How Predictive Maintanance Reduces Both: Risks and Costs

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Focus on Practice

The carefully coordinated combination of individual strategies and methods creates the basis for practice-focused hazard assessment. This also means that not every “defect” needs to be remedied. Material inhomogeneities or incipient cracking spotted by means of non-destructive testing (NDT) may prove acceptable under defined operating parameters in fracture analyses and risk assessments. Within the context of a high-quality and integrated analysis of the total system, the principle of “living with defects” is quite acceptable.

Dedicated analyses and tailored remediation and maintenance measures may permit even older plant to continue to operate safely.

Selection of the most suitable maintenance strategy must take into consideration the special features of the company and the plant in question. The maintenance professionals should be aware of the conditions of operations and the conditions at the plant and include them in all their decisions.

Practice in general engineering, experience and in-depth knowledge at plants and systems are therefore important. The role of a maintenance professional today is also that of a system analyst who keeps an eye on the whole context and interdependency.

Creative Solutions

To deliver maximum benefits for the company while ensuring cost-effectiveness qualified maintenance needs to find creative solutions. Given this, dedicated and qualified personnel are of critical importance. Management staff need to be able to motivate their personnel.

This is only possible in an organisation based on division of labour, which leaves staff scope for taking action and adopting an appropriate level of responsibility. Acceptance of tolerable risks is also part of the deal. The climate in the company should be characterised by clarity and consistency, trust and appreciation.

A Look into the Future

In the future, maintenance strategies will focus increasingly on failure prevention and the continual improvement of plants and systems. Tüv Süd Industrie Service supports plant operators in finding and implementing the right maintenance strategy. Systematic knowledge and practice-oriented approaches will come together to ensure the best possible plant management, offering long-term safety and reliability and maximum availability.

* * The author is Senior Expert Power Plants, TÜV SÜD Industrie Service, Mannheim, Contact: Phone +49-621-395-0

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