Condition monitoring and RCA: a roadmap to operational excellence

摘要

This paper discusses how condition monitoring techniques can be used to increase machine availability, reduce damage and achieve operational excellence. A complete framework is devised with the aim to avoid catastrophic accidents and forced outage events. This framework provides a simple and systematic approach to put into process the activities that will ensure the integrity of plant operations. Critical equipment criteria are set through criticality analysis and analysis of actual active failure mechanisms. Under this framework, a formalised schedule is set for conducting condition assessments on the components resulting from the criticality analysis. Condition monitoring techniques are integrated under a single platform to reap the full results of the programme. A report is then generated addressing condition monitoring assessments, component life expectancies and countermeasures to avoid recurrence. Root cause analysis (RCA) is also part of this framework to determine the root cause of an incident. This investigation covers the actual and worst case outcome of an event.