Reliability improvement of process equipment: A case of rolling mill application

Successful manufacturing business operation of today mainly depends on higher order reliability and availability of plant machinery. The implementation of any reliability-oriented study in process machinery undoubtedly, therefore, is very important initiative. Reliability engineering and reliability management have entered into the decision making process of asset management in large number of reputed organizations abroad, but Indian acceptance to this vital approach in machinery management, as experienced from the current system-approach in Indian industries towards Reliability, is not encouraging. The main reason behind the low profile acceptance of reliability studies is due to the perennial habit of running the maintenance function on time based Preventive Maintenance (PM) philosophy alone, the ignorance of evaluating and appreciating the tangible benefits from Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM), and above all improper management of knowledge in this specialized field. Since long, phenomenal benefit, of having a plant with full fledged RCM and advanced diagnosis tools in place, is not realized as fast as it could have been. In this Indian scenario, any study on effective implementation of RCM with proven financial benefits and/or plant's enhanced availability is expected to be welcome by industry. In the current case, an attempt has been made to reflect the same with a wrapper roll case of a steel mill. The need of this approach, use of reliability analysis and diagnostic software, improvement achieved and associated cost benefits are discussed elaborately. The study is expected to enrich operation managers as well as reliability managers with the implementation-process so that they can apply the same in Indian process industries.