Can we make maintenance decisions on risk analysis results?

Abstract

For several branches of industry, an increasingly competitive environment has raised important questions concerning maintenance in plant systems. For example, the 1996 deregulation in Sweden’s electricity sector has resulted in increased competition among the country’s power producers. To survive the competition, suppliers have to reduce maintenance costs, i.e. handle maintenance more efficiently. Risk analysis is one tool decision makers can use to help them prioritise as they plan maintenance actions. There are a number of different approaches to risk analysis. As the results of an analysis must form a reliable basis for decision making, it is important to consider whether the quality of the results will vary significantly with the risk analysis approach chosen. This paper presents a comparative study based on three independent risk analyses performed on a specific hydro‐power plant. The comparison and evaluation of the analyses reveal major differences in performance and results, along with various factors that affect the quality of the analyses. The study establishes the importance of a well‐planned requirement specification and the need to analyse and interpret risk analysis results, before making maintenance decisions.

Augmenting the Risk Management Process

“…The same argument also holds for the usage of sensitivity analyses; both on riskand uncertainty analyses. This idea is also supported by (Backlund and Hannu 2002). 3.…”

“…The third step -response planning, or risk management strategies -depends directly on the risk analysis. If the assignment is as arbitrary as the study of (Backlund and Hannu 2002) shows, then the suggested responses will vary greatly. Thus, a more reliable way of analysing risks must be found, which is discussed in Section 4.…”

“…This step is filled with shortcomings and potential pitfalls of the serious kind. This step relies heavily on subjectivism, and that is a challenge in itself because it can produce widely different results as (Backlund and Hannu 2002) point out. The challenge was that there existed no consistent decision support for improving the model other than to revise the input -sadly sometimes done to obtain preconceived results.…”

“…Nonetheless, there exists numerous risk management approaches, but all suffer from a major limitation: They cannot produce consistent decision support to the extent desired and subsequently they become less trustworthy. As an example; three independent consulting companies performed a risk analysis of a hydro-electric power plant and reached widely different conclusions, see (Backlund and Hannu 2002).…”

Activity-based risk management for the acquisition of electronic mine safety equipment

“…Thus, regardless the level of experience of the assessment team, the lack of a systems engineering (SE) approach to system safety can still lead to invalid or suboptimal results (Aven, 2009;Leveson, 2012) ® Impact of technology: Due to the lack of independent assessment, risk assessment quality varies between different safety equipment suppliers, since suppliers are sometimes required to perform assessments on their own equipment. This makes it very hard to identify a safety product or system with the lowest risk score as a uniform measurement standard is not used across assessments (Backlund and Hannu, 2002). The technology supplier is, in many cases, not aware of the exact operating conditions under which a product will operate and often does not take productivity into account ® Human integration: Observations showed that consideration of human performance variability was not evident in risk analysis processes as a particular focus.…”