Knowledge Based Asset Integrity™ (KBAI™)

Safely increase the reliability of critical assets and reduce overall maintenance costs

Knowledge Based Asset Integrity™ technology (KBAI™) enables organizations to dramatically increase the reliability of critical assets and reduce overall maintenance costs. Traditional reactive and time-based maintenance approaches are unable to deliver the strategic alignment of financial and operational objectives like KBAI™.

KBAI™ is KBM's patented risk-based asset modelling technology at the core of the Arivu™ platform. The intelligence within the KBAI™ modelling engine enables you to evolve your existing reactive and time-based maintenance strategies, and move into a risk-based asset management approach.  As you make this move, KBAI™ will improve critical asset reliability and integrity while simultaneously optimising maintenance costs.

With KBAI™, benefit is measured as a reduction in risk to your operation.  For example, a KBAI™ analysis may identify that a $5,000 preventive maintenance activity on a busy asset will reduce the risk of an unplanned outage by $10,000 and therefore should be undertaken. Or a KBAI™ analysis may identify that the same $5,000 maintenance activity on a less busy asset will only reduce risk by $100, and therefore should not be undertaken.

Traditional maintenance programmes are founded on time-based inspection, time-based preventive maintenance (pre-emptive replacement), and reactive maintenance (repair after failure).  A traditional approach does not place a priority on incorporating both risk of failure and the resulting business impact, thus over allocating resources to low risk assets and under allocating resources to high risk assets.

In contrast, KBAI™ is a dynamic inspection and maintenance approach which determines resource allocation based on risk.  KBAI™ increases resource allocation to high risk assets (where it is needed most) and reduces allocations to low risk assets.  KBAI™ will typically increase the reliability of critical assets and reduce expenditures on low risk, non-critical assets.

The KBAI™ Risk Matrix

KBAI™> identifies recommended inspection and maintenance intervals for assets with the risk matrix.  This characterises the criticality of an asset, or the main groups of components within an asset, by plotting the Probability of Failure (PoF) against the Consequence of Failure (CoF). Maintenance recommendations are then assigned according to the criticality, with separate criticalities calculated for the main groups of components within an asset, where appropriate.  An aging asset subject to high usage and performing an important function might be in the ‘high’ criticality category and thus require frequent maintenance, while a similar asset, working in conjunction with an identical standby asset, might be in the ‘low’ category thus requiring infrequent maintenance.

The PoF is driven by statistical analysis from our global customer and asset database, with a focus on Mean Time to Failure (MTTF) for each asset and their components.  This information is reinforced with public data sources and the insight from recognized Subject Matter Experts from Lloyd’s Register.  Over time, the KBAI™ regimes are refined with further MTTF data collected in the program.

The CoF assessment models a combination of factors to quantify an event based on availability, safety, environmental, and political impact. The CoF assessment can be driven by both qualitative and quantitative modelling techniques.  The more complex quantitative approach provides the most accurate estimates on the impact of an event, while the less complex qualitative approach provides a range of possible impacts and supports more subjective input.

The Bottom Line

KBAI™ offers a highly structured, financially defendable asset management approach to clients in asset intensive industries. KBAI™ represents the next generation of risk-based asset management technologies and provides companies with a rapidly implemented, practical and innovative solution for applying proven risk-based asset management principles across a large scale asset base.

KBAI™ also supports the principles within the guidance provided by British Standards’ Asset Management framework, PAS55 and provides asset intensive companies with a quick journey to extracting economic value from the physical asset base.