MSc Reliability Engineering and Asset Management / Course details

Any organisation that relies on plant and equipment to generate products and/or services to customers’ needs to invest in equipment and ensure that that the equipment performs reliably for the required time. This is usually achieved through the implementation of asset management and maintenance activities. The cost-effective execution of these activities significantly depends on the implementation of a strategy. Once the appropriate strategy is developed, a suitable organisation has to be put in place to implement the strategy and plans. 

This unit is fundamentally about how to develop two crucial strategies (asset management and maintenance strategies) as well as the organisation to implement them in a cost-effective manner.

Syllabus:
•    Plant acquisition policy and life cycle costs
•    A methodology for understanding the maintenance function
•    Modelling industrial plant by process flow diagrams
•    Maintenance objectives and decision making
•    Principles of preventive maintenance; definition of a plant item; maintainability diagrams
•    Models for optimising the balance of preventive and corrective work
•    Definitions of operate to failure; fixed time maintenance; condition-based maintenance
•    Selection of the best maintenance procedure in the light of cost, safety factors and how the equipment fails
•    Assembling the maintenance tasks into a complete life plan for a unit or system
•    Producing a balanced forward maintenance plan from all of these unit life plans
•    The top down and bottom up approach to formulating a maintenance strategy
•    Principles behind Reliability Centred Maintenance & Total Productive Maintenance 
•    Industrial case studies
•    Assessing the risks from equipment failures
•    Life cycle costing
•    Developing asset strategies from business requirements
•    Linking asset policies  & strategies to plans
•    Leadership, communication & culture
•    Continuous improvement 
•    Implications of out-sourcing different activities
•    Main types of asset management & maintenance organisations & drivers for them

• Explain the purpose of asset management & maintenance within an organisation
• Review the historical development of maintenance principles and techniques
• Review the historical development of asset management principles & techniques
• Show how a structured and logical approach to the formulation of an all-embracing strategy for maintaining complex industrial plant can be developed
• Show how a structured and logical approach to the formulation of an asset management strategy can be developed for any industry
• Show how an asset management organisation & a maintenance organisation can be mapped and modelled
• Identify key decisions that define the structure and operation of asset management &  maintenance organisations
• Outline the business trends in asset management & maintenance organisations over the last thirty years

Any organisation that relies on plant and equipment to generate products and/or services to customers’ needs to invest in equipment and ensure that that the equipment performs reliably for the required time. This is usually achieved through the implementation of asset management and maintenance activities. The cost-effective execution of these activities significantly depends on the implementation of a strategy. Once the appropriate strategy is developed, a suitable organisation has to be put in place to implement the strategy and plans. 

This unit is fundamentally about how to develop two crucial strategies (asset management and maintenance strategies) as well as the organisation to implement them in a cost-effective manner.

Syllabus:
•    Plant acquisition policy and life cycle costs
•    A methodology for understanding the maintenance function
•    Modelling industrial plant by process flow diagrams
•    Maintenance objectives and decision making
•    Principles of preventive maintenance; definition of a plant item; maintainability diagrams
•    Models for optimising the balance of preventive and corrective work
•    Definitions of operate to failure; fixed time maintenance; condition-based maintenance
•    Selection of the best maintenance procedure in the light of cost, safety factors and how the equipment fails
•    Assembling the maintenance tasks into a complete life plan for a unit or system
•    Producing a balanced forward maintenance plan from all of these unit life plans
•    The top down and bottom up approach to formulating a maintenance strategy
•    Principles behind Reliability Centred Maintenance & Total Productive Maintenance 
•    Industrial case studies
•    Assessing the risks from equipment failures
•    Life cycle costing
•    Developing asset strategies from business requirements
•    Linking asset policies  & strategies to plans
•    Leadership, communication & culture
•    Continuous improvement 
•    Implications of out-sourcing different activities
•    Main types of asset management & maintenance organisations & drivers for them

The course is delivered as 5-full days of teaching on campus and subsequent discussion through the online Blackboard system.

•    Explain / describe how asset management & maintenance fits into an industrial organisation
•    Demonstrate of fundamental awareness of the role of maintenance in asset life cycle cost modelling
•    Explain / describe how business influences over the past 30 years have resulted in radically different maintenance and asset management organisations

•    Develop and/or review a maintenance strategy and asset management strategy for their own organisation or a case study
•    Develop or review a maintenance organisation and an asset management organisation for their own organisation

•    Provide a practical description of how a maintenance management system is used as well as identifying common risks through simple risk assessments through relevant case studies.
•    Analyse an existing maintenance organisation and propose improvements to it

•    Students will enhance their abilities in independent learning (through examinations and industry-simulated major assignments) as well as teamwork

Provided in person or via the Blackboard system.

•    Maintenance Strategy by Anthony Kelly Butterworth Heinmann ISBN 0 7506 2417 5 (2000)

•    Reliability Centred Maintenance (Second Edition) by John Mowbray Butterworth Heinmann ISBN 0 7506 3358 1 (1997)

•    Excellence in Maintenance Management by Stuart Emmett & Paul Wheelhouse Cambridge Academic ISBN 978 1903 499 65 8 (2011)

•    International Infrastructure Management Manual ISBN 0 473 06739 0 (2011)

•    ISO 55,000 2013 Parts 1, 2 & 3

•    Value Driven Maintenance by Mark Haarman ISBN 90-808270-2-9

•    Organisational Design by Galbraith Addison-Wesley ISBN 0 201 02558 2 (1977)

•    The Boundaryless Organisation by Ron Ashkenas Jossey-Bass ISBN  0 7879 0113 X (1995)

•    Competency Requirements for the management of physical assets & infrastructure published by the Institute of Asset Management 2006

•    Excellence in Maintenance Management by Stuart Emmett & Paul Wheelhouse Cambridge Academic  ISBN 978 1903 499 65 8 (2011)