Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
Find all articles across all article series listed in reverse chronological order.
Overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) is a widely implemented metric that characterizes the performance of a plant, and is expressed as a percentage of the total planned or scheduled production time. OEE essentially measures your plant’s performance in terms of equipment reliability and availability. It is calculated as the product of 3 factors – performance, quality, and availability:
Development challenges are rarely simple. Is your team rolling the dice in hopes it gets resolved quickly? Do you start with two dice in your hand, yet are hoping for a Yahtzee? Understand the risks and impacts and make sure the plan is appropriate. [Read more…]
We have all heard and/or read the oft quoted “40% of all businesses experiencing a crisis go out of business within one year…”. Ever wonder where that statistic came from? For many years a colleague of mine, unfortunately now deceased, searched for the answer; to no avail. No one could actually cite the source for this statistic. Many refer to FEMA or the US Small Business Administration:
“According to a report from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), 40 percent of businesses do not reopen following a disaster. On top of that, another 25 percent fail within one year”. [Read more…]
This myth, planning meetings are for planning, is based on a misuse/misunderstanding of correct planning and scheduling terminology. Planning meetings are normally run by your planner, but they are not, or shouldn’t be, about planning. They are about scheduling – i.e.: when work will be executed. Planning defines what work (scope) will be done, how to do it (instructions, guidance, specs, etc.) and what is required to do it (resources, skills, permits required, etc.). Scheduling is done to define when the job will be executed and by which resources (skilled trades). [Read more…]
This past week, I was getting really frustrated, angry and hateful towards myself. I kept seeing the root cause of my problems and I wasn’t able to let it go, I wasn’t able to heal. I started laying into myself, beating myself up in a way that is appalling. I shut down. I stalled. On Friday, I had a call with my coach and she told me what I needed to do. [Read more…]
Many problem solving processes include separate steps for determining root cause and generating potential solutions. In cases where a clear and single cause is identified, maybe there is some sense to this. However, for complex situations the causes tend to be tangled together through interactions, which cannot be determined with simple comparative tests. A well constructed Design of Experiments can uncover the causes and expose the solution at the same time. [Read more…]
This myth, planning should be done by the trades, has a big impact on common practice, but when you talk to those who do it, they’ll often agree that planners are needed. That is an apparent contradiction and it arises due to sloppy use of terminology in the maintenance world.
Many companies have heard that planners should be skilled trades and misinterpret that to mean that your skilled trades should do planning. No, no, no. [Read more…]
Since 2002, I’ve been involved in well over 100 risk assessments as either an in-house risk manager or as a consultant. Actually, let me rephrase that.
Since 2002, I’ve been involved in the beginning of well over 100 risk assessments. However, I’ve seen many fewer risk assessments completed. Of those completed assessments, fewer still actually get turned into any kind of meaningful action. [Read more…]
The more people I talk to in industry, the more I see a divide. I see a divide between companies who treat their employees like robots and companies who treat their employees with the love & connection that they deserve. We’ve all experienced disengagement, frustration and apathy throughout our careers and it costs us our happiness. It costs us our mental health.
It also costs our companies. It costs them big dollars. [Read more…]
No discussion of root cause analysis is complete without a review of 5 Why Analysis. This brainstorming technique was developed by Japanese industrialist and founder of the Toyota Motor Corporation, Sakichi Toyoda, and used throughout Toyota since the 1930’s. As the wave of continuous improvement moved through the aviation industry in the 1970’s, the auto industry in the 1980’s, and the healthcare industry in the 1990’s, 5 Why Analysis moved along with it. The tool’s simplicity is what makes it so adaptable in the safety, quality, engineering and production disciplines. [Read more…]
While I have a very uncommon last name, I come from a big family. The picture below is the family my grandparents grew by having three sons. Thomas (my father) whose family is dressed in red, Walter dressed in white and Robert (Mike) dressed in blue had 16 children between the three of them and as a result if you live or know someone who lives around Spencerport, New York there’s a good chance they know a Plucknette or two.
On the surface, it is easy to run a test. What is less easy is gathering the required and desired information. Set up and analysis do not matter if the data is of low quality. Consider these points to improve your effectiveness. [Read more…]
I get asked a lot of questions and asked for a help. Sometimes the “ask” comes from senior management, sometimes middle-level management and sometimes even from the shop floor. People and companies need help to achieve more than they are today.
Performance is already known and often less than desired. Change is needed and that means new ideas. After all, if they had the ideas themselves, they may have tried something different before calling me in. Sometimes they have, and it hasn’t worked. They are stuck. [Read more…]
The tumblers all fell into place, the lock clicked, the door opened and it all became clear.
Bad leadership almost cost me my life.
This was a few weeks ago in a session with my coach, Susan Hobson. I hadn’t put the pieces together. I hadn’t seen the connection. I saw my depression, my suicidal thoughts, my pain, my struggles as part of my story but something that just happened to me.
Now I see that it’s a gift. [Read more…]
More than one operational mode may need to be considered to ensure that all important failure modes are identified and analyzed in the FMEA. This article focuses on what you need to know about modes of operation when performing FMEAs.
“My favorite mode of transport is hot-air ballooning. It’s so graceful to be blown by the wind, to go where the wind takes you.” Richard Branson
