Measuring reliability of service systems using failure rates: variations and extensions

A systems approach in the evaluation and comparison of engineering services applied in facilities management

Purpose

This paper aims to be a balance of mixed management and engineering concepts that aims to fuse classical engineering methodologies into a systems engineering framework to assess and compare systematically and comprehensively services rendered by engineering systems.

Design/methodology/approach

An auditing framework is developed to assess the performance of engineering services in the context of engineering services found within a facility. As a result of a system heterogeneity factor, an approach to remove this confounding issue is developed to provide a different insight into the performance of engineering services.

Findings

The output of the audit exercise serves as an input to the second methodology, direct age‐adjusted failure, which overcomes systems attributes confounding issues when comparison is made between different systems populations of the same class type. This method allows management to identify areas in which extra resources are needed to improve maintenance performance.

Practical implications

The proposed standardization technique, which can be applied to system attributes other than age, overcomes the systems heterogeneity issue between localities. This research work is positioned in the context of building engineering services, as they are the most important in terms of socio‐economical impact. A case study based on an actual facilities assessment in Singapore is used to demonstrate the usefulness of such an integrated systems approach.

Originality/value

This paper presents a qualitative‐quantitative assessment framework that consists of two major methodologies to help in identifying and prioritising engineering system services in order to allocate limited resources to the appropriate engineering service so as to improve its performance.