Improving the reliability and availability of a marine diesel generator using RCM on a tanker

Abstract

The Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) implementation is proposed on a marine diesel generator to improve its reliability and operational availability. This equipment is critical to ensuring the safety and continuity of onboard operations, where uninterrupted power supply is essential. This applied, descriptive, and analytical study with a quantitative approach, is based on the technical and statistical evaluation of key indicators such as MTBF, MTTR, RPN, and availability. By applying RCM, the most critical failure modes (RPN > 150) were identified, including inadequate crankshaft lubrication (RPN = 192) and overheating (RPN = 180), allowing maintenance resources to be focused on functions with the greatest operational and safety implications. The projected results indicate a 150% increase in MTBF (from 192 to 480 hours) and a 41.7% reduction in MTTR (from 12 to 7 hours), resulting in an improvement in availability from 94.1% to 98.6%. These findings establish a technical benchmark for maintenance strategies in maritime-industrial environments.