Understanding Criticality - Myths and Pitfalls to Avoid

Risk Assessment

Date posted: 04/09/15

Tacoma Zach, P.Eng., of Ontario and Alberta, Canada, is a Certified Reliability Leader and CEO of Uberlytics, experts in criticality analysis. With over two decades in operations, Tacoma now helps organizations discover what is most critical to their mission and uses that information to optimize their asset management. Understanding criticality and where it fits in your reliability engineering plans is, well, critical to the success of your asset management program. But there are some commonly held myths and misperceptions about criticality. These top myths and pitfalls often prevent organizations from performing a comprehensive criticality analysis is. Simply stated, criticality refers to the relative importance of an asset or system to the mission of an organization. Here are seven myths and pitfalls to avoid in understanding criticality in your operation - 1. We know what is most critical already, so we do not need to do a criticality analysis. 2. We just did a HAZOP - FMEA so we do not need another analysis. We have all the information we need. 3. A criticality analysis is a very expensive and time-consuming effort. We are not sure it is worth the effort. 4. An expensive asset is definitely a critical asset. Something inexpensive can not be that critical. 5. If something is in poor condition, then it is critical. 6. If it is not broke, do not fix it. 7. Phew. We finished our criticality analysis. We can check that box. Wrong.