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Setting up Susceptibility to Failure Questionnaires

Susceptibility to failure evaluation examines the asset’s non-age related degradation patterns. It can provide an alternative to probability of failure analysis for these failure modes. For example, susceptibility evaluation can be used to determine the vulnerability of atmospheric storage tanks to corrosion under insulation or stress cracking. The evaluation can result in recommended actions, susceptibility ratings, or both.
A susceptibility to failure questionnaire presents the analyst with a series of questions. Like a decision diagram, the response to one question determines the next question, and so on, until a conclusion is reached. Along the way, instructions can be displayed to respond to individual answers.
This topic illustrates susceptibility evaluation with an example, provides an overview of the steps to the create a questionnaire, and explains how to create and test the questionnaire.

Example of a Questionnaire

The following example helps the analyst determine a course of action when assessing an atmospheric storage tank’s corrosion rate:
When the questionnaire is completed and closed, the results are shown on the Susceptibility view of the Maintenance Action Plan window. For example:
The analyst can revise the questionnaire by clicking Review.

Steps to Create a Questionnaire

Setting up susceptibility to failure questionnaires involves these steps:
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Develop a flowchart or decision tree: a plan for presenting your questions and responding to two or more answers with instructions, recommendations, and follow-up questions.
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Create the questionnaire in the site’s strategy development settings. This involves creating the questions, adding answers, and selecting the first question that users will see. You can name the questionnaire and select a custom or APM class for it. When defining an answer’s properties, you can specify the class attribute to set and the value.
See Creating the Questionnaire in this topic.
Note: You must launch APM with the administrator privilege to create or modify questionnaires. For more information, see Logging on as an Administrator.
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Test the questionnaire by creating a strategy development analysis and adding the questionnaire to risk options. Then create a failure mode and launch the questionnaire.
See Testing the Questionnaire in this topic.
Tip: We recommend developing and testing questionnaires in your Development environment. Then use the Environment Migration Wizard to copy questionnaires to Production. For more information, see APM Environment Migration Guide.
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When the questionnaire is ready for general use, select the susceptibility to failure option in your analysis types’ risk settings and select the questionnaire. For more information, see Setting Risk Analysis Options for Analysis Types.
Tip: These settings are also available in risk analysis options on asset types and analyses. You can also select a susceptibility questionnaire in a library failure mode’s Evaluations tab, Susceptibility tab (RBI analysis).

Creating the Questionnaire

Note: You must launch APM with the administrator privilege to create or modify questionnaires. For more information, see Logging on as an Administrator.

To Create a Questionnaire

1.
From the Site window, select the Strategy Development view, Settings tab and then the Probabilities tab. Select the Probability of Failure Settings node in the tree.
Tip: You can also select the Administration menu, Strategy Development Settings, Risk Analysis, and then Probabilities. The Strategy Development - Probability of Failure Settings dialog appears.
2.
Select the Susceptibility tab.
3.
Click New. The Questionnaire Design dialog appears, displaying the Questions tab. Select the General tab:
4.
Provide a title for the questionnaire in the Name box.
Tip: “Susceptibility to failure questionnaire” is selected by default in the Questionnaire type box. This list also contains General, MTA2, RBI, RCM2, and RSS types, each of which comes with unique properties, such as the location where it can be used.
5.
In the Class to edit box, select the Criticality evaluation class. When developing answers, you can set values for the class attributes.
6.
Select whether to show supporting information in the questionnaire. The notebook can show the asset history, asset properties, damage mechanism attachments (RBI analysis), or a combination.
7.
You can provide additional information about the questionnaire in the Description box.
8.
Select the Questions tab:
9.
For each question you wish to create, click New.
Tip: For best results, create the questions in the order you wish to present them in the questionnaire and number them sequentially. You can create all of the questions and then add answers using the Questions tab. Creating all of the questions first ensures that the follow-up questions and statements are available to add to answers.
The Question dialog appears:
10.
Provide the following information:
Setting Name
Description
Reference
Category used to identify types of questions. For example, a susceptibility to failure questionnaire might have references like “External exposure” and “Stress corrosion cracking”.
type
Type of entry:
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Question – Supports primary and secondary questions as well as answers.
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Statement – Supports primary and secondary recommendations but not answers. The Finish button is available in the questionnaire.
Sequence
The number assigned to the question determines its order in the list of questions.
Primary Question or Recommendation
Question or statement presented in the questionnaire.
Secondary Question or Recommendation
Supporting questions, examples, or explanation.
11.
Click OK to save the question or statement and close the Question dialog. The question or statement is added to the Questions tab.
12.
When you have defined all of the questions, you can add answers for each one using the Questions tab. For example:
13.
In the First question list, select the starting question for the evaluation.
14.
Add at least two answers for each question. Select the question in the top table. Click New at the bottom of the Answers table. The Answer dialog appears, for example:
15.
Provide the following information:
Setting Name
Description
Answer
The questionnaire user is presented with two or more answers to choose from. Enter the text in this box, for example, “Yes” or “No”.
Sequence
The sequence number determines the answer’s position in the multiple-choice list. Typically, “Yes” has the sequence number “1”.
Next step
When the questionnaire user selects this answer, one of the following can occur:
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Display a follow-up question – When the user presses Next, the question that you specify is displayed.
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Display a decision statement – When the user presses Next, a recommendation is displayed. The Finish button is available.
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End the questionnaire – The Finish button is available.
Follow up question or decision statement
The question or statement that appears when the user selects this answer and clicks Next.
Tip: You can also create a follow-up question or statement by right-clicking in this box and clicking New. The Question dialog appears.
Attribute
If it is appropriate for this answer to change an attribute value, click the browse icon to open the Attribute Selector. This dialog lists all of the attributes on the class that you selected on the General tab of the Questionnaire Design dialog. Select the attribute and then the value to set.
Instructions
Text that will appear in the Instructions box on the questionnaire when the answer is selected.
16.
Click OK to save the answer and close the Answer dialog. The answer appears on the Questions tab of the Questionnaire Design dialog. For example:
Tip: Select the Attributes Set tab to view a list of the questions and answers as well as the attributes and values assigned to them.

Testing the Questionnaire

When you have created the questionnaire, test it before releasing it to users.

To Test a Questionnaire

1.
On the Site window, select the Strategy Development view and tab. Select the tab for the type of analysis that you wish to test with: MTA2, RCM2, or RBI.
2.
Click New to open the New Analysis window.
3.
Select the primary asset and click OK. The Strategy Development Analysis window appears.
4.
On the Properties view, select the Risk Options tab.
5.
Select Use evaluation forms. Select the Susceptibility tab.
6.
Select Susceptibility to failure analysis is performed and select the questionnaire that you created from the list. For example:
7.
Set any options required to ensure that you can view the class attribute values that are set by the questionnaire.
8.
Select the Facilitation view and the Info Worksheet tab.
9.
Click New to create a failure mode. The Maintenance Action Plan window appears.
10.
Select the Susceptibility view. For example:
11.
Click Analyze to open your questionnaire.
12.
You can now test all of the questions and answers.