Problem Component Selection

DOE-STD-1052-93

6.1

Problem components are usually known and acknowledged as plant problems.

They may be identified as those components whose past failures have caused

significant adverse impact on safety system availability or maintenance cost, or those

components with a high rate of initiating reactor scrams, power reductions, or

unplanned days off-line. It is important to start the enhancement effort by focusing

on these components so that timely improvements in component reliability may be

realized.

An unacceptable failure rate is a factor in determining problem components; however,

the consequences of the component's unreliability are more important factors.

Problem components should usually be determined through existing programs for

engineering analysis of plant performance. These analyses would include review of

plant availability and event reports, limiting conditions for operation logs, outage

reports, maintenance history, and component failure analysis reports. The

components identified using this process should be confirmed by interviews with

various managers and key operations and maintenance personnel.

The components identified should be prioritized according to their impact on the

plant. Impact on resources may also provide valuable input to prioritization. Any

method acceptable to plant management may be used to quantify the component's

impact on the plant. Plant management should review and concur with the priorities

before the detailed analysis is initiated.

Efficiency may be gained if similar components are grouped together for the analysis.

The criteria for grouping components should be that the components have similar

functions, failure effects, and operating environments. Although it may be helpful to

review failure history of all components with the same manufacturer and model

number, selection and assignment of the same PM tasks to all of those components

may lead to unnecessary tasks being assigned.

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