Problems with Typical Reliability Initiatives

Maintaining an effective reliability program is essential to optimizing maintenance costs, mitigating unplanned asset failure, and improving compliance.

Oftentimes, to meet these goals, numerous initiatives are introduced—Corrosion Control Documents (CCDs), Alarm Rationalization, Corrosion Under Insulation (CUI) Programs, Risk-Based Inspection (RBI), Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM), Integrity Operating Windows (IOWs)—the list goes on.

While many initiatives are put in place to solve challenges relating to downtime, compliance, and costs, these initiatives are often ineffective for various reasons.

Typical reliability initiatives are:

1. Not value driven:

Initiatives are started by a champion, but a value proposition is not defined for the business.

2. Overlapping one another:

Tens or hundreds of initiatives are overlapping one another in involved data, systems, personnel, and expected value.

3. Worked on in silos:

Departments within a facility operate independently even though they have goals that are shared among multiple departments.

4. Not properly implemented:

Initiatives are not properly internally resourced—or—consulting firms do not have proper cross functional expertise or horsepower.

5. Lacking management of change:

Initiatives are not executed with an end state in mind, are under-resourced for run/maintain, and don’t have user buy-in early on.

These problems, whether alone or in tandem, result in overspending and unrealized value.

How to Ensure Effective Initiatives

As mechanical integrity and reliability leaders, there are two questions you must answer:

• Do I know that my priorities are the right priorities?
• How are these priorities going to pay off in the short and long term?

To answer these questions, we recommend evaluating your site practices and performance—the result of which will highlight the most valuable improvement opportunities.

By utilizing industry benchmarking and best practice standards to assess your program, it is possible to identify current mechanical integrity and reliability gaps and how the closure of those gaps will result in value creation (reduced downtime and/or reduced spend).

Using the data gathered from the assessment, you can then development an improvement plan to prioritize quick wins that will close spending and lost production gaps.