MAINTENANCE RELIABILITY IN MARINE ENGINEERING

 1.3 MAINTENANCE RELIABILITY IN MARINE ENGINEERING

By Aleksandar Pudar

Technical Superintendent and Planned Maintenance Supervisor Reederei Nord BV

Co-founder of "Out of Box Maritime Thinker Blog" and Founder of Naro Consilium Group

Marine maintenance engineering is typically defined as a critical function ensuring adequate maintenance techniques, designing and modifying equipment to improve maintainability, and investigating ongoing maintenance technical problems. In addition, appropriate corrective and improvement actions must be taken to ensure equipment reliability and optimal performance. "Maintenance engineering" and "reliability engineering" are often used interchangeably.

On vessels, the definition and interchangeability of titles are generally accurate. Even though these functions have different roles and responsibilities, a group of engineers may be responsible for the reliability and the main engine, auxiliary engines, other ancillary machinery, maintenance and other engineering duties.

The reliability engineering function in marine engineering is responsible for managing risks and ensuring life cycle asset management. It is a strategic resource with single-point accountability for providing a long-term business strategy that ensures production capacity, product quality, and the best life cycle cost. Its mission is to provide proactive leadership, direction, single-point accountability, and technical expertise to achieve and sustain optimum reliability, maintainability, useful life, and life cycle cost for a vessel's assets ( and vessel as an asset) and processes. As a result, the vessel can operate safely and efficiently by ensuring optimal maintenance reliability while minimising downtime and operational costs.

 

1.3.1 RESPONSIBILITIES OF RELIABILITY AND MAINTENANCE ENGINEERING

 

·         Ensure that newly acquired machinery systems are maintainable in the long run

·         Identify the root cause of repetitive breakdowns and expensive equipment problems to eliminate reoccurrence.

·         Feedback to makers related to maintenance problems encountered

·         Create, implement and observe a practical and cost-effective preventive or predictive maintenance system.

·         Ensure that equipment is operated correctly and taken care of

·         Detailed Lubrication programs/schemes designed and implemented.

·         Inspection, adjustments, parts ( critical, optimum, consumable), replacement schedules, and overhauls for equipment existing on board as appropriate.

·         Vibration, Thermal and Lube oil testing and other predictive analyses.

·         Collect, keep and analyse equipment data ( IoT, annual input)  and historical records to predict maintenance needs.

From the get-go, reliability engineering for vessels is a strategic activity focusing on improving future operations. However, there is also a need for tactical assistance to the vessel's operations and maintenance functions; this includes identifying and implementing methods to improve design, procurement, installation, operation, maintenance, and repair practices. Additionally, there is a need to develop strategies to minimise losses and optimise vessel performance levels. Some of these tasks, such as failure analysis and sustaining maintenance, primarily deal with maintenance tactics and are typically performed by a Fleet Manager, TSI and Purchasing officer together on a fleet level. However, in larger tanker organisations, these roles (related to maintenance set-up and monitoring)  are combined under the title of Planned Maintenance Supervisor/Engineer in a shore-based industry known as a reliability engineer, as described here.

Reliability engineering is one of the most vital parts of reliability, good practices and optimum machinery performance; these are the functions that are responsible for :

·         Setting up guidelines to ensure reliability and maintainability of machinery and equipment, maintenance processes that align with maker's requirements, utilities, facilities, testing requirements, and safety or security procedures as applicable.

·         Optimising and improving maintenance work wherever possible; achieving smooth operation of all machinery/equipment on board the vessel; while protecting and prolonging the economic life of machinery/equipment and vessel as an asset, all at minimal expense to the owner/vessel operator.

·         Serving in a hands-on capacity, the function relieves the Planned Maintenance Supervisor/Engineer of those responsibilities that are purely engineering.

·         Equipment history information collection; is crucial for reliability engineering, as it is the primary user of such data. Without this function, any maintenance work order system will be rendered ineffective and underutilised, significantly reducing the vessel's payback.

Reliability is the probability that an item, for example, the main engine, will continue to run as per the owner/vessel operator's needs without failure under maker-prescribed conditions. Reliability engineering is the use of engineering knowledge in risk management.

Risk Management.

