1. Operation & Maintenance Engineering Detailed activity description

2. The role of Maintenance Engineering
Maintenance Engineering consists of knowledge and skills aimed at reducing the cost of maintenance and increase system productivity and safety.
It is a process which is a crucial part of Elettraenergia’s corporate policy.
Turning maintenance from a cost centre into a profit centre.
Create consensus on the maintenance approach.
It has available management and operation tools to monitor the organisation processes of the maintenance system (spare parts, personnel, equipment, etc.).
Maintenance Engineering
Customer

3. Activities implementation stages
The engineering services proposed by Elettraenergia cover all the stages making up a system’s life cycle.
Elettraenergia can offer its customers several contract options:
Consultancy during the Design stage, to enhance system reliability and availability.
Implementation of a maintenance engineering process capable of optimising maintenance costs.
Use of an information system to monitor the effectiveness and efficiency of maintenance plans.
System maintenance operations and management.

4. Objectives
Maintenance engineering is aimed at reducing system management costs and optimising maintenance organisation and management, as well as spare part warehouse stocks.
Maintenance cost reduction is intended in its widest meaning, i.e. including “direct” maintenance costs (labour and spare parts) and production loss costs (loss of availability, efficiency and quality) related to the systems.
Maintenance engineering involves the methods applied by personnel and system changes, and aims to increase safety and ensure compliance with law requirements, by being an interface with the Safety function.

5. The methods applied

6. RAM analyses
The objective of RAM (Reliability, Availability, Maintainability) analyses is to increase a system’s ability to operate normally, for a long time, without any failures.
RAM analyses contribute to optimising maintenance policies in order to reduce critical issues and consequently increase system operating efficiency and availability. The following standards are applied:
FMECA: MIL-STD-1629.
PLANS: MIL-STD-470, MIL-STD-785, EN 50126, EN50129.
PREDICTIONS: HDBK-217-NPRD-OREDA.
FTA-RBD: IEC
Calculated parameters are the following:
Reliability R(t).
MTTR (Mean Time To Repair).
MDT (Machine Down Time).
MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures).
A (intrinsic, achieved, operating availability).

7. The Life Cycle Cost (LCC) analysis
Correctly considering all costs during the design stage is vital to make an accurate estimate of the items making up the system’s life cycle cost.
The LCC is used as a managerial tool in the decision-making processes related to the design of a system’s costs.
Maintenance costs include preventive maintenance and corrective maintenance costs.
Operating costs are related to the system’s energy consumption throughout its useful life.
Investment costs include equipment, spare parts, training and maintenance documentation costs. The following methodologies are applied: EC
UNIFE – GUIDELINE.

8. Safety analyses
The objective is to accurately assess the risk associated with an accident or a system as a whole.
Safety analyses are used during system design to reduce the likelihood of a hazardous event, thus taking a preventive measure to reduce and/or eliminate a risky situation.
Safety analyses can considerably reduce the unexpected events that are typical of system start-up and maintenance.
Risk assessment is the result of damage frequency (F) * damage consequence (C).
The following methodologies are applied:
MIL-STD-882, MIL-HDBK-764.
IEC61508.

9. RCM analysis & Maintenance Plans
Maintenance plans are drawn up using the RCM (Reliability Centred Maintenance) analysis.
It has been largely proven that the application of the above-mentioned methodology leads to a significant increase in system availability, without raising operating costs.
The RCM analysis identifies maintenance types and intervals only in relation to the actual critical features of the various components.
The RCM approach is therefore based on the collection of information and the identification of relations between the various components, in accordance with the FMEA (Failure Mode Effect Analysis) technology, including safety analyses and issues.
The following methodology is applied :
RCM in accordance with MIL-STD-2173.
Maintenance Plan

10. The Maintenance Information System
The maintenance process needs to be accurately managed, in order to ensure full system efficiency and productivity, thus allowing for a real reduction of management costs.
The MIS (Maintenance Information System) is structured in such a way as to allow for the management and control of all maintenance-related activities, going beyond the concept of a plain data filing system used to schedule maintenance activities.
The MIS has a modular structure which allows to manage different types of systems.
The MIS implementation stage is entrusted to a team of experts.
Operation
and
Maintenance
MIS
Job Orders
Maintenance Data
Engineering
Data
Collection

11. Customer approach The typical work stages are listed below:
Feasibility study
Proposal to the Customer
Project implementation
Constant support
Monitoring of performances
Analysis of results

12. Working team structure
A team of engineers working in the design function carries out all Maintenance Engineering activities.
The team works throughout all plant/system creation process stages:
during the marketing stage,
during the offer stage,
during project implementation,
during the service stage.