Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
Find all articles across all article series listed in reverse chronological order.
by Alan Ross
When you think about maintenance from a reliability perspective rather than an engineering perspective, it becomes clear that transformers are somewhat of a red-headed stepchild, even though they are the heart of the electrical system.
Why? Let’s take a closer look.
Guest post by Mark Latino
This case history takes place in a packaging facility in Virginia. The packer on module E5 was checked for vibration integrity during a pre-machine care evaluation. A problem was detected in the folding arm gearbox. The frequency characteristics indicated a bearing was deteriorating.
This seems very straight forward but let’s put the reality of the situation into the problem detected. The gearbox is located in a section of the packer that is not easily accessible. To do the necessary repairs it will require separating the two sections of the machine. When the packer is split it will take an additional two days of work before the unit can be restored to service. [Read more…]
As a teenager, my father was a house painter. He started out as a “brush and roller guy”, climbing ladders and cutting in windows. But as his business grew, he caught the attention of commercial developers with large jobs like grocery store ceilings and outfield fences. These can’t be completed with old school tools; they require a sprayer.
I remember my dad walking me through his logic of whether or not to buy a commercial sprayer. I didn’t recognize it then, but he was explaining to me “Break-Even Analysis”. [Read more…]
This one is a HUGE MYTH. Maintenance costs are a direct result of what you do and what you do produces capacity for service delivery or production (depending on your business). Cost is a consequence of your actions, available cash (in a budget) does NOT determine what you will spend. [Read more…]
It’s another Saturday at my house. In this video we use RCM principles to determine if the replacement task my husband is performing on his 1989 Toyota Supra is both technically appropriate and worth doing. [Read more…]
[This is a companion article to “Using Design FMEAs to Identify Special Product Characteristics.” These two articles should be read in sequence.]
Identification and application of special product and process characteristics help to focus assembly and manufacturing processes on the most important areas, in order to achieve the right outcomes.
“Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding” – Brian Greene
Guest post by Charles J. Latino
At the root of most mechanical and system failures lurks a human cause. Insights into what to look for when solving human-caused failures are essential. Human error is generally described as behavior that goes beyond the norm. A proper definition in the context of this article is, “an action planned but not carried out according to the plan”. To find a means of minimizing human error, one must first understand its characteristics: [Read more…]
Major projects, particularly infrastructure projects, can be spectacular in terms of their scale, timeframe, public and private investment, and the capital cost for their implementation. Completion is often celebrated and overruns of time and cost are temporarily put aside, technical calamities become bygone memories, and ‘success’ is the order of the day. [Read more…]
The last article speaks to who should run your storeroom – NOT maintenance. It also leaves us hanging a bit – what should go into the store room to ensure good supply of needed materials, when needed? [Read more…]
My mentor John Moubray taught me that managing the consequences of failure is the essence of RCM. Watch how I used RCM principles to change the consequences of failure with a Default Strategy. [Read more…]
When a new product development effort begins, we have a clear plan to get to completion. However, part way through we start feeling it is much harder than expected. If you have ever felt that way, this video will talk about some ideas that might make it easier. It will never be simple, but it can be much less painful. Having worked to resolve the highest technical risk on a large Army program, I know it can be achieved. [Read more…]
by Alan Ross
As VP of reliability at my company, I often meet customers when they are at the tyranny of the urgent. They’ll have a significant problem, multiple questions, and a big decision to make.
Just recently I was with one of our customers as he was facing one of those big decisions. It was a tough one. [Read more…]
In order to know if all RCA is the same, we first have to define ‘What is RCA?’ On the surface this seems quite simple, but unfortunately it is quite complex. When I train or present speeches around the world, I often poll my audiences about how they define ‘RCA’. The fact is I will get as many answers, as I have people that I ask. This is unfortunate because there is no universally accepted definition of what ‘RCA’ actually is. Are there definitions out there, absolutely! There are hundreds of them. Various regulatory agencies have their own such definitions, as do corporations and companies. However, when definitions differ between agencies, corporations and industries, it is hard to measure the effectiveness of ‘RCA’ across the board, because everyone considers whatever they are doing, as ‘RCA’.
The deeper you drill into process capability analysis, the more you realize just how many capability indices are available. The two most common capability indices are Cpk and Ppk, and the closely related Cp, Cpu and Cpl, and Pp, Ppu and Ppl, respectively. Cpm is less commonly used, and has a unique way of accounting for the centeredness of a process within its specification limits. (See my past blog posts for extended discussions about all of these.) [Read more…]
Here are some practical considerations you need to make in developing and implementing your COVID-19 business continuity strategies for your organization or business, or even for yourself.
If you already have some form of business continuity plans already developed, execute them. Otherwise, you have to take a practical short-cut and use the information below to flexibly develop your next steps as you go. [Read more…]
