A new method of electrical equipment maintenance optimisation based on reliability analysis: Industrial perspective

This paper describes a new methodology for developing common maintenance strategy based on reliability-centered maintenance (RCM) principles. The development took place in a major industrial establishment in South America. The name of this industrial establishment is suppressed for commercial confidentiality. Performance-based maintenance contract has become a general trend in many industrial organizations. This allows the organizations to focus on their core business while others handle maintenance tasks. This paper demonstrates that the transition of a maintenance contract based on body shop to a one based on performance is feasible. As demonstrated in the paper, this can be accomplished by changing the maintenance strategy from being based on vendor recommendations to a strategy based on RCM principles. The new strategy can computer-simulated to calculate the maintenance indicators. The produced indicators are the basis to change the traditional maintenance contract to a performance based maintenance contract. The experience gained and the method of simulation is explained in this paper. The optimization process and its results are discussed.