31: No or Inappropriate Maintenance Selected
Definition/Typical Issues
Did the organization fail to develop an equipment reliability program for this piece of equipment? Did the organization fail to analyze the maintenance needs for this piece of equipment?
Was an inappropriate maintenance method specified for the equipment? Are there problems with the analysis process that is used to determine the appropriate maintenance requirements?
Was their a failure to assign resources based on the risk analysis? Are some high-priority maintenance tasks not being specified because other low-priority maintenance tasks are being specified instead?
Note 1: If the maintenance needs were analyzed and it was incorrectly determined that no maintenance was appropriate, it is appropriate to code this situation under this node also.
Note 2: If the organization did not assign maintenance to the equipment because it did not identify the equipment as critical, then Critical Equipment Not Identified (#30) is appropriate.
Examples
Example 1
- Hydraulic hoses on the forklifts in the facility were failing once every 2 months. A review of the maintenance program records indicated that proper maintenance for these hoses had never been determined.
Example 2
- There was no reliability program for some of the directional drilling tools.
Example 3
- Corrective maintenance was assigned to an auger that provided raw materials to a food process. This selection was based on a very low expected failure rate and a quick repair time. Actual experience indicates that the failures took much longer to repair than the analysis team estimated. As a result, planned or predictive maintenance would have been more appropriate than corrective maintenance.
Example 4
- Records indicate that tube failures were occurring in heat exchangers shortly after plant startup. The failures were determined to be caused by hot spots that developed when contaminants collected in portions of the heat exchanger. Event-based maintenance activities implemented to clean out the system prior to startup should be implemented. This would remove the contaminants and prevent the heat exchanger failures.
Example 5
- Periodic maintenance, performed every 6 months, was put in place for a set of six pumps. However, experience at another plant indicated that most failures could be avoided using condition-based maintenance. Monitoring every month resulted in repair activities being performed every 6 to 18 months based on monitoring pump vibration, reducing parts costs and down time.
Example 6
- Maintenance activities had been specified for the running components of a wood chipping machine (i.e., bearings, blades) but no maintenance activities had been specified for the safety interlocks associated with the machine. The analysis procedure did not require safety interlocks to be addressed. As a result, an operator's arm was amputated when the emergency stop feature failed.
Example 7
- Mechanics were always being pulled from scheduled work to work on "emergencies." The percentage of corrective maintenance was 80%. This had not changed since the development of additional planned, predictive, and event-based maintenance activities.
Typical Recommendations
- Determine the appropriate level of maintenance for all equipment in the facility that is important to safety, reliability, quality, or security.
- Ensure that the analysis process addresses all aspects of equipment operation important to safety, reliability, quality, and security.
- Ensure that personnel are provided with sufficient guidance to select appropriate maintenance tasks for different types of equipment.
- Ensure that personnel who are responsible for developing the equipment reliability program have the proper training.
- Assign additional resources to equipment with a demonstrated history of problems.
- Reduce maintenance on equipment that has no significant impact on production, reliability, quality, safety or security and that can be easily repaired or replaced.
- Review the frequency of periodic maintenance. If the same activity routinely needs to be performed between scheduled intervals, shorten the periodic maintenance interval.
- For each piece of critical equipment, develop a reliability program plan that is based on recognized and generally accepted good engineering practices (RAGAGEPs), manufacturer's recommendations, equipment history, company standards, and the expected consequence(s) of failure of the specific equipment item.
- Ensure that appropriate personnel are aware of recommended practices contained in recognized and generally accepted good engineering practices (RAGAGEPs) and apply their requirements.
- Develop a company- or facility-wide standard that summarizes applicable recognized and generally accepted good practices (RAGAGEPs) related to the design, test, and inspection requirements for each type of equipment.
- Periodically review the inspection, test, and preventive maintenance (ITPM) plan for each type of equipment (or equipment item) to determine whether there is redundancy or whether the activities could be accomplished more efficiently if they were linked or done in a specific sequence.
Cross-References
| Version 10 Element(s) | |
|---|---|
| Node ID | Node Name |
| 22 | No Program |
| 23 | Program LTA |
| 24 | Analysis/Design Procedure LTA |
| 25 | Inappropriate Type of Maintenance Assigned |
| 27 | Allocation of Resources LTA |
| Maritime Element(s) | |
|---|---|
| Node ID | Node Name |
| 35 | No Program |
| 36 | Program Inadequacy |
| 38 | Inappropriate Maintenance Type Applied |