Equipment critical analysis: The need

for an effective maintenance program

Oil refineries and large petrochemical plants contain thousands of pieces of process
and utilities equipment that are subject to wear, erosion, deterioration, aging, etc.,
resulting in increasing breakdowns and outages. Imagine being a maintenance
engineer and receiving 50 work orders during an overhaul with a limited budget,
time, labor, spare parts, tools, machines, etc. How does that engineer prioritize the
work?

Oil refineries and large petrochemical plants contain thousands of pieces of

process and utilities equipment that are subject to wear, erosion, deterioration,
aging, etc., resulting in increasing breakdowns and outages. Imagine being a
maintenance engineer and receiving 50 work orders during an overhaul with a
limited budget, time, labor, spare parts, tools, machines, etc. How does that engineer
prioritize the work?

An important daily challenge at all hydrocarbon processing plants is equipment

failure, which can have many causes and consequences. End users not only
investigate causes, but also determine the best strategy to mitigate or avoid
consequences. The consequences of an equipment failure include risks related to:

 Safety
 Environment
 Production loss
 Maintenance cost.

Each type of equipment has a unique role with a different criticality index. Criticality
is the failure’s consequence in relation to health, safety, environment, loss of
production and maintenance cost (TABLE 1). Selecting the equipment criticality
index is explained in the following sections.

EQUIPMENT CRITICAL ANALYSIS

Equipment critical analysis is a quantitative analysis of equipment faults, and ranking
them in order of serious consequences on safety, environment, production loss and
maintenance cost. The key benefit of this analysis is to provide the means to
recognize high-criticality vs. low-criticality equipment, reduce the level of uncertainty
and focus on high-priority maintenance tasks. The analysis also helps select the best
and most economic maintenance strategy, prioritize work orders and decide on
insurance and the demand on spare parts. The inputs, tools, techniques and outputs
of this analysis are depicted in TABLE 2.

Input
The first step is to clarify the main systems inside a plant with unit boundaries. This
action is normally accomplished by marking up piping and instrumentation diagrams
(P&IDs) into main and sub-systems. For example, a gas compression unit in a gas
plant can be divided as:

 Main system—scrubbing, compression, cooling and other auxiliary systems

 Sub-systems—includes components of the main system. For example, scrubbing
would include scrubbers, pressure safety valves (PSVs), shutdowns, alarms, etc. as
sub-systems.

For criticality analysis, the following drawings and documentation should be

available: detailed plant/system description or control narratives, datasheets, P&IDs,
process flow diagrams (PFDs), single-line diagrams, cause-and-effect diagrams,
shutdown logic, etc.

To conduct the analysis, which mainly assesses the consequences of equipment

failures and the degree of sparing and redundancy, the consequence classes must
be properly defined prior to beginning the analysis. This helps assess the
consequences of equipment failures, and the degree of sparing and redundancy.
The definition of the consequence classes should be conducted in accordance with
the company’s criteria for safety and the environment, and reflect actual plant
operations for determining economic losses, such as costs related to lost operation.
Decision criteria normally includes four main indexes for safety, environment,
production, and operation and maintenance costs. Typically, each index contains a
table with three different levels (A, B, C), as shown in TABLES 3 and 4.

Hidden faults that are not evident to the operator during normal operation should
also be considered as input to the assessment.

Tools and techniques

Expert judgment should apply to the inputs used to develop the equipment criticality
list/classification, and to all technical details during this assessment. Such expertise
is provided by any group or individual with specialized knowledge or training in
safety, cost estimation, operation, maintenance, environment, health, design, etc.
Document analysis is used as another tool. A wide range of documents and
drawings may be analyzed to help provide a more effective and efficient study.

Several group creativity activities, such as brainstorming, nominal group techniques,

etc., can be organized to assess equipment. The analytical hierarchy process (AHP)
method can be used as a powerful tool to prioritize assets according to their
criticality. The AHP is built on three basic principles: decompositions, comparative
judgment and hierarchy composition of synthesis priorities. Decomposition is another
technique for dividing and subdividing systems and sub-systems into smaller
components. A criticality assessment and respective plan are developed based on a
set of hypotheses and assumptions.

