People expect the consumer and business applications and services at their fingertips to function flawlessly in real time, constantly, in today’s digitally connected world. However, managing the underlying technology that underpins digital services is incredibly difficult, so failures are inevitable. As a result of lost revenue and productivity, some Fortune 500 retailers claim they lose hundreds of thousands of dollars every minute as a result of downtime.
In order to maintain the standards necessary to keep the business operating smoothly despite inevitable IT disruptions, IT organizations maintain service level agreements (SLAs) around application and website reliability and uptime. The key system design characteristics of reliability, availability, maintainability, and safety (RAMS) aid teams in determining whether systems meet essential requirements such as performing as intended and being functional and maintainable. The ones that IT teams typically give the most thought to are availability and reliability, especially as they relate to system performance.
IT organizations must choose between options and make decisions based on costs and service levels when determining metrics for both reliability and availability. To maintain high service levels and the lowest possible impact on the business and user experience, they must strike a balance between costs and investments in infrastructure and performance.
How to increase reliability
You can increase the equipment reliability in your company in a number of ways. These include:
Training your team in equipment use and maintenance
By instructing your team in the proper use and upkeep of tools, you can prevent some system and equipment failures. For instance, instructing kitchen personnel on how to maintain and use sharp kitchen knives can prevent the knives from degrading too quickly and causing a hiccup when filling orders. How to use and operate machinery and how to maintain equipment are a few examples of training.
Focusing on continuous improvement
To make it more effective for your business, fix one issue or implement a new task before moving on to the next. As you become more knowledgeable about each procedure, you can take preventative measures to ensure that the machinery remains in good condition. Looking for new ways to improve reliability can also help you acquire new equipment to meet your company’s needs.
Collecting data about the overall status and failures of your equipment
By gathering information about each piece of equipment you use in your business, you can increase reliability. Planning preventative maintenance that reduces the amount of time that equipment needs to be down for repairs can be facilitated by being aware of the state of your equipment and the most frequent ways that it fails.
Performing failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA)
After gathering information on the most frequent ways your equipment malfunctions, you can perform a failure mode and effects analysis to stop those malfunctions. The four most common categories that failures fall into are:
You can plan preventative maintenance to stop your equipment from failing using these four categories.
Optimizing your maintenance, repair and operation inventory
You can order your inventory for preparing each piece of equipment your company uses after gathering data about each one. Because you can plan for what each piece of machinery needs in order to be fixed quickly, this can lower the cost and MTTR of each piece of equipment. Planning for other aspects of your business, such as other inventories, material distribution, acquisition, and human resources, can also be aided by doing this.
What is reliability?
Reliability is a way to gauge how well your company’s equipment performs its functions. Analyzing a drill’s ability to efficiently drill through wood is one example. Reliability is a common metric used by businesses to gauge how effective their tools and products are. Some ways businesses measure reliability include:
Fault tolerance
Fault tolerance takes into account the entire system a company uses to produce goods and render services. A system’s ability to manage a malfunctioning piece of equipment while continuing to provide service without interruption is measured in this way. Generally speaking, a system’s fault tolerance determines how likely a disruption will be.
For instance, there might be several machines performing the same function on an assembly line. The others can carry on with the task with little disruption if one breaks down. You can consider that system to have high fault tolerance.
Mean time between failures (MTBF)
Consideration of each resource’s mean time between failures is another way to gauge your company’s dependability. Some resources can include:
This reliability measurement can be done by using the formula below:
In this formula, the total amount of time a business is open can be thought of as a single business day, an operating month or year, or another time unit. While failures are the exact number of times the equipment fails unexpectedly during operational time, downtime is the time when the machinery or other equipment does not work.
Mean time to repair (MTTR)
With the mean time to repair, you can assess the dependability of your company’s equipment in a third way. The average amount of time it takes to repair a piece of equipment after it breaks is known as the mean time to repair. Though some equipment may not need repairs frequently, when it does, the lengthy process can interfere with your company’s products and services. Servers in an IT company, for instance, may only fail once every couple of years, but the average repair time for physical servers is several weeks. In this case, the machinery would need extensive repairs, which would cause more disruptions to the services the company offers.
What is availability?
The likelihood that a system will be available for use You can take availability into account by applying the following formula to the MTTR and MTBF:
When it comes to availability, you want high availability during your business’s operating hours. That way, you can accomplish tasks with that equipment quickly.
How to increase availability
You can take a number of actions to increase the availability of your equipment. These include:
Measuring their current availability
You can determine how frequently your equipment’s availability corresponds with your company’s needs by calculating the current availability of your equipment. When a piece of equipment is nearly always accessible, it is likely to be operating efficiently, which will lower your costs. If its very low, as in there is a 50% or less chance the equipment isnt available, you can start raising that equipments availability
Finding your current achievable availability
You achieve your achievable availability when the business is operating at its peak. It can help you identify inefficiencies and areas where the process might be reworked, so it is a useful number to have. It is possible that 99% availability isnt workable for your business If so, you can concentrate on gradually increasing the availability of your equipment while gradually adjusting your budgeting as it becomes available.
Staying up to date on operational practices
Some limitations to availability come from operational practices. To keep your equipment in good working order as availability of your equipment increases, you can update operational procedures and offer training. Similar to reliability, ensuring that your team is knowledgeable about how to operate the equipment efficiently can increase availability.
Implementing effective preventative maintenance practices
You can increase the likelihood that your equipment will be prepared for use during operational hours by carrying out efficient preventative maintenance. Planning time to inspect your equipment outside of business hours can help you save time during the operational day and keep your mean time to repair much lower.
Improving your scheduling practices
Using good scheduling practices can help you decrease logistical delays. Keep the following in mind when evaluating the equipment’s accessibility:
Implementing predictive maintenance
You can streamline preventative maintenance by utilizing predictive sensors and other technology as it becomes available to your business. It can assist you in planning maintenance only when it is required and not at other times, possibly saving you a significant amount of time and money. It is crucial to remember that when implementing a new predictive maintenance tool, having a solid preventative maintenance plan can be beneficial.
Reliability vs. availability
There are some differences between reliability and availability in the workplace, despite the fact that both can speed up procedures and maintain the quality of your equipment:
There are also some similarities:
Reliability, Availability – Georgia Tech – HPCA: Part 5
FAQ
What is the differences between reliability and availability?
The ability of a piece of equipment to be operated if necessary is measured by availability, whereas the capacity of a piece of equipment to carry out its intended function for a predetermined period of time without failing is measured by reliability.
Is high availability the same as reliability?
Time loss drives the measurement of availability, whereas the frequency and impact of failures drive the measurement of reliability. A system’s availability can be thought of mathematically as a function of its dependability. In other words, it is possible to think of availability as a subset of reliability.
Does high availability mean high reliability?
As you can see from the table, even at a high reliability value, this does not necessarily imply a high availability. As the time to repair increases, the availability decreases. If the time to repair is short, even a system with low reliability could have high availability.
What is the relationship between reliability maintainability and availability?
Something is operational if it is available, reliable if it is likely to work correctly, and maintainable if it can be easily fixed even if something goes wrong.
