ERIN Engineering and Research, Inc. (ERIN), an SKF Group Company, has developed an integrated reliability, availability, and capacity factor analysis tool for application to any industrial facility from a computer manufacturer to a power plant. This tool, the PLANTFORMAä software program, uses standardized reliability methods and applies them to the problem of estimating integrated plant performance. It has been successfully used for both reliability assessments of plant operations and in-progress plant design.

Facility reliability analysis is based on the results of a fault tree model developed using any of a number of commercial fault tree codes. The fault tree model defines the combinations of events, such as component unavailabilities and human error rates, which can impact facility performance. The PLANTFORMA program expands fault tree results into an integrated set of scenarios quantified to generate the following performance indicators for the facility:  

  • Availability factor
  • Capacity factor
  • Forced outage rate (power plants)
  • Unplanned capability loss factor
  • Frequency of lost production events
  • Expected production losses (per year)
  • Cost of expected production losses (per year)

The PLANTFORMA program also provides reliability importance measures with respect to these performance indicators that can be evaluated at various levels, including component level, system level, scenario group level, and individual scenario.

The PLANTFORMA software product is more advanced than any other plant reliability tool because it uses proven fault tree analysis techniques to resolve the system dependency issue ignored by all other commercial software.  It also eliminates the need for the assumption that components are maintained independently of each other. This code expresses the problem of plant reliability and availability in terms of scenarios involving a loss of plant production, rather than in terms of component availabilities. Scenario development mirrors the way in which actual plant events occur to facilitate the collection and analysis of plant data to support the model. Also included is the capability to include the risk of outage extensions. Not only does the PLANTFORMA™ software rigorously compute many plant reliability factors, it also develops a full set of reliability importance measures unavailable elsewhere.

 
 
Benefits
  • Compatibility with state-of-the-art PRA technology and methodology
  • Rigorous analysis of system dependencies
  • Unique calculations of component, system or group importance measures
  • Ability to quantify plant vulnerabilities in terms of economic factors


Services

  • Database development
  • On-site support
  • Training and consulting
   

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ERIN Engineering and Research, Inc., an SKF Group Company