition monitoring facilitates Predictive Maintenance.
We subscribe to a multi-technology approach to condition
monitoring, where vibration monitoring, tribological
analysis, ultrasonic monitoring, balance, alignment,
infra red thermography, performance analysis and
inspection tasks all provide necessary input. Condition
monitoring is a knowledge-based activity.
Design Reliability & whole life cycle costing
"Life Cycle Costs - is the total costs of ownership,
including the costs of acquisition, operation,
maintenance, conversion & decommissioning. LCC is
usually split into 4 phases concept + proposal, design +
development, build + install and finally the most
significant phase operation + support"
The majority of the life of most assets is spent in the
operate and maintain cycle. It is in this phase, that
the asset creates the value contribution to the
organization, but also absorbs the vast proportion of
the costs of maintenance.
Adopting an approach where reliability is designed into
the asset together with using the methods of whole life
cycle costing has significant opportunities for cost
savings over the life of the asset.
Reliability & Availability modeling
In practice all machines breakdown at some stage in
their life, whether expected or not. This, coupled with
other factors, means that plants rarely achieve their
design performance continuously. Hence, we need tools
and techniques to estimate, predict and monitor plant
performance. The primary tool for modeling real life
availability of systems, composed of the individual
production assets is known as Reliability and
Availability modeling.
Root Cause Failure Analysis
Root Cause Failure Analysis (RCFA) is both a process and
a set of technical skills, which in combination find out
why a particular failure or problem exists and sets in
place a set of defense actions correcting those causes.
Typically, when assets fail most organizations have
always found some understanding and rational leading to
an explanation as to why it broke. But root cause
failure analysis takes you beyond that to the latent
roots, which are the management system weaknesses. Once
you've found these, you have the means to solve many
other potential problems that haven't yet occurred.
We offers the following RCFA services: Implementation of
total RCFA systems within organizations Training in RCFA
- both system establishment and technical skills we also
undertakes specialist investigations into specific
chronic failures.
Tribology And Lubrication Engineering Services
Tribology is the study of wear and lubrication. It is
estimated that component wear and lubrication problems
are responsible for at least 70 % of mechanical
failures. We offer
-
Tribology and lubrication audit
-
Development of "best practice" capabilities for
organizations
-
Development of a lubricant related condition
monitoring programs
-
Development of contamination control and component
life extension programs
-
Comprehensive training and skills enablement
-
Tribological failure investigations
|
Subscribe to our mailing
list
