Decision-making guidelines for the use of experience and generic data

Operating experience, as captured in maintenance and repair records of a facility, provides a directly applicable source of equipment reliability data for reliability and risk analysis quantification. However, this experience may not have sufficient breadth or depth to meet the data needs of die analysis. Therefore, even the best direct experience-based data set should be complemented by generic information, if only to provide a comparison with similar equipment experience in other settings, environments or industries. Generic data use involves some cure in matching die generic component types and applications to the facility equipment types and environments, particularly if the facility in question is rather unique. The bottom line, however, is that most often a combination of plant-specific and generic data are required to fulfil a risk and reliability study parametric needs. While judgment cannot be removed altogether from the process of deciding which data is most appropriate to use, based on experience there are factors to consider which can be structured into a set of guidelines. This paper therefore provides such guidance for the comparison between generic and facility-specific data and for the selection of which data or combination best meets the study data needs.