O & M efficiency model: A dependability approach

The occurrence of equipment failures is one of the main causes of inefficiency. These events increase the operational costs and give rise to a loss of revenues or in the worst case they can even produce an accident with significant damages to people and the environment. The efficiency of the operation of an industrial installation in a given period of time has been defined use the ratio of the Dependability level achieved by the installation in a specified period of time and the sum of the corresponding Dependability and Undependability costs. The aim of this paper is the development of a methodology for the calculation of operating costs in industrial facilities that addresses the difficulty of performing a simple, homogeneous and objective evaluation of the operational efficiency of the industrial facility. The main obstacle to this evaluation is the lack of a method for quantifying Dependability, which to date has always been considered a purely qualitative characteristic.