Equipment Criticality Analysis
Criticality of Assets should be used to drive maintenance tasks and frequencies and is the first step in Maintenance Optimisation. For the most part, organisations focus on equipment which is deemed HSE critical, however this is just one aspect of equipment criticality. AIE ranks equipment criticality based on safety, environment, operational costs, repair costs and reputational damage. Further to this, equipment criticality is often assigned at the project phase and is heavily based on assumptions made about asset performance and longevity at the time. AIE recognises that criticality assignments are dynamic and should be regularly reviewed.
CRITICALITY 1: VERY HIGH CRITICALITY
Equipment which is assigned a Criticality Rating of 1 will likely comprise of what may deemed to be safety & environmental critical equipment
CRITICALITY 2: HIGH CRITICALITY
Equipment which is assigned a Criticality Rating of 2 will typically comprise of production critical equipment
CRITICALITY 3: MEDIUM CRITICALITY
Equipment which is assigned a Criticality Rating of 3 would be expected to serve a production support function, process control function or non-executive alarm function
CRITICALITY 4: LOW CRITICALITY
Equipment which is assigned a Criticality Rating of 4 would be expected to comprise of equipment that performs general functions and would not be associated with safety, control or production systems
AIE was asked by a customer to review their criticality ranking of their assets as it was thought that a high proportion of assets were assigned as safety critical after verifying their Master Equipment List. The outcomes from the review are as follows:
- Fine tuning of generic maintenance strategies.
- Increased focus on value-added activities.
- Identified Spares optimisation opportunities.
- Aligned to the business strategy and asset lifecycle phase.
- Reduction of maintenance on non-safety or non-production critical equipment.
- Criticality linked to hierarchy, improved reporting and deferral process.
