SRC Forum - Message Replies

Forum: Reliability & Maintainability Questions and Answers

Topic: Reliability & Maintainability Questions and Answers

Topic Posted by: Reliability & Maintainability Forum (src_forum@alionscience.com )
Organization: System Reliability Center
Date Posted: Mon Aug 31 12:47:36 US/Eastern 1998

Original Message:

Posted by: Dabney
Date posted: Mon Mar 12 15:44:04 US/Eastern 2007
Subject: Reliability in a non-manufacturing environment
Message:
I am familiar with the concept of reliability and RCFA's when I worked for a manufacturing company. Now, I work in the services industry, and I have been given a project regarding this topic by my director, who has a manufacturing background as well. He would like me to apply basic reliability and an RCFA type methodology to our department. We do similar processes every quarter and year-end with occasional errors. Is anyone aware of any non-manufacturing reliability website or white papers?

Reply:

Subject: Reliability in a non-manufacturing environment
Reply Posted by: David Dylis (ddylis@alionscience.com )
Organization: Alion SRC
Date Posted: Thu Jun 7 11:11:57 US/Eastern 2007
Message:
Many aspects of reliability including RCFA can be used for non-manufacturing applications. In a technical paper entitled: “IMPROVING CUSTOMER SATISFACTION IN THE SERVICE INDUSTRY USING FAILURE MODE & EFFECTS ANALYSIS” by Debbie Vermilion the value of using Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) for service related applications is provided. The paper identified that “in the services industry, FMEA is critical because once a service encounter has occurred (and resulting customer dissatisfaction has ensued), any corrective actions taken by the service provider will likely be futile. With FMEA, potential failure modes in the process are identified in anticipation of the service encounter. In this way, the potential for errors is reduced or eliminated, allowing for only the smallest probability of customer dissatisfaction.” It further goes on to identify that once a service provider decides FMEA is the right choice, several steps should be pursued to implement the process:

1. Select a service process to be analyzed
2. Define responsibility (team, engineers, designers, developers etc)
3. Flow-chart the process
4. List and describe all failure modes at each step in the process
5. Perform a criticality assessment by determining the risk level for each fault by failure probability or severity of failure
6. Rank the faults in terms of priority
7. Design changes to reduce the risk of the highest priority failure modes
8. Specify outcome measures and criteria to determine the success of the changes
9. Specify a time frame
10. Implement the changes and evaluate
Design changes should continue until all possible causes of failure have been reduced or eliminated. As mentioned earlier, while FMEA can technically be performed at any stage, ideally it is performed at the process design stage. This way, potential problems can be identified and prevented before the process is put in place.”

A paper by de Carvalho, A.A.P.; Scapin, C.A titled Service fault-tree-analysis: its use for improving the efficiency of service processes “presents a case study in which the technique of fault tree analysis (FTA) was applied in solving a complex systemic failures in a service process carried out by a major aviation company in Southeastern Brazil. A procedure for analyzing and solving problems on service/administrative processes was developed and tested in this company, with significant results, helping to address organizational issues. This systemic failure analysis project generated action plans, through the analysis of the maintenance process in this company. These plans eliminated the occurrence of faults and consequent delays in the maintenance of aircraft.”

The Alion SRC can provide assistance in the application of RMSQ techniques to service industry applications. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.