The Saudi ARAMCO, appointed “ARE” to provide Reliability Availability and Maintainability (RAM) studies, and the model that reflects the overall production of the Eastern Region Terminal Operations Department (ERTOD) operating facilities as by the process flow function. The scope of work consisted the following.
- Predict and assess the production availability of the facilities based on the (base case) configuration, and compare against the target availability;
- Identify area of vulnerability from a reliability point of view, i.e. single point of failures and any areas where the predicted unavailability may affect production;
- Identify and rank the equipment/ sub-systems, which are major contributors towards plant unavailability; and
- Confirm the sparing, operating and maintenance philosophies adopted to meet the total availability of the system, and define remedial actions or potential design changes.