Course Outline

I - Introduction to Reliability Engineering & Maintenance

• What is reliability, why reliability?
• Reliability concepts
• The changing world of maintenance
• The different disciplines involved in repairable systems analysis

II - Life Data Analysis

Statistical Theory Background, and Applications

• Basic definitions and concepts
• The most commonly used distributions for product life and their applications
  • 1, 2 and 3-parameter Weibull, mixed Weibull, 1 and 2-parameter exponential, lognormal, normal
• The most applicable distribution for your data
• Product life data types, presented and defined
  • Complete data, right censored/suspended data, left censored data, interval censored data, grouped data
• Parameter estimation methods and theory
  • Probability plotting, rank regression analysis, maximum likelihood estimation (MLE)
• Confidence bounds
  • Fisher matrix, likelihood ratio and beta-binomial bounds

Applying Life Data Analysis

• Tracking an item's reliability and guiding corrective actions through the use of field data
• Predicting number of returns/failures
• Reliability specifications
• Optimum replacement time determination
• Spare parts determination
• Reliability goals (specifications), setting and meeting them
• Supplier reliability issues
• Failure behavior assessment and failure mode detection
• Warranty time determination
• Analysis of different failure modes
• Reliability bathtub curves
• Comparing designs, suppliers and data sets
• Competing failure mode analysis
• Degradation analysis
• Event Log analysis
• Contour plots and their application
• Tests of Comparison

Weibull++ 7 Software Familiarization

This hands-on workshop will be based on ReliaSoft's Weibull++ Training Guide. The training guide is specifically designed to guide you step-by-step from simple to advanced concepts, allowing you to proceed at your own pace.

III - Recurrent Event Data Analysis Approach for Repairable Systems

• Renewal process
• The non-homogeneous Poisson process approach
  • Power law Poisson process
  • Concept of minimal repair
  • Laplace trend test
  • Cramér von Mises test
  • Reliability metrics
    • Expected number of failures
    • Mission reliability
    • Optimum overhaul
    • Failure intensity/ mean-time-between-failures
• General Renewal Process (GRP) model approach
  • Applications and interpretations of the model
  • Type I and type II GRP models
  • The effectiveness factor
• Non-parametric recurrent data analysis approach
  • Mean Cumulative Function (MCF) and its application
• Weibull++ RDA tool and RGA 6 software familiarization

IV - Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM): Introduction and Overview

• Introduction and overview
  • History
  • Applications and benefits
  • Published guidelines
• Prepare for the analysis
• Select the equipment to be analyzed
  • Published equipment selection questions
  • Criticality factors
• Identify the functions
• Identify the functional failures
• Identify and evaluate (categorize) the effects of failure
  • Published logic diagrams
• Identify the causes of failure (failure modes)
• Select maintenance tasks
  • Published task selection questions
  • Comparing maintenance strategies based on cost and availability
    • Run-to-failure
    • Repair/replacement
    • Service tasks
    • Failure-finding inspections
    • On-condition inspections
    • One-time tasks
  • Calculating optimum maintenance interval
• RCM++ software familiarization

V - Repairable System Analysis with RBDs

System Analysis: Introduction and Overview

• Defining a system
• Viewing a system as a collection of components and/or component failure modes

Elementary RBD Constructs and their Analytic Quantification

• Using RBDs to represent the reliability model of a system
• Series configurations
• Simple parallel configurations
• K-out-of-n configurations
• Complex configurations
  • Complex configurations for failure modes, networks and mechanical systems
• Introduction to time dependency
• Inclusion of "used" components in modeling
• System reliability metrics:
  • Obtaining a system pdf
  • Derivation of functions of interest: system failure rate function, system MTTF, etc.

Advanced RBD Constructs and their Analytic Quantification

• Modeling standby redundancy:
  • Energized and quiescent failure distributions
  • "Hot," "Warm" and "Cold" standby definitions
  • Switching (perfect or imperfect switching, with delays, retries and switch quiescent failure probabilities)
  • K-out-of-n-plus-M standby configurations
• Additional RBD constructs:
  • Nodes
  • Containers
  • Block encapsulation (sub-diagram blocks)
  • Block multiplicity

Reliability Importance

• Identify importance of components and subsystems (and/or modes) and their overall impact on system reliability

Fundamentals of Maintainability and Availability

• Repair and downtime distributions and metrics
• Introduction to renewal theory
• Introduction to maintainability
• Imperfect repairs (restoration factors)
• Availability definitions:
  • Instantaneous (point) availability
  • Mean availability
  • Steady state availability
  • Inherent availability
  • Achieved availability
  • Operational availability

Preventive Maintenance (PM) Principles

• When does "preventive maintenance" make sense?
• The fallacy of "constant failure rate" and "preventive replacement"
• Quantifying preventive vs. corrective replacement strategies
• Determining optimum PM intervals
• Modeling effects of PM actions

Advanced Simulation Options: Using Policies, Pools and Resources

• Adding crews to the analysis
  • Probabilistic elements
  • Crew costs
  • Crew utilization metrics and bottlenecks
• Adding spare part pools (depots) to the analysis
  • Probabilistic elements
  • Spare part inventory management, costs
  • Spare utilization metrics and bottlenecks
  • Standard, on-condition and upon emergency spare part provisioning with associated costs and probabilistic delays
• Utilizing "corrective," "preventive" and "inspection" actions with associated policies
  • Corrective actions, "immediate" or "upon inspection" (hidden/discovery)
  • Inspections based on system time, component age and/or other system events (e.g. similar component failure elsewhere in the system)
  • PM actions based on system time, component age and/or other system events (e.g. similar component failure elsewhere in the system)

Visualizing and Improving System Availability

• Looking at common metrics (MTBF, MTBDE, MTBE, AX, etc.) and charts.
• Additional (new) metrics for identifying opportunities in repairable systems:
  • RS-FCI (ReliaSoft's Failure Criticality Index)
  • RS-DECI (ReliaSoft's Downing Event Criticality Index)
• FRED (Failure Report Evaluation Diagram) reports

Throughput Analysis

• Throughput metrics and terminology
  • System throughput
  • Component throughput
  • System and component utilization metrics
• Bottlenecks identification
• Backlog processing

Including Costs in the Analysis, Introduction to Life Cycle Cost Analysis

• Determination of the probabilistic costs associated with system operation
• Sample financial analysis

Introduction to Phase Diagrams

RBD vs. NHPP

• Advantages and disadvantages of each approach

BlockSim 7 Software Familiarization

Hands-on Workshop and Group Case Studies

• Individually work through detailed examples with step-by-step instructions to complete sample analyses that combine many of the concepts covered in the course.
• Using realistic cases (described in an objective statement), determine how to set up and analyze each case in a team environment. The case studies combine select topics covered in the course.