RS 540 Training Seminar
Reliability and Maintainability Analysis for Repairable Systems

RS 540 provides an overview of the ways in which reliability engineering concepts and methods can be applied for repairable system analysis and maintenance planning. ReliaSoft’s Weibull++, RGA, BlockSim and RCM++ software are used for hands-on practical examples. Topics include life data analysis, recurrent event data analysis, reliability block diagrams and reliability centered maintenance.

The course presents concepts and software tools that you could use to help your organization:

• Understand the array of methodologies that can be applied for repairable systems analysis and determine the approaches that will be most effective for the data you have and the objectives you wish to achieve.
• Identify critical components (or failure modes) and determine the most effective ways to improve system performance through design improvements and/or maintenance planning.
• Evaluate potential maintenance strategies and calculate optimum PM intervals and/or overhaul times.
• Use simulation to obtain estimated performance metrics that can facilitate decision-making in a variety of areas, such as scheduling planned maintenance, planning for spares, identifying bottlenecks in production throughput and estimating life cycle costs.

Course Outline

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

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.

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 software familiarization

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

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.