PROCEDURE FOR IMPROVING AND EVALUATING RELIABILITY, AVAILABILITY AND MAINTAINABILITY IN THE CUBAN CHEMICAL INDUSTRY

Abstract

Introduction:
In Cuba, chemical industry is characterized by low profitability, ineffective technological investments, a high number of failures, and high operating costs. This is due to the lack of foresight and technical evaluations of aspects related to reliability,
maintainability and availability.
Objective:
To propose an evaluation and improvement procedure for reliability, maintainability and availability of the industry, during its life cycle.
Materials and Methods:
Used tools and methods such as reliability, maintainability, availability and criticality were analyzed, and their influence on various stages life cycle of an equipment or system was incorporated in this analysis.
Results and Discussion:
A procedure that integrates a group of techniques and tools was proposed, in order to apply them throughout the facilities life cycle, which will allow predicting and minimizing the occurrence of stoppages due to failures, as well as the identification of
the most critical areas and equipment.
Conclusions:
This procedure covers the entire life cycle of an equipment or installation, facilitates decision-making according to the industry stage when repairing or replacing equipment or installation and enables the generation of maintenance policies to be applied for the optimization of operational and stadium costs.