26th International Association for Management of Technology Conference - IAMOT 2017

Reliability and availability are important maintenance indicators for most physical assets. Availability is also an important indicator for the business enterprise since it directly affects the output of the production assets and therefore the profits for the company. Various maintenance concepts like Reliability-centred Maintenance (RCM) and Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) emphasize the achievement of high reliability through preventive maintenance technologies linked to condition monitoring in particular. One of the basic principles of TPM is operator maintenance, also known as autonomous maintenance. Manufacturing companies aim to increase profitability by decreasing production costs through higher reliability and availability. However, one of the major petrochemical plants in South Africa have experienced high maintenance costs due to high failure rates of rotating equipment and pumps in particular. This situation initiated the research project discussed in this paper The main objective of this research study was to establish the extent of autonomous maintenance for centrifugal pumps at a number of petrochemical refineries in South Africa and to determine whether the application of autonomous maintenance has a positive effect on the reliability of these pumps. A secondary objective of this study was to establish the barriers to implementation of autonomous maintenance for centrifugal pumps at petrochemical refineries. Data was obtained by means of a survey amongst maintenance and asset managers from four of the six refineries in operation in South Africa. A web-based questionnaire with 56 statements and questions was designed and 137 completed questionnaires were returned. An estimate of the reliability of centrifugal pumps was obtained by requesting an average of the mean-time-to-failure (MTTF) for pumps managed by the respondent. Information was acquired for a number of age categories of the pumps. A set of questions also established the respondent’s knowledge of autonomous maintenance and the extent to which autonomous maintenance is applied in the plant. Another set of questions requested the respondent’s opinion on barriers to the successful implementation of autonomous maintenance. Provisional findings don’t indicate a strong correlation between the reliability of centrifugal pumps and the presence of autonomous maintenance. Further statistical analysis for different age groups and the four different plants is being performed. The survey also identified the most important barriers to implementation of autonomous maintenance. These barriers were linked to knowledge management, employee factors and people management. Employee factors comprised employee training, motivation and resistance to change. The findings of this research could assist maintenance and asset managers in petrochemical plants to implement and sustain operator maintenance in their plants which has the potential to improve the reliability of pumps in particular but also to improve the reliability of other physical assets. Autonomous maintenance is not feasible for all assets but certainly for a large number of assets. Operators can observe potential problems or failures at an early stage and report such incidents to the maintenance supervisors for action. The authors recommend that similar studies be performed for a broader range of assets, e.g. electric motors, valves and filters. Actual reliability data should then be obtained for such equipment if available and possible correlations with the extent of autonomous maintenance established.