Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
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by Alan Ross
A few weeks ago I went to a customer site where they had a meeting of the minds for their reliability team. The host was a multi-site paper manufacturer with an intelligent approach to plant reliability. The reliability team included, of course, several reliability professionals, but there were procurement people there too. That’s not unusual. We’re finding more and more that procurement and reliability often work hand in hand. [Read more…]
The first part of the title is a nod to a book by the same name. The book by Rosemary Gibson and Janardan Prasad Singh, “China Rx”, discusses the consequences of China’s dominance in the production of the world’s basic drugs and how it occurred. The “More” discusses the global supply train and how the Coronavirus is highlighting its downside. [Read more…]
This is a direct followup to my post last week.
I usually don’t do two part posts but….
I got some great responses to my post last week. I then got this image from my buddies at NASA (on the ground, not on the space station). One is actually my roommate from college. His hair is much shorter now.
In theory, integrated computer systems enable multiple uses for any single piece of data that is input only once. Data becomes available wherever it needs to be in whatever business process is integrated into the whole. In a sense it is like our brains – information and experience is registered once and available for access whenever needed for any purpose. Integrated systems should make our lives at work easier, but they seldom do that. Integrated business computer systems are very complex and can be very difficult to use. Imagine that they must support many separate business processes and departments, all of whom have different “languages” and ways of doing things. [Read more…]
One of the more confusing distinctions for quality professionals, especially those working within one of the quality management standards such as IATF 16949 or ISO 13485, is the difference between a Corrective Action Request (CAR) and a Preventive Action Request (PAR). [Read more…]
The biggest change in asset management practices and maintenance models in the coming years will be the shift from corrective and preventive to predictive and condition-based maintenance that is built on real-time as well as historical data.
With emerging new technologies like IoT (Internet of Things) and easy access to the Internet and cloud storage capabilities, accessibility to information and remote monitoring of assets can be done anytime and from any location and device. This calls for a reliable remote monitoring setup accompanied by a robust and proven management system to track and manage all that data. And it is this combination precisely that can elevate your business to a world-class maintenance program.
As organizations focus more on data, the quality of data is important. But what does it mean? How do we know if we have it? This video provides some insights for understanding your data situation. [Read more…]
Sometimes I see images that speak strongly to how reliability engineering affects us everyday. Think of how many items you own or use systems that you wouldn’t touch/interact with if you couldn’t be absolutely sure they would work as expected. I wouldn’t use my microwave if I thought there was a 1/1000 chance it would catch fire. The amount of faith I have in traffic lights working correctly is astounding. If they malfunction it could be fatal.
One of the most important principles in reliability engineering and management is the differentiation between the vital few and the trivial many. The application of special product characteristics uses that principle.
“The whole of science is nothing more than the refinement of thinking.” – Albert Einstein
You’ve acquired and are now implementing a new CMMS / EAM (Computerized Maintenance Management System / Enterprise Asset Management) computer software program to help you manage maintenance. It may be a simple functional system that only looks after maintenance and likely Maintenance, Repair and Operating (MRO) spares, or it may be part of a much bigger enterprise system that handles many business functions. Regardless, one question almost always arises when converting from one to another system – what should we do about our old data? [Read more…]
What is quality? In a manufacturing or heavy industry, it is to minimize the defects and errors. Today it emphasizes customer satisfaction as well. It means quality is achieved if in the end the customer or user can effectively use the product. High quality is important to project success. Poor quality has a cost. [Read more…]
Design of Experiments is a great approach for confident modeling of systems. It does have limitations. What are the limits? How can those be dealt with? How important is it for practical systems? [Read more…]
by Alan Ross
“Why don’t they care?”
“About what?”
“About electrical system reliability?”
“Who says they don’t care?”
“You do. Quite often, as a matter of fact.” [Read more…]
I am often asked, what is the benchmark for a particular KPI. At first, I would quickly answer the target from the SMRP Best Practices Guide. Depending on the organization and the maturity, I would either see their faces light up or see them shut down. If they shut down, what momentum was present, quickly vanished. If they were meeting the target (and the KPI and supporting data checked out), the momentum would fade a bit, as they were hitting the target.
Emergency maintenance is the maintenance required when an asset suffers an unexpected functional failure. Typically, such failures can halt production lines and disrupt business operations until fixed.
Emergencies almost always happen without prior warning, and hence emergency maintenance is not one that can be preemptively scheduled – but it can definitely be planned for and efforts made to reduce its business impact when they do occur.
