Learn the Secrets of Your Equipment
From the RCM2 world, how many protective devices do you have? Of those, how many are you maintaining? Examples of protective devices are a High High Level Switch in an acid tank or an Emergency Stop on a Conveyor. The failure of protective devices is typically not evident to the Operator under normal operating conditions. Therefore, the failure of the protective device is a hidden failure. Consider the acid tank as an example. When the High Level switch is working, the High High Level switch is never actuated. Only in the event of the protected High Level switch failure does the protective High High Level switch come in to use. If the protective High High Level Switch has failed, then acid potentially overflows the tank and possibly creates an environmental impact or worse, injures someone.
If you count up the number of protective devices in a typical manufacturing facility, it will surprise you to learn that you have lots and lots of them. Now what is scary is that for roughly 33% of these protective devices, you probably were not aware they even existed in the factory. Even scarier is the fact that only approximately 30-40% of all protective devices that we know about are maintained. That said, upwards of 20% are already in the failed state. Remember that we said above that the failure of protective devices is typically not evident to the Operator under normal operating conditions and are hidden.
Make it a point to learn more about hidden failures and protective devices. Work through your process documentation to ensure that you identify these protective devices and make sure you have a maintenance strategy for them based on the risk to the organization.
Tip provided by: Jeff Shiver, CMRP, CPMM, RCM2 Practitioner, People and Processes, Inc.
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Comments (1)
Jeff is dead right. After more that 40 years Maintenance, Engineering. and Maintenance Management.I have found that protective devises that only operate in an emergency do not get the attention they should.There should be a procedure in place for to cover the extent of the testing required and the routine included and recorded on the site CMMS. Site Maintenance, Production and EHS should be involved to ensure that all devices on a site are picked up.In the long run it will reduce downtime and may even save life's
Rgds
Derry O'Farrell MIET
1) Posted 9:00 am, 25 January 2012 by Derry O'Farrell