Reliability Target Assessment Based on Integrated Factors Method (IFM): A Real Case Study of a Sintering Plant

Abstract

The success of a company depends on customer’s satisfaction: quality, price, and service. These three goals depend in particular on R.A.M.S. characteristics: reliability, availability, maintainability, and safety. In the last few years, in order to guarantee high standards of reliability and maintainability, new methodologies and techniques have been developed to estimate the R.A.M.S. targets. In particular, the reliability target represents both the starting and the ending point of R.A.M.S. analysis. The design of the reliability target of a system is a crucial aspect of reliability analysis, as it affects the performance of the system and components. This paper aims to develop a new approach called “IFM Target,” to define the reliability target for complex systems through the integrated factors method, to combine the advantages of usually used approaches, and to overcome some criticalities highlighted in a careful literature analysis. The proposed method has been applied on a sintering system. The results show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.