Asset Performance Management

Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) and Failure Modes, Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) are methodologies designed to identify potential failure modes for a product or process before the problems occur, to assess the risk associated with those failure modes and to identify and carry out measures to address the most serious concerns.

Our Reliability Engineers have extensive experience of hosting FMEA and FMECA workshops in the Design, Process or Functional context. The workshops are performed to Industry specified requirements either as stand-alone activities or pre-cursors to RCM or Fault Tree activities.

Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) analysis provides a structured framework for analyzing the functions and potential failures for a physical asset (such as an airplane, a manufacturing production line, etc.) with a focus on preserving system functions, rather than preserving equipment. RCM is used to develop scheduled maintenance plans that will provide an acceptable level of operability, with an acceptable level of risk, in an efficient and cost-effective manner.

Our Reliability Engineers have extensive experience of hosting FMEA, FMECA and RCM workshops in the Design, Process or Functional context. The workshops are performed to Industry specified requirements either as stand-alone activities or as part of a Reliability and Asset Management programmes.

A system is a collection of subsystems, assemblies and/or components arranged in a specific design in order to achieve desired functions with acceptable performance and reliability. The types of components, their quantities, their qualities and the manner in which they are arranged within the system have a direct effect on the system’s reliability. Therefore, in addition to the reliability of the components, the relationship between these components is also considered and decisions as to the choice of components can be made to improve or optimize the overall system reliability, maintainability and/or availability. This reliability relationship is usually expressed using logic diagrams, such as reliability block diagrams (RBDs) and/or fault trees.

Supporting both product design and asset management functions, our Engineers develop and analyse system Reliability Block Diagrams and Fault Trees, usually as part of a Reliability project. These models can be made-up from a variety of sources of data from standards-based libraries, to real-world test/field data or from Supplier’s product technical specification data.

Using exact computations or discrete event simulation, our Engineers use ReliaSoft’s BlockSim software to undertake a wide variety of analyses for both repairable and non-repairable systems. This includes reliability analysis, reliability optimization, and sensitivity studies, exploring the effect of redundancy on improved reliability against increased cost.

Using ReliaSoft’s BlockSim software as our tool of choice, BlockSim allows you to specify both the direct and indirect costs associated with the maintenance strategies that you have defined, including costs related to downtime, maintenance crews, spares, etc. This yields a wide array of simulation results that are instrumental in performing realistic Life-Cycle Cost assessments. With BlockSim’s modeling flexibility, you can:

• Specify what kinds of crew delays are included in cost calculations and what delays should be ignored.
• Specify costs associated with system failure, including cost per incident and downtime rate.
• Specify system uptime revenue and revenue due to throughput so the simulation is able to calculate opportunity costs.

View new cost-related simulation results, including system-level costs, the contributions of different kinds of wait times to block costs and the contribution (criticality) of a block’s cost to the total system costs.

Our Reliability Engineers have extensive experience of hosting FMEA and FMECA workshops in the Design, Process or Functional context. The workshops are performed to Industry specified requirements either as stand-alone activities or pre-cursors to RCM or Fault Tree activities.

Failure Reporting Analysis and Corrective Action System and Defect Report Analysis and Corrective Action System are commonly used terms for a system that is used to report failures and/or defects and track their corrective actions. Other commonly used names include DRACAS (Data Reporting Analysis and Corrective Action System), DCACAS (Data Collection Analysis and Corrective Action System) and CAPA software (Corrective And Preventive Action software).

For every installation of ReliaSoft’s XFRACAS software for FRACAS or DRACAS applications, our Reliability team works closely with our Clients to help configure and implement the software into the Client’s FRACAS/DRACAS processes. Our team can help develop the process if one isn’t already in place.

A key aspect of our work is the mass import of data into the XFRACAS system from external sources using a number of Data Analytics methods and the management of data that can interact with other Client systems.