Articles

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

Wrecking a Mature PdM Program

The phone conversation starts with the words “Doug, I’ve got a big problem and I’m hoping you’ll be able to give me some insight as to how to resolve it.”

The call comes from a long-time client and someone I consider a friend. We not only worked together to start RCM effort at his company, we’ve hunted, golfed and attended a few sporting events together. Someone who if I’m working in his part of the country or just driving through I make a point to make a call so we can get together to and catch up on our lives. [Read more…]

by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

The Low Bid: Who’s Risk?

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

The Low Bid: Who’s Risk?

We live in a competitive environment and business generates the money that makes the world go round, or at least should do. Money is the medium of exchange for goods and services and allows society as we know it and the global economy to function.

Those who have money engage those who want money to provide them with products or services and this is done through contracts. Contracts are awarded at a price that the person who has the money (the Client) is prepared to pay and ‘the winner’ is typically the lowest compliant bid.

If compliance isn’t met then there is suffering somewhere. It can be the Client, the Bidder, the end user or all three and on Government projects it’s the taxpayer who, inevitably, pays. [Read more…]

by Perry Parendo Leave a Comment

Are We There Yet?

Very often I hear New Product Development teams say “we are almost there.” Yet they can be in this condition for months or years. Using a DOE approach can accelerate to the design point. When something has hit the wall, this has been the best approach I have found to create a break through in development. [Read more…]

by Adam Bahret Leave a Comment

Anchoring Methodology Presentation at ARDC 2018

I just finished my talk today at the Applied Reliability and Durability Conference in Portland Oregon. A great conference in a fun city. My topic was “Reliability Test and Analysis with Intent.” I explain a technique I have developed called “Anchoring” which ensures that reliability tools maintain connectivity to program phases throughout product development. Enjoy!

-Adam

by Robert Allen Leave a Comment

Agile Requirements Discovery and Validation

Many companies pursue a product development strategy that provides a product (or service) which meets customer needs sooner (rather than later), and then makes adjustments after the product has been fielded.

Pursuing this approach means accepting the associated risks. What if a critical to quality or critical to reliability characteristic fails to meet customer needs? A product could fail miserably by eliminating important product development work scope and accelerating time-to-market. By the time an adjustment or “pivot” can be made it may be too late, or too costly to correct.

[Read more…]

by James Kovacevic Leave a Comment

The Actions To Accelerate Your Culture Change

Hit the ground running and embed the culture change to achieve maximum results

Your culture change has a plan, it has the right people in place, and you are ready to roll it out. Your change stands a better chance of success than most change programs as you have a plan with the right people. Sometimes changes fail because the change is not embedded quickly, people lose interest and go back to their old ways. If you haven’t already, please start at the beginning of the series with the warning signs that you need a culture change. [Read more…]

by Mike Sondalini 1 Comment

Cyclone Separators — an overview

What you will learn from this article.

How cyclones and hydrocyclones work.
Where cyclones are used.
Design features that affect cyclones.
How to get long life from cyclones.

A tornado can lift cars from the ground and hurl them hundreds of meters away. Chickens and ducks can be hurled kilometers away. The story of fish falling from the sky is explained by the power of a tornado to lift materials kilometers into the sky. The spinning vortex of air separates and segregates heavy and light objects. The heavy objects drop out sooner and the light objects are carried further. Cyclone separators and hydrocyclones work the same way. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg 2 Comments

The Non-parametric Friedman Test

The Friedman test is a non-parametric test used to test for differences between groups when the dependent variable is at least ordinal (could be continuous). The Friedman test is the non-parametric alternative to the one-way ANOVA with repeated measures (or the complete block design and a special case of the Durbin test). If the data is significantly different than normally distributed this becomes the preferred test over using an ANOVA.

The test procedure ranks each row (block) together, then considers the values of ranks by columns. The data is organized in to a matrix with B rows (blocks) and T columns (treatments) with a single operation in each cell of the matrix. [Read more…]

by Adam Bahret Leave a Comment

Coaching Works

A coach is an external set of eyes and ears. They will break down the way you do things and assist with building it up better.

In many disciplines our learning curve rolls over to a plateau as the years pass. Finding ways to continue to improve can be difficult. The traditional, methods of education, formal training, and self directed improvement take significant time investment.

Coaching is not training. Training is pre-constructed material. Coaching is an observation and prescriptive method for improvement.

[Read more…]

by Doug Plucknette Leave a Comment

Measure twice, cut once

Measure twice, cut once. This is what the sign read in our Apprentice Training shop at Eastman Kodak. Anyone who has worked for a living in the trades understands the true meaning behind this phrase. The intent is to help your company save time and money by doing things right the first time.

The sign really could be posted on the wall of every shop, every office and every conference room in every manufacturing plant around the world. It applies to more than the skilled trades. The sign in fact applies to every person and every job.

Do it right the first time! [Read more…]

by James Kovacevic Leave a Comment

Getting the Right People on the Bus and In the Right Seats

A guide to ensuring your department will support your reliability culture

People are the heart of any maintenance reliability program and they have the ability to make the program succeed or fail. This is why managing the change to reliability culture is critical. We covered a few of the key pieces to change management in the previous post. But sometimes, not matter what change management technique(s) you use, the change may not be successful. [Read more…]

by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

The Great Wreckoning

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

Time matters most when decisions are irreversible

Transparent vulnerabilities are so obvious that they are easily overlooked; they are the ones we:

see when they are pointed out;
recognize when we are made aware of them;
fail to acknowledge, leading to potentially significant consequences when the vulnerability is realized.

Risk and time are opposite sides of the same coin; for if there were no tomorrow, there would be no risk. Growing government intervention in the private sector therefore becomes a transparent vulnerability that we have not accounted for in our identification of vulnerabilities. Time transforms risk. The nature of risk is shaped by our time horizon. In order to achieve corporate goals and objectives time horizons are established few take into account government actions. [Read more…]

by Mike Sondalini Leave a Comment

Spread Forces Throughout Equipment and Reduce Breakdowns

What you will learn from this article.

How forces are distributed through an object.
Force diagrams are used to represent forces on an object.
Position and direction of a force determines the type of stress.
How to redistribute force in a structure.

Why don’t you fall to the ground when you sit in a chair? Why doesn’t the roof fall in on top of you? We don’t expect these sorts of things to happen. But at times chairs fail and people fall to the ground and at times roofs fall on people. When structures are put under sufficient stress they will fail. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg 1 Comment

Continuous Improvement of the Risk Management Framework

Systems and processes exist in our dynamic world. Each organization and situation is different. Just as there is not one risk management process that works for any organization, there also is the need for continuous improvement of an existing system.

When first designing a risk management process for your organization, you consider your objectives and adjust a framework to fit your needs. Over time your objectives and the surrounding environment changes, thus requiring a critical look at your process. [Read more…]

by Ash Norton Leave a Comment

What does it mean to Engineer with Impact?

If you’ve hung around this site, subscribed to the email list, or followed me on social media, you know that I am obsessed with engineering impact. It is how I close every email and is the focus of nearly every article and post. Heck, my tagline is Engineer with Impact. But what does that really mean? And how do we know if we are doing it?

As engineers, we pride ourselves on the ability to problem-solve. And rightfully so. We are dang good at it! We’ve spent years, if not decades of our lives, honing the craft of working through problem after problem, getting a precise solution. But sometimes we get so focused on solving the problem in front of us that we don’t stop to think if the problem is really…well…the problem. And when we fail to solve the right problems, we fail to Engineer with Impact. [Read more…]