Modeling Imperfect Repair for Realistic RAM Analysis of Operating Facilities

Reliability, Availability and Maintainability analysis (in short RAM analysis), a significant decision-making activity of an operating facility, needs to deliver an accurate and realistic performance prediction of the facility over its complete design life i.e. typically, thirty years plus. Only then the short and long-term strategies, formulated based on the analysis outcome, can become effective and value-adding. Realistic performance prediction necessitates that the operating environment considered during analysis is representative of a real operating facility. This paper investigates the main impediments to achieving this goal and finds out that failure to incorporate wear and tear and imperfect repair for rotating machinery to be the major reason. This inability causes the analysis outcome to drift far away from reality and portrays a much rosier version of the performance. As a next step, the paper illustrates how wear and tear and imperfect repair of rotating machinery can be translated into modeling parameters to overcome this obstacle so that the predicted performance becomes far more accurate and realistic leading to more efficacious decision making and positive contribution to the company bottom line.