Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
Find all articles across all article series listed in reverse chronological order.
Let’s agree that the EAM Data is our organizations’ “Augean Stables”. And, we the Maintenance & Reliability professionals are “the Hercules”. It’s dirty, smelly & massive. But it is only we who can dare to cleanse it. We are the Hercules of today’s organizations. [Read more…]
I created and posted this meme a few weeks ago and it went viral through the LinkedIn reliability community. It was a tongue-in-cheek look at the vicious circle that keeps most plants in a fire-fighting mode. One of the people who shared the post asked ‘what comes first the chicken or the egg?’ In our case, reliability work comes first. [Read more…]
Equipment is described as reliable when it functions as designed without failure. Admittedly, equipment failure of any kind is quite inconvenient especially in fast-paced environments like the manufacturing sector. However, the consequences of failure – if it were to occur – go just beyond the usual inconveniences of unplanned downtime, lost productivity, lost revenue, etc. All these are bad enough, but should equipment failure cause injury or fatality, recovering from the consequences could become an uphill task.
Basic overview of how long description text is managed in most CMMS systems. Tips on why you should avoid using the long description to store valuable information. [Read more…]
Oh, why oh why didn’t I employ the “Essence” of RCM when I packed for my keynote speech? Watch how I “suffered” because I didn’t! [Read more…]
Model Building is a key theme for several advanced techniques. It boils down to creating an equation. Done well, one can predict and forecast how things will behave. Creating understanding reduces product risk and increases the chances for success. [Read more…]
Guest Post by Geary Sikich (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)
Merriam Webster Dictionary defines reputation as:
1a: overall quality or character as seen or judged by people in general
b: recognition by other people of some characteristic or ability has the reputation of being clever
2: a place in public esteem or regard: good name; trying to protect his reputation
Google Dictionary:
the beliefs or opinions that are generally held about someone or something.
“his reputation was tarnished by allegations that he had taken bribes”
a widespread belief that someone or something has a particular habit or characteristic.
“his knowledge of his subject earned him a reputation as an expert”
A few weeks ago, I got a question about the best place to take an oil sample for oil analysis. Instead of generic answers like, “after the pump before the filter” or “never on the drain”, I like to take a more practical approach. [Read more…]
In a previous article, we compared and contrasted the definition of a requirement, with a ‘story’, which is used in agile/scrum. In that article, we stated: “requirements and stories establish a clear understanding of customer needs in the context of desired functionality”.
What if we want to establish a clear understanding of a customer’s needs in the context of desired business functionality? The customer can be an internal or external customer, business functionality can be a business process (IT-enabled or otherwise).
Sometimes we just need a simple plot of a few data points. When there is scant data a histogram or box plot just is not informative. This is a great use for a one dimensional scatter plot, dot plot, or a what is called a strip chart in R.
The basic idea is to see where the data lines along a line. For example, let say we have 20 times to first failure. A table of numbers is not all that helpful. We could explore using a cumulative distribution plot (Weibull analysis), yet it would be difficult to fit a distribution with so little data.
Let’s turn to a strip chart to get a look at the data. [Read more…]
We discuss calibrated instruments, calibrations, and test standards. For more information on calibration management visit our friends at http://calopex.com [Read more…]
As Responsible Custodians, we’re not in the business of predicting or preventing all Failure Modes. Watch as I explain how RCM helps with our first responsibility – Managing the Consequences of Failure. [Read more…]
New Product Development is constantly under pressure to get projects done faster – to shorten the development schedule. Making the analogy from basketball to engineering projects, if you want to play fast – you are going to have to live with turn overs. Similarly with engineering, you are going to experience some bumps in the road when trying to create a speed record. [Read more…]
ISO 31000:2018 is the world’s foremost risk management standard. The Standard provides guidelines, principles, framework, and a process for managing risk.
The standard explicitly states that it should NOT be used for certification or registration. But, it is.
So, what’s going on? We can only speculate. But, here goes:
We now live and work in VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity) time. More companies want to be RISK audited and certified by an independent Certification Body (CB).
And, more CB’s are working to use ISO 31000:2018 as a standard for certification. [Read more…]
Let’s take a look at how to understand the PM compliance metric. [Read more…]
