This video provides a more in depth understanding of Asset Management Systems.
[Read more…]on Maintenance Reliability
A listing in reverse chronological order of these article series:
- Usman Mustafa Syed — Aasan Asset Management series
- Arun Gowtham — AI & Predictive Maintenance series
- Miguel Pengel — Asset Management in the Mining Industry series
- Bryan Christiansen — CMMS and Reliability series
- James Reyes-Picknell — Conscious Asset series
- Alex Williams — EAM & CMMS series
- Nancy Regan — Everday RCM series
- Karl Burnett — History of Maintenance Management series
- Mike Sondalini — Life Cycle Asset Management series
- James Kovacevic — Maintenance and Reliability series
- Mike Sondalini — Maintenance Management series
- Mike Sondalini — Plant Maintenance series
- Andrew Kelleher — Process Plant Reliability Engineering series
- George Williams and Joe Anderson — The ReliabilityXperience series
- Doug Plucknette — RCM Blitz series
- Robert Kalwarowsky — Rob's Reliability Project series
- Gina Tabasso — The Intelligent Transformer Blog series
- Tor Idhammar — The People Side of Maintenance series
- André-Michel Ferrari — The Reliability Mindset series
Questions About Coefficient of Friction in Fasteners
I recently received an interesting LI inquiry that I felt others could learn from the answers that I was able to get. This is not my expertise so I sought out answers from some colleagues who were more familiar with fasteners.
Here is the original inquiry (translated from Portuguese so I hope Google Translator did a good job):
“I would like to know if you can help me clarify my doubts about:
- The purpose of conducting a study of the coefficients of friction in screws, threads and nuts?
- Is there an accurate standard for such testing?
- What methods can be perfected in projects that target this type of trial and application?
- Can surface treatments influence changes in results?
- Who is responsible for such testing (the manufacturers and suppliers of raw materials, the assembler and/or its various final assembly applications)?
The Importance of Documentation in Precision Maintenance
Why Proper Documentation Will Lead to Sustainable Improvements
Imagine being able to look back and see what settings the equipment was last ran at for a particular SKU. Or being able to look back at the last three alignment inspections and see that slowly the alignment is drifting. What could you do with this type of information? You could perform Root Cause Analysis to see why the alignment is drifting, or trend the drifting to know when it will be out of acceptable tolerances.
Having the right information is critical to making informed decisions and driving systematic improvements in the performance of the equipment. This information is typically captured in a report or work order and should be linked to the asset and easily searchable. However, most organizations that I have worked with do not record the right information, which would allow them to make informed decisions. This documentation is a critical piece in precision maintenance, so what is required for documentation? [Read more…]
Maintenance and Reliability Maturity – 2
In part 1 of this 2 part series, “Maintenance and Reliability Maturity”, I point out that achieving the maximum value from your physical assets will require excellence in 2 main dimensions, efficiency, and effectiveness. Those are described more fully in our recent book, “Paying Your Way“. I also promised a Maintenance and Reliability Maturity Assessment tool. That tool is now available to you, our readers.
[Read more…]7 Steps of Clean, Inspect, & Lubricate
Through daily inspections, cleaning, and lubrication practices we can measure, prevent, and restore deterioration to our equipment. The expectation is that a team is put together made up of maintenance, operations, and leadership employees to roll out strategy beginning with one piece of equipment. They will implement the following 7 steps:
- Initial Cleaning
- Eliminate sources of dirt and hard to clean & inspect areas
- Create and maintain cleaning, inspection and lubrication standards
- General Inspection
- Operator Inspection
- Activities standardized
- Team Development and Operator Driven Reliability
Recognizing Basic Gear Fatigue Failure Patterns
Lets start with a fresher on general Component Fatigue.
- Fatigue occurs when a material is subjected to repeated loading and unloading.
- When the loads are above a certain threshold, microscopic cracks will begin to form at a material’s surface.
- Cracks always begin in high stressed areas of a material.
- Eventually a crack will reach a critical size, and the structure will suddenly fracture.
Allowing Wrong To Become Normal
I’ve seen it twice this year and it concerns me. In twenty years of working with companies to improve manufacturing reliability I would like to believe that those of us who care are leaving a mark. It’s the days I’m about to describe that make you wonder.
I created RCM Blitz™ over twenty years ago as a tool that would help companies identify a complete maintenance strategy to improve and achieve the inherent designed reliability of their critical assets. Prior to entering the world of consulting, I had completed and implemented several RCM (Reliability Centered Maintenance) analyses on critical assets at Eastman Kodak company. With each analysis we completed, I gained knowledge and confidence that the process when adhered to and implemented, could improve the reliability of even our worst assets. In the same two years of proving the process I also learned something very important.
[Read more…]Learn to Speak Finance
The Key To Gaining The Ear Of Your Executives
As a maintenance professional, you spend a lot of time explaining how a proper maintenance & reliability program will improve uptime, safety, etc. But why is it that there is a hard time gaining support for the improvement initiatives? Well, senior executives are focused on how the company is being a measure of performance from the shareholders, financial analysts, or owners. Most of these measures are financial in nature, and while there are others, the primary measures are financial. [Read more…]
Maximizing the Potential of Your CMMS System
It’s no secret that equipment maintenance software offers many benefits to your organization. However, organizations frequently find that the software doesn’t deliver the end results they anticipated. This often happens because organizations don’t maximize CMMS potential. In other words—they’re not using their software to its fullest potential.
[Read more…]Maintenance and Reliability Maturity – 1
Maintenance and reliability maturity provides an understanding of both how well we do maintenance and how good is our maintenance program. One delivers a major business result, the other is a big part of how you get there. Doing maintenance with precision and care, so the job is done once and done well by the right people and without delay is what maintenance organizations strive for. Some achieve it, some struggle to do so. If they can achieve that, then they are being efficient.
[Read more…]Clean to Inspect for Best in Class Operator Care
Cleaning is an important first step in Operator Care and reliability gains because:
- Insufficient cleaning causes losses and
- The cleaning activity itself exposes hidden defects
Dirt in rotating parts, sliding parts, pneumatic and hydraulic systems, electrical and control systems, sensors, etc. causes malfunctions, reduce function, failure by wear, clogging, resistance, speed losses, etc. are different types of defects. Defects are anything that is abnormal from the expected ideal condition. Insufficient cleaning causes forced deterioration. All these losses are solved through a thorough cleaning of equipment and countermeasures to keep the equipment clean.
[Read more…]The Stigma of RCA: What’s in a Name?
Let’s start off with some honesty…the term ‘RCA’ (Root Cause Analysis) is quite vague, misleading and easily misinterpreted by those who are not immersed in its use. It is a useless and counter-productive term because there is no universally accepted, standard definition. Therefore, any process/tool someone is using to solve a problem is likely to be labelled as ‘RCA’. It could be troubleshooting, brainstorming and/or some other more structured problem solving approaches such as 5-Whys, fishbone diagrams, causal factor trees and/or logic trees.
[Read more…]Striking the Right Balance of Costs
How to Balance the Cost of Maintenance
There is not a single maintenance department that I am aware of that has an unlimited budget. If you are aware of one, please let me know as I would love to see if it is successful or not.
Since most of us do not have an unlimited maintenance budget, we need to be smart about how we spend our maintenance money. Therefore there needs to be a balance and well thought out approach to the spend. We all know that proactive maintenance is cheaper than breakdown maintenance. But how do we balance the cost of maintenance with risk, to ensure that operations get the most out the equipment?
[Read more…]
Asset Prioritization and Criticality
Asset Prioritization and criticality are used to provide a structured approach to determining the relative organizational risks and failure consequences associated with assets. This provides a means for the organization to focus on critical risks to the business.
Asset Management Systems for Small Groups
An asset management system is comprised of all of the necessary processes, procedures, tools, systems, and methods necessary to meet business objectives in a manner which is controlled, measured, and improved upon. The system, more often than not, takes on some visual representation as in the graphic below. The purpose is to provide a simplified understanding of the overall process to meet asset management goals.
[Read more…]