Criticality Analysis for Maintenance Purposes

The purpose of this paper is to establish a basis for a criticality analysis, considered here as a prerequisite, a first required step to review the current maintenance programs, of complex in-service engineering assets. Review is understood as a reality check, a testing of whether the current maintenance activities are well aligned to actual business objectives and needs. This paper describes an efficient and rational working process and a model resulting in a hierarchy of assets, based on risk analysis and cost–benefit principles, which will be ranked according to their importance for the business to meet specific goals. Starting from a multi-criteria analysis, the proposed model converts relevant criteria impacting equipment criticality into a single score presenting the criticality level. Although detailed implementation of techniques like root cause failure analysis (RCFA) and reliability centered maintenance (RCM) will be recommended for further optimization of the maintenance activities, the reasons why criticality analysis deserves the attention of the engineers, maintenance and reliability managers are here precisely explained. A case study is presented to help the reader to understand the process and to operationalize the model.