(100d) Failure Mode, Effect and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) for Planning Maintenance Using Risk and Reliability Criteria

The maintenance planning process in these days has been changing because of the need to incorporate risk and reliability criteria, not just to impact the assets maintenance tasks, but to look for control and risk prevention, achieving a risk management strategy. Now, the maintenance planning process incorporates a risk analysis, in this case a Failure Mode, Effect and Criticality Analysis (FMECA); the idea of using a FMECA is mainly because of the need for understanding the way the things fails and its associated risks. A failure mode is the way an asset loses its ability to carry out a desired specific function, a functional failure. For every failure mode it has to be a specific maintenance task or recommendation; the failure modes are ranked on a risk basis, from the most critical to the lower one.

This work presents the application of a FMECA for a gas processing plant, as a part of an asset management program. The scope includes: Definition of operational context, functional analysis, failure mode identification, failure effects and criticality, and maintenance recommendations. With the FMECA application, the failure modes evaluated are clearly related to a maintenance action, if we fail identifying the failure modes, the maintenance actions will fail. Evaluating the risk associated to each failure mode, we can assure that the maintenance actions have a real effect on the facilities' risk and reliability.