Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
A listing in reverse chronological order of these article series:
If you’re managing equipment that’s 10, 20, or even 40 years old, it may be time to revisit some of the maintenance tasks you’ve put in place. In today’s video, I explain why it’s essential to periodically review your proactive maintenance tasks and other strategies as your equipment ages and how Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) principles can help.
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Are you having trouble producing good quality maintenance job plans?
Is your “standard job” plan library nearly empty?
Is your planned work running below 65% (bottom quartile)?
Note: scheduling without a plan, isn’t planned, and failing to plan is planning to fail!
With maintenance costs burning up to 30% or more of your operating costs (depending on industry) there can be a big benefit from reducing those costs. Every dollar saved goes straight to the bottom line, and upwards of 20% (sometimes more) can be achieved by doing a good job at maintenance work management. But many companies don’t even come close. At the heart of their problem is their approach to maintenance planning. Not the planners! They do their best but are often untrained and unfamiliar with good practice in planning.
However, even if your planner are well trained, they can be easily side-tracked by parts chasing, purchasing, schedule shuffling and even standing in for supervisors!
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has now come to planning!
If you are a planner, don’t worry. It won’t take your job, but it will help you become a superstar planner!
We all know that maintenance plans are critical to efficient work execution and keeping a lid on costs. Planners create those plans and then go on to schedule the work when it best suits the organization.
Creating maintenance job plans requires a great deal of knowledge and insight into parts, tools, trade skills, lifting apparatus, and so on. Only a planner