Risk management in the marine industry and on board vessels involves increasing the probability that marine assets and processes will operate safely and efficiently when needed; this can be achieved by implementing strategies to prevent failures, detect the onset of failures in their earliest stages, and minimise all risks associated with the vessel or marine facility. Some key actions to support this and mitigate risk are:

·         Identify potential for cost reduction through extended equipment life, reduced maintenance cost, and other improvement techniques.

·         Participate in review phases of the design of capital changes in a vessel or marine facility to ensure full maintainability of equipment, machinery, superstructure, hull, cargo tanks, cargo holds and water ballast tanks.

·         Initiate corrective action by studying corrosion, fatigue, wear, and erosion rates throughout the vessel or marine facility.

·         Explore alternate solutions to reduce specific machinery or equipment costs. ( e.g. Turbocahrger, BWTS, GMDSS)

·         Recommend economic studies for equipment/machinery retirement, modification, updating,

Life Cycle Asset Management. Create, introduce and supervise a workable maintenance process or processes that will ensure the ideal life cycle management of the vessel as an asset.

Configuration Management. It is essential to ensure that all machinery/equipment of the vessel or marine facility are designed, installed, operated, and maintained to provide maximum useful life and the best life cycle cost; this can be achieved by:

·         Developing and standardising a program that influences new construction and equipment purchases, including materials, equipment, and spare parts for the vessel or marine facility.

·         Participating in approving all new installations, including those done by contractors, in ensuring their maintainability and reliability as influenced by life cycle costing.

·         Implementing a configuration management program that tracks changes to the vessel or marine facility, including equipment and software changes, to ensure that they are documented, tested, and implemented in a controlled and coordinated manner.

Asset Care. In the marine industry, developing, implementing, and overseeing viable processes is crucial to ensure appropriate levels of sustaining maintenance and operator care are provided for all physical assets; this can be achieved by:

·         Implement processes to minimise physical asset failures' number and severity, including equipment/machinery, use other than designed performance levels.

·         Develop strategies to reduce the impact of failures that cannot be prevented.

·         Defining, developing, administering, and refining vessels' machinery/equipment preventive or predictive maintenance program.

·         Laying out repair techniques for repetitive tasks, such as parts replacements, and developing standards specifying the optimal performance of the equipment/machinery and the resources needed for these tasks.

·         Using value analysis to make maintenance decisions by repairing, replacing, or redesigning vessels as assets and machinery/equipment.

Loss Elimination. In the marine industry, it is essential to develop, implement, and oversee viable processes to continuously eliminate losses and waste from all areas of the vessel life cycle, such as purchasing, operations, and maintenance; this can be achieved by:

·         Minimising and improving maintenance work wherever possible, ensuring the efficient and productive operation of the vessel or marine facility process and machinery/equipment while protecting and prolonging the economic life of the vessel/marine facility as an asset, all at minimal expense to the owner/vessel operator.

·         Analysing machinery/equipment historical maintenance records, i.e. corrective jobs outside of scheduled /routine maintenance, to identify reoccurring failures and effectively implement barriers on identified issues.

·         Review all equipment failures to determine what action might have been taken to prevent and protect against recurrence. Processes and procedures should be revised so similar failures do not happen in the future

1.3.2 MAINTENANCE ENGINEERING

The maintenance engineering role is strategic, for example, ensuring that

the assets (machinery/equipment) within a vessel environment meet the present demands of the company. Where the person in charge of reliability engineering  looks at the long-term reliability needs, the maintenance engineer ( Planned Maintenance Supervisor) handles the day-to-day

reliability responsibilities.

Position Responsibilities

·         Identify, initiate, coordinate, and complete tactical maintenance and process improvement opportunities.

·         Technical support of operations or maintenance of machinery/equipment on board the vessel, including the vessel itself, such as troubleshooting and spares management.

·         On new projects ( new vessel, new equipment), assist the project team with the development/creation and implementation of control systems, that is criticality, preventive/planned maintenance plan, spares ( critical, optimum, consumable), quality, maintainability ( tools, RA etc.), and operability.

·         On machinery /equipment in use, perform regular reviews and upgrade and modify maintenance plans.

·         Communicates with the fleet manager to ensure long-term operations and maintenance of vessel machinery/equipment

·         Any engineering accident/incident/breakdowns are appropriately investigated with solutions implemented

·         Assist fleet manager and TSI or designated maintenance management with vessel budgeting and expense forecasting

·         Continuously track and evaluate operations ( machinery running hours) or maintenance expenditures, for example, consumables, spare cost and man-hours, to ensure adequate machinery/equipment  utilisation

·         Lead and promote a positive change in the organisation related to maintenance by proactively leading department initiatives.

·         Act as a change sponsor in creating and introducing implementing cross-department business objectives

·         Create the overall maintenance reports for the fleet divided into logical groups.

·         Completions of Health, Safety, Quality and Environmental (HSEQ) tasks and management of change (MoC), including work permits and Risk Assessment Analysis (RAA).

·         Create, implement, and come up with best practices related to preventive maintenance practices and operating methods

·         Follow up on purchases ( before and after)  to ensure correct specifications and design is used

·         Initiate, develop, and review significant improvement/upgrade projects

 

As part of a reliable engineering and maintenance philosophy in the marine industry, the technical department is responsible for developing, implementing, and periodically evaluating an effective vessel maintenance plan (VMP). The objective of this plan is to:

·         Maintain the required safety functions for marine operations.

·         Maintain safety and reliability levels of marine machinery/equipment and vessel structures.

·         Optimise the availability of vessel

·         Obtain information necessary for design improvement of marine components whose reliability has been identified as inadequate.

·         Accomplish these goals at a minimum economic impact to the owner or vessel operator, including maintenance costs and the costs of identified failures.

·         Obtain necessary info for establishing a dynamic maintenance program that improves upon the existing program and its revisions by systematically assessing the effectiveness of in-use maintenance tasks. Monitoring the condition of specific safety-critical or costly marine components would play an essential role in developing a dynamic maintenance program.

These objectives recognise that maintenance programs cannot correct deficiencies in marine equipment and structures' inherent ( existing from delivery) safety and reliability levels. Maintenance programs can only minimise deterioration and restore the item to its delivered levels. If the machinery/equipment delivery levels are found to be unsatisfactory, design modification, operational changes, or procedural changes (such as training programs) may be necessary to improve marine operations

Maintenance Program Content.

The maintenance program for vessels and machinery/equipment typically consists of two groups of tasks:

Preventive maintenance tasks include failure-finding tasks scheduled at specified intervals or based on condition. The objective of these tasks is to identify and prevent deterioration below inherent safety and reliability levels by means such as:

·         Lubrication or servicing

·         Operational, visual, or automated checks

·         Inspections, functional tests, or condition monitoring

·         Repairs

·         Discard or disposal

This group of tasks is determined by reliability-centred management (RCM) analysis and comprises the RCM-based preventive maintenance program.

Corrective Maintenance occurs when an issue is noticed; in essence, it is nonscheduled maintenance tasks which result from:

·         Additional findings from the scheduled tasks accomplished at specified intervals of time or usage

·         Reports of malfunctions or indications of impending failure (including automated detection)

This second group of tasks aims to maintain or restore the equipment to an acceptable condition to perform its required function.

 

An effective program schedules only those tasks necessary to meet the stated objectives. It does not schedule additional tasks that will increase maintenance costs without a corresponding increase in protection of the inherent level of reliability. Experience has demonstrated that reliability decreases when inappropriate or unnecessary maintenance tasks are performed due to an increased incidence of maintainer-induced faults.

References & Bibliography :

1.       Chapter 2 Reliability definition of terms and concepts - LSU (no date). Available at: https://biotech.law.lsu.edu/blaw/dodd/corres/pdf/32351h_0382/chap2.pdf (Accessed: March 30, 2023).

Disclaimer:

Out of Box Maritime Thinker © by Narenta Gestio Consilium Group 2022 and Aleksandar Pudar assumes no responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions in the content of this paper. The information in this paper is provided on an "as is" basis with no guarantees of completeness, accuracy, usefulness, or timeliness or of the results obtained from using this information. The ideas and strategies should never be used without first assessing your company's situation or system or consulting a consultancy professional. The content of this paper is intended to be used and must be used for informational purposes only.