Effective ship maintenance strategy using a risk and criticality based approach

The insight about maintenance tasks has evolved over the years in great depth. Different methodologies have been applied in industrial sectors such as the aviation, nuclear, chemical and manufacturing industries among others. Proposed methods include the Reliability Centered Maintenance approach, Condition Monitoring and Risk Based Inspection. In maritime industry, maintenance is broadly subdivided into three categories: corrective (or run-to-failure), preventive (or time-interval based) and predictive maintenance. Inadequately maintained vessels increase the operational cost, reduce ship availability and operability, cause frequent inspections on board the ship and create over-occupied crews. Furthermore, ship owners/managers try to combine their valuable experience in the actual marine field with the technological advances in order to minimize maintenance related disorders. In the present paper, the background of ship maintenance is shown along with its various categories. A novel methodology which combines a risk and criticality approach is also demonstrated using the Failure Modes, Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) and the Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) tools. Moreover, a case study of machinery related equipment using actual field data demonstrates the results of the above mentioned method. Main outcomes are the identification of the critical items and operating procedures as well as determining the reliability of the system examined.