 An assumptions analysis validates all assumptions used during the study, and

identifies risks to the assessments due to inaccuracy or incompleteness of the
assumptions.
  A risk probability analysis covers the probability that specific failure risk will occur.
Risk impact analysis includes potential consequences and effects on safety, health,
environment, production, and operational and maintenance costs.
 Risk data quality assessment is a technique to evaluate the degree to which the
data about risks is useful for risk management (i.e., the degree to which the risk is
understood and the accuracy, quality, reliability and integrity of the data about the
risk). Using quantitative risk analysis (QRA), the effect of identified failure risks on
operational and maintenance costs, safety, health and environments can be
quantitatively analyzed.

Application of equipment criticality index

The result of the assessment will be an equipment criticality list or classification.
Advantages of the criticality list are that it:

 Determines the most efficient, effective and economic maintenance strategy for each
piece of equipment (e.g., predictive maintenance, preventive maintenance, run to
failure, corrective maintenance, total productive maintenance, etc.)
 Is a valuable input report to determine the optimum and economic spare parts
inventory needed, and to decide which piece of equipment needs insurance or capital
spare parts
 Helps determine the overall priority for performing maintenance tasks when many
maintenance activities, or “work order priorities” exist
 Determines, at a high level, the risk mitigation strategy to be applied to equipment
(i.e., condition monitoring and defect elimination on high-criticality items)
 Helps operators decide conceptual and design evaluations of the high-critical
equipment, and prepare the corrective actions
 Helps reliability engineers focus on reliability improvement efforts on the most
“critical” equipment.

Mean time between failures (MTBF)

To analyze and determine the equipment criticality index, personnel must define a
maintenance index, an index of probability of failure or an MTBF index (TABLE 5).

Using evaluation tables for assessment

First, to define and classify failure for the equipment, the following questions should
be addressed:

 What are the consequences if the equipment works below the requirements?
 What are the consequences if the equipment is completely out of service?

Next, consider the most serious and actual equipment failure scenario. Performance
degradation due to equipment failure should also be considered. The effect of failure
on safety, environment, production, and operational and maintenance costs is
determined and integrated into the MTBF index (TABLE 6).

CASE STUDY
Typically, naphtha hydrotreaters and octanizer units in oil refineries contain 13
hydrogen (H2) gas compressors to boost, recycle or export H2 gas. In this case study,
the main 5-MW, API 618 standard H2 recycle gas compressors were considered.
Each reciprocating compressor had a 100% spare machine with two stages and four
throws.

Possible compressor failures include:

 Valve failure
 Coupling failure
 Piston rings failure
 Cross head shoes failure
 Bearing failures.

Coupling bearing and cross failures are the most serious failures, and can result in
the compressor being put out of service.

Step 1: Safety index evaluation. TABLE 3 results to Index C, because there is no

potential for injury and/or fire after failure.

Step 2: Environment index evaluation. TABLE 3 results to Index B, because

compressor cylinders’ gas should be sent to the flare to allow workers to begin
maintenance activity on the failed compressor.

Step 3: Production index evaluation. TABLES 3 and 4 result to Index C, because

there is a spare machine, which causes no impact on production.

Step 4: Operation and maintenance cost index. TABLE 3 results to Index B. The

cost of spare parts, gas sent to the flare, manpower cost, tools, etc. are assumed
to be less than $30,000.

Note: MTBF index. TABLE 5 results to Index 2, with reference to maintenance

experience, type of bearing and vendor’s recommendation, it was learned that the
bearing failure was more than 5 yr old.

Based on TABLES 3, 4, 5 and 6, the criticality indexes for this case study are shown
in Table 7. 
As a result, the higher equipment criticality index should be selected as the final
equipment index for this compressor (i.e., M for medium).

Criticality index evaluation

The flow chart shown in FIG. 1 facilitates the process of criticality index evaluation
for equipment.
 Fig. 1. Criticality index evaluation for equipment.

This critical analysis can help the maintenance team prioritize equipment, select the
best economic maintenance program, prioritize work orders despite resource
constraints, plan for spare parts, reduce maintenance costs, plan for design
modifications and upgrades, and increase productivity. The criticality analysis shown
in this article clearly identifies the advantages of having selected equipment that is
suitable for successful operations, with respect to production, business costs, safety
and the environment. HP

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

The author is grateful to all of the people who supported his efforts and provided
input for gathering data and finalizing the findings for this article.