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Riesgo Industrial [TPM on Line, the friendly network] Industrial Risk

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Introduction to
Industrial Risk Management
All of us have some ideas about what "risk" is, not to insure
the car “is a risk”, play the lottery “is a risk” a little bit
different, to risk on an investment, etc. Al these gave us some
ideas about a probability that something may happen, a
probably win orloss event. In fact almost constantly we are
living in a world driven by risk, although sometimes we are not
aware that we are using this concept in the process of making
important decisions.
In the mathematic world we may explain the risk like
probability (frequency) of event times its consequences. As we
can see in engineering the risk is associated with negative
consequences
R=PXC
R=FXCBoth equations are equivalent and will have value units divided
by time units ($/year, $/month, etc.). About the differences of
both equations: We must not talk about frequencies of events
that have never happened, in these cases we use the
"probability" concept.
The majority of industrial and engineering operations are in
the risk world. Almost everything done involves probabilities
andconsequences. The future never will be predicted in a
100% and there are a lot of factors that contribute with
uncertainty, for example:
> External influences (oil prices, political changes, etc.)
> Equipment characteristics (reliability, availability)
> Materials, contractors performance and suppliers
> Organization complexity
> Human errors and bad communications
> ...

Etc.Fortunately it is possible to transfer some calculation methods
in the fields of probability and risk to the industrial field.

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Riesgo Industrial [TPM on Line, the friendly network] Industrial Risk

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Risk Acceptance
What risk value is acceptable? This is a million dollarsquestion, it is not simple but it is approachable. Starting with
logic rules and company vision direction. What is really true is
that risk must be evaluated and controlled under accepted
levels. Tools like criticality and lost opportunity studies give us
a quick evaluation of the risk factors that are currently
affecting us. For big potential risks we must develop deeper
analysis like HAZOPstudies, for example.
Let us see how to calculate a risk exposure:
If we have a big event probability (fire, explosion) estimated in
one every 100-50 years and the consequences valued between
10 and 200 million dollars, then the risk exposure would be
between:
R = $100,000/year ($10 millions and 100 years)
And
R = $4,000,000/year ($200 million and 50 years)
How to estimate the eventfrequencies?
Information options will allow us to see some possibilities:
a.- Computer system: When we have it and it is well data
provided. It may be a really valuable information supply,
although many times its information is too general and does
not allow us to distinguish clearly some data like event causes.
b.- Worker’s experiences: They tend to know their equipment
really well but the humancapacity to estimate is not efficient
enough when we start to deal with extreme and non common
quantities. Another conflictive point is the different opinions
between the workers.
c.- Available databases: Other option is to use databases
gathered by third parties for example OREDA (Off Shore
Reliability Data), IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers). They can give usapproximations to some factors
like failure rates; normally those data may be referenced
values or benchmarks to do primarily evaluations. The fact is
that different operational conditions make those data really
dispersed .

Consequences
The event consequences in the operational point of view could

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