On Condition Tasks

On condition maintenance relies on the capability to detect failures before they happen so that preventive maintenance can be initiated. If, during an inspection, maintenance personnel can find evidence that the equipment is approaching the end of its life, then it may be possible to delay the failure, prevent it from happening or replace the equipment at the earliest convenience rather than allowing the failure to occur and possibly cause severe consequences. In BlockSim, on condition tasks consist of an inspection task that triggers a preventive task when an impending failure is detected during inspection.

For on condition tasks, the Inspection properties allow you to configure the inspection portion of the task, and the options are identical to those available for configuring inspection tasks. The On Condition Task (Upon Detection) properties allow you to configure the preventive portion of the task. The options are the same as those available for configuring preventive tasks, except that the Task Scheduling properties are not available. Instead, Failure Detection properties are used to specify the "warning period" that spans from the time when a potential failure can first be detected to the time when the failure occurs.

To define the Failure Detection properties, first specify when the task is likely to detect an imminent failure. If you choose When a certain percentage of the life of the item has been consumed, you must then specify the percentage of the item's life that must have elapsed in order for approaching failure to be detected. This is called the failure detection threshold (FDT). For example, if the FDT is 0.9 and the item will fail at 1,000 days, the approaching failure can begin to be detected at 900 days. If you choose Within a fixed time frame prior to failure, you must then specify the amount of time before a failure when the approaching failure can be detected by inspection. This is called the P-F interval. For example, if the P-F interval is 200 days and the item will fail at 1,000 days, the approaching failure can begin to be detected at 800 days.

On condition tasks can be set to perform the preventive portion of the task even if the item failed before the approaching failure could be detected. If the inspection portion of the task is scheduled based on item age, you can answer Yes to the Perform this task even if the item failed before this task was scheduled to occur? option. (For more about this option, see Inspection Tasks.)

Note the following simulation assumptions regarding on condition tasks:

• An inspection that finds a block at or beyond the failure detection threshold or within the range of the P-F interval will trigger the associated preventive task as long as preventive maintenance can be performed on that block.
• If a non-downing inspection triggers a preventive maintenance action because the failure detection threshold or P-F interval range was reached, no other maintenance task will be performed between the inspection and the triggered preventive task; tasks that would otherwise have happened at that time due to system age, system down or group maintenance will be ignored.
• A preventive task that would have been triggered by a non-downing inspection will not happen if the block fails during the inspection, as corrective maintenance will take place instead.
• If a failure will occur within the failure detection threshold or P-F interval set for the inspection, but the preventive task is only supposed to be performed when the system is down, the simulation waits until the requirements of the preventive task are met to perform the preventive maintenance.
• If the on condition inspection triggers the preventive maintenance part of the task, the simulation assumes that the maintenance team will forego any routine servicing associated with the inspection part of the task. In other words, the restoration will come from the preventive maintenance, so any restoration factor defined for the inspection will be ignored in these circumstances.