Articles

Find all articles across all article series listed in reverse chronological order.

The Root Cause of a Failure is Always a Decision

We often get sucked into drawn-out conversations (or heated debates) about the ‘true’ meaning of words. Especially when it comes to sports. Was James Harden (a basketball player) in the ‘act of shooting’ when he was fouled? It matters – because if the answer is ‘yes’ he gets up to three free throws. So what does the ‘act of shooting’ mean and who decides it? There will be endless debate over beers about what this means. Perhaps largely dependent on which team you support.

At the end of the day, it usually doesn’t matter. You can debate it as much as you want, but the referees have already decided what happened on the court. It is done. It is over. You can disagree with them. But nothing changes the score. [Read more…]

by Robert (Bob) J. Latino Leave a Comment

Defining & Achieving the Reliability Culture

“There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things, because the innovator has for enemies, all of those who have done well under the old conditions, and luke-warm defenders in those who will do well under the new.”
– Niccole Machiavelli

This quote is appropriate when we seek a paradigm shift towards a proactive culture, after spending our careers trained to become the best ‘react-ors’ or responders, we can be. I encourage you to read this lengthy article to the end for a surprise and to ask you a couple of questions about your experience with reliability. [Read more…]

by James Kovacevic Leave a Comment

The Storeroom Layout: Setting Up Yourself For Success

Proper Storeroom Layout Will Enable Long-Term Success

You begin your day by looking for a part in the storeroom. You are looking for a common bearing used on multiple pieces of equipment on the site. You look up the part in the CMMS and it does not have a bin number associated with it. You walk into the storeroom and beginning going through the “bearing section”. Only the bearing is not there. You wander over the equipment section and find it buried in the equipment specific drawer, but you know that it is used elsewhere. Is this the best way to organize materials, by equipment? [Read more…]

by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

A Solution for the Changing Nature of Work

Guest Post by Stephen Miller (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

Much is being written these days about the future of work and the problems it presents. This piece presents one way we could manage this constantly evolving situation.

The world is changing rapidly in so many ways, primarily, but not limited to technology, geopolitics and climate change. There is no attempt to assign priorities here; these factors are all intimately connected and affect the outcome in concert. [Read more…]

by James Reyes-Picknell Leave a Comment

We want it now and we want it cheap

These days most of us are used to instant gratification – we want it now and we want it cheap! When it comes to information, entertainment, finding your way around, and communications we more or less have it all at our fingertips. It’s also available to us just about anywhere. We can even order and pay for coffee to pick up on our way from the commuter train to the office – no line ups for delays. We can book houses, rooms, hotels, airlines, vacations, and rental cars at the touch of our fingers with apps that show us the cheapest options. [Read more…]

by Bryan Christiansen 1 Comment

How To Use CMMS To Supplement Root Cause Analysis

According to the American Society of Quality (ASQ), a root cause is defined as “A factor that caused a nonconformance and should be permanently eliminated through process improvement. The root cause is the core issue—the highest-level cause—that sets in motion the entire cause-and-effect reaction that ultimately leads to the problem(s).”

As most of you already know, Root Cause Analysis (RCA) is a systematic process for identifying the origins, or root cause, of problems and determining an approach to minimize or eliminate their risk of recurrence. It focuses on preventing problems at the source rather than resorting to a firefighting approach and being reactive every time. RCA tries to be more scientific about asset failures, going one step beyond troubleshooting. [Read more…]

by Larry George Leave a Comment

Gozinto Theory and Parts’ Installed Base

Andrew Vázsonyi led an interesting life. He collaborated with mathematician Paul Erdös, he was co-founder of The Institute of Management Sciences, and he wrote “Which Door has the Cadillac: Adventures of a Real-Life Mathematician”. Around 1970, Andrew Vázsonyi interviewed for a teaching job in Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia. During the job interview, he taught us Gozinto Theory. [Read more…]

by Steven Wachs Leave a Comment

How do I Choose the Appropriate Type of Control Chart?

Proper control chart selection is critical to realizing the benefits of Statistical Process Control. Many factors should be considered when choosing a control chart for a given application. These include:

The type of data being charted (continuous or attribute)
The required sensitivity (size of the change to be detected) of the chart
Whether the chart includes data from multiple locations or not
The ease and cost of sampling
Production volumes

[Read more…]

by Christopher Jackson Leave a Comment

‘Artificial deep machine learning intelligence’ is never your first option

When I was working at a university, I was involved in a conversation with a representative of an energy company. He was having all manners of problems with a valve. It was failing too often. He wanted us to look at what we could do in terms of optimizing the preventive maintenance (PM) or servicing regime to hopefully fix these problems. But … there was a catch.

He had heard about ‘deep learning’ and ‘artificial intelligence’ from another university. And he wanted some of it. [Read more…]

by Robert (Bob) J. Latino Leave a Comment

Effective Root Cause Analysis Means Accepting We Could Be Part of the Problem

No matter where we work, we will experience failures or ‘undesirable outcomes’ of some kind. As long as we work with other humans, this will indeed be the case. These failures may surface in the form of production delays, injuries, customer complaints, missed deadlines, lost profits, legal claims and the like. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

Help Your Team Make Better Reliability Decisions

While in the US Army many years ago, I took command of an artillery battery. My first day included sitting down with my boss, the battalion commander. I’ve used the advice he gave me every day since.

He said that I needed to make decisions. It’s great when they are good decisions, you can learn from decisions that don’t work out well. He also said the only thing not allowed is not making a decision.

I learned that decision-making is a process and that I could get better at it with practice and feedback, and I did. [Read more…]

by James Kovacevic Leave a Comment

The Importance of Master Data in Spare Parts Management

Enabling Storeroom Success Through Data

How often does your facility run out of raw materials? Chances are it is not very often, if ever. Why is this? It may be because the organization has invested heavily in gathering the right data, analyzing and developing contracts for the materials. This prior work ensures a steady supply of materials.

So why is it that within the same organization there is virtually no data to support the spare parts? Not having a spare part can dramatically impact an organization in the same way as not having raw materials. The result is no production. [Read more…]

by Alex Williams Leave a Comment

Guide to Maintenance Management Terminology

It’s easy to become overwhelmed with the vast amount of terminology used to describe maintenance concepts. Even those who are familiar with various maintenance management terms know there is a lack of consistency among sources. This guide to maintenance management terminology serves to help teams better understand the differences between key phrases used in the industry. Browse through our maintenance glossary below. [Read more…]

by James Reyes-Picknell Leave a Comment

Are you on the right track with the right…

Are we on the right track with the right train? Your job is to improve reliability and you have a plan. It focuses on bad-actors, having the right data, cleaning up some parts data that is known to be causing delays in work execution, a bit of training in reliability methods, and your adding engineers. You are certainly on the right track with your plan and the actions you will take should indeed make some improvement. But are you on the right track? [Read more…]

by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

Linking Risk Assessments to Decision Making

Guest Post by Andrew Sheves (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

The point of risk management is to understand and react to the threats and opportunities that might affect your business. The problem is that risk management can often become dislocated from the mainstream business processes. Instead of being integrated into the organization, risk management takes place in a parallel but separate workstream: one that decision-makers dip into occasionally but generally look at as a specialized, technical process. [Read more…]