The application of condition based facility management on cable dehydration systems

Abstract

The objective of this project was to investigate and develop a new maintenance strategy for the Total Facilities Management Company (TFMC) which would drastically improve the availability of the environmental equipment in a cost-effective manner. In the study, a new Condition Based Facility Management (CBFM) strategy and methodology was developed that overcame the historical downfalls of Condition Based Maintenance and improved the value release of data encapsulated within Condition Monitoring. At the outset, the different maintenance strategies that are in use today were examined and the best practices of each were selected for incorporation into a new approach. The concept of Condition Monitoring was then adapted to suit the Facility Manager. This included: - Identification of equipment condition parameters representing a holistic view of the plant ldentification of possible modes of failures with high severity consequence and high likelihood of occurrence Design or selection of sensors to measure the equipment parameters identified above Collection, and processing of data from these sensors into engineering values presenting the equipment condition The current Remote Alarm Monitoring System was the ideal platform for collection of the equipment condition data. In order to complete the CBFM system, methods and modules were developed, to first convert engineering data into predicted failure data or un-optimised equipment performance data and then further convert this data into action plans. In view of the imporlance of cables within the telecommunication chain, the Cable Dehydration System (CDH) was selected for the case study to apply and test the new CBFM strategy. The CBFM system immediately highlighted several problem areas within the current maintenance strategy which the previous Planned Preventative Maintenance system was not able to detect. As a result implementation of the CDFM system, the availability of the cable dehydration system was improved from 90% to 98%, and costs were reduced. The current actual maintenance costs of R4,3 million could be reduced to R3,1 million, saving of 27%. The case study demonstrated the success of the new CBFM approach and can now be used on other environmental equipment in TFMC.