|
ility Engineering
|
| Rose & Laurel |
Engineering
|
|
|
Engineering
|
|
|
|
The business of ility Engineering is to increase your profits by making your operations more efficient and, as a bonus, safer. To do this, we offer a range of consultancy services in the reliability, availability, maintainability and safety of critical systems. ility Engineering is mainly active in the field of chemical process plants but we have also worked on systems as diverse as the Uzi sub-machine gun and the Space Shuttle. Contact us...
We can perform complete plant analyses for reliability, maintainability and availability, thus identifying weaknesses and reducing expensive downtime. From our proprietary database of failure information, we can provide uniquely accurate failure data on process components and this can be used in mathematical models of plant availability which allow you to optimize equipment and resources.
Simply stated, Availability is a measure of the proportion of time that a plant spends working, compared to when it should be working. Availability directly affects profits and is what the owners of most continuous process plants want to maximise.
ility Engineering has proven software for Availability analysis and a unique and extensive database of process equipment failure rate data. We can use this to model plant availability and identify problem areas - thereby increasing profits and reducing maintenance costs. Availability is a function of Reliability and Maintainability - noted below.
We can provide:
- Availability analyses based on plant data.
- Availability predictions.
- Availability improvement plans.
- Training in Availability methods.
Simply stated, Reliability is a measure of how often a thing fails. Without Reliability, there can be no Safety and Availability will suffer. Contrary to popular opinion, equipment failure, rather than human error, is the dominant immediate cause of major incidents.
ility Engineering has paid considerable attention to process plant reliability, an area in which there is little good data, and we offer a selection of such data free to our users. Through the LiFE Project, we are also able to offer failure rate models for process equipment which are a function of time.
We can offer:
- Equipment failure rate analyses based on historical data to either the exponential or linear distributions.
- Equipment and system failure rate predictions to either the exponential or linear distributions.
- Failure Modes and Effects Analyses (FMEA).
- Fault Tree Analysis (FTA).
- Training in Reliability methods.
ility Engineering does not do analyses of failed equipment, but we can recommend companies which do.
Maintainability can be thought of as a measure of how easily equipment can be returned to service after a failure. Like Reliability, it is a key component of Availability. It can easily be shown that improvements to Maintainability are more cost-effective than improvements in equipment reliability. Unfortunately, Maintainability is often neglected on process plant. By analysing existing maintenance practices according to Maintainability practices, one of our clients was able to save £50,000 per year by cutting turn-around time on flue gas precipitators.
We can offer:
- Maintainability analyses of existing or planned systems and equipment.
- Fault coverage analyses, including Fault Detection and Failure Location.
- Maintenance FMEA.
- Task analyses.
- Training in Maintainability methods.
In the area of safety, we offer the usual methods of HAZOP, FMEA, FTA, etc. and these can be extended into such areas as computer control and maintenance procedures. Some further details are given here. ility Engineering has pioneered the use of Sneak Analysis - a methodology for identifying design errors - and in this area we can offer the most comprehensive expertise available in Europe.
ility Engineering provides partof the training in the MSc course in Process Safety and Loss Prevention, offered by the University of Sheffield (UK) and sponsored by HSE and IChemE.
We can offer:
- HAZOP - with or without Sneak Analysis.
- Failure Modes and Effects Analysis for safety.
- Fault Tree Analysis (FTA).
- Functional hazard identification.
- Sneak Analysis.
- Safety Management.
- Training in the above methods.
Most of our work is confidential but some projects that ility Engineering has been involved in are:
ility Engineering also provides training in all areas of RAM and safety, together with a variety of specialised publications and editorial services through our publishing arm, Rose and Laurel.
ility Engineering provides two of the course modules (Modules 4 and 9) for the MSc degree in Process Safety and Loss Prevention, run jointly by the University of Sheffield, the Institute of Chemical Engineers (IChemE), and the UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE).
Dr Cris Whetton, founder of ility Engineering, writes regularly for the Instrumentation, Systems, and Automation Society (formerly the Instrument Society of America - ISA). He is also known as a writer on literature and on military history.
|
ility Engineering
|