Development of the Reliability Basis Optimisation Process

The mandate received for the Reliability Basis Optimisation process was “Each

Business Unit will establish a Plant Reliability management system to ensure plant availability and maintainability at optimal cost as well as legal, regulatory and statutory compliance”.

The Reliability Basis Optimisation process would ensure:

• All assets and related processes shall be analysed following structured processes to establish the best maintenance strategies

• The intent of the RBO process should be to maintain an optimal Predictive Maintenance/Preventive Maintenance ratio

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5.2.1 Initial Reliability Basis Role Model – Excellence Model

Figure 11: The Excellence Model

The initial RBO model sought to make the Power Stations responsible for developing the maintenance strategies using any recognised analysis methodology. The process would typically work as follows:

Power Stations that had specific system expertise would develop the specific maintenance strategy for that system (e.g. Duvha Power Station would develop the Turbine Centre Line Strategy as Duvha had experts on the Turbine Centre Line). This in turn would make that specific Power Station the System Excellence Centre for the system developed.

The systems developed would then be housed in a central library (denoted as 1 in figure 11) within the Asset Management Department. These strategies would then be broken down into a component level. Component specific strategies would then be developed (denoted as 2 in figures 11). These component strategies would be developed using:

A Case Study on the Development of and Asset Management Process within the Eskom Fossil Fired Power Stations with Emphasis on Reliability Basis Optimisation

32 • Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) component templates that are

available to Eskom Generation • Pro-Solution component templates

• Input from Generation Business Engineering

• Input from the Generation Technology Focus/Care Groups

Once the generic component strategies were developed, they would be distributed to the rest of the Power Stations in the Fleet (denoted as 3 in figure 11). The Power Stations in return would develop System Maintenance Strategies for their specific systems using the generic component strategies that were developed by the Asset Management Department. The Power Stations would then forward their competed System Maintenance Strategies to AMD to be housed in the central library. These System Maintenance Strategies could then be viewed by other Power Stations and used by these stations accordingly, resulting in effective cross pollination and standardisation among the Power Stations.

5.2.1.1 Advantages

The main advantage of the Excellence Model was the development of Power Stations as System Specialists. It also decentralised the process so that the Power Stations had greater ownership of the process instead of the process being viewed as a Head Office initiative. Power Stations that were weaker on some systems would benefit for the System Maintenance Strategies developed by the stronger Power Stations. The central library would ensure cross pollination.

5.2.1.2 Disadvantages

Disadvantages of the Excellence model were:

• Errors in the original analysis would be carried over to other Power Stations • Weaker Power Stations would apply the created System Maintenance

Strategies without first analysing for applicability to their specific systems • The control of the completion of the RBO process would be difficult as Power

Stations were in control and would move the process at a pace suitable to the Power Station.

A Case Study on the Development of and Asset Management Process within the Eskom Fossil Fired Power Stations with Emphasis on Reliability Basis Optimisation

33 • With the reduction in the power reserve margin the pressure on the Power Station was to focus on running the plant hence the RBO process would be of secondary importance.

For the points mentioned above it was concluded that the disadvantages of the Excellence process far outweighed the advantages. Hence the Excellence Model was disbanded.

5.2.2 Final Reliability Basis Roll Out Model

With the learning from the Excellence Model it was agreed that the roll out of the Reliability Basis process would be done at the Head Office level. The roll out would occur as follows:

• Head Office Specialists with specialisation in analysis processes of RCM, FMECA and FMA were assigned to the Power Stations.

• Head Office Specials with specialisation in specific Mechanical, Electrical and Control and Instrumentation equipment would develop the Generation Generic Component Strategies (GGCS) (development of the GGCS is explained in Section 5.4).

• GGCS’s would then be forwarded to the Specialists performing the role out activities to apply to the systems that they were analysing.

• Completed System Maintenance Strategies were then forward to AMD to be uploaded into the central library.

• Roll out Specialists would move over to the next Power Station once the System Maintenance Strategies for their particular Power Station was complete.

• The Power Stations would be responsible for converting the System Maintenance Strategy into tasks to be implemented into SAP for execution. • Maintenance strategies would then be reviewed on an annual basis by the

Power Stations and a two yearly review would be carried out by the Asset Management Department.

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Figure 12: The Final RBO Roll Out Model