RCM based Framework for Maintenance Strategy for more efficient, reliable, and effective Crane Operations

Abstract

The Maritime Industry is a vast, complex, and still growing business in the world. Although the focus of the Maritime sector has been very much towards digitalization and de/carbonization, old issues such as maintenance management have not yet reached its optimality. Often maintenance plans are established from the manufacturer's recommendations, but it does not necessarily prevent critical functional failures to happen. Consequently, operational costs increase, as well as the risk for accidents to happen. This thesis aims to apply the Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) approach as a framework for the maintenance strategy of JIB cranes. Many maritime units such as platform rigs, construction vessels, and bulk carrier ships use cranes on its daily activities and the nonavailability of this asset results in downtimes that represent a considerable loss of money. The RCM method has been successfully used by other industries such as Aerospace, Nuclear Plants, and Oil & Gas. The RCM, if correctly applied, can result in higher maintenance effectiveness, more reliable and safer operations. Through a detailed study of the crane system, historical reports, meetings, and interviews, failure modes of the crane will be identified and registered on an FMECA worksheet. Thus, the failure modes will be ranked though its significance generating an RPN number for each failure mode concerning operation and safety. The next step of the process is to analyze the failure modes with the highest RPN through the RCM Decision Diagram. The expected result is to identify tasks that can reduce the probability of those failures modes to happen or to minimize the effect of its consequences. Due to the short amount of time, the RCM will be applied only to the function hoisting of the JIB crane. Further recommended actions are to implement the proposed tasks to the existent maintenance plan in force, as well as the application of the RCM to the sub-system luffing, slewing, control and structure so the whole crane system can benefit from this maintenance framework strategy.