METHODOLOGICAL PROPOSAL FOR THE EVALUATION OF RELIABILITY IMPACTS IN COMPLEX SYSTEMS. APPLIED CASE TO A CRUSHING COPPER PLANT

Abstract

Analysis of the reliability and maintainability of a production process is relevant to the determination of availability and the capacity of the plant. In order to quantify the importance of each equipment in the systemic availability and improve decision-making related to asset management, it is proposed a new analysis tool: the methodology of the Expected Impact of Fault (IEF). It has as main novelty quantifying indicators of the real influence of each element in the total reliability/availability of the productive system. This is applicable in any logical functional configuration. In this way the importance of the equipment is set and is quantified more accurately the impact of his possible unavailability. The methodology starts with the management of the process data to analyze, and then proceeds to develop an analysis based on the classical technique of block diagram of reliability (RBD), which structure the teams according to their functional configuration by levels, in ascending order, to determine the availability of each item and of the system in general. Subsequently, IEF methodology makes descendant analysis, from the availability of the system to the impact of each element in particular in the expected availability of the system. This impact is expressed through indicators of Propagation of the Time of Failure (FPD) and the index of Expected Impact of Operational Criticality (ICO) of an element on the whole of the system. The use of these indicators has shown important results to evaluate the design and performance of a plant. In this case the methodology is applied to the actual data of a plant's crushing of a mining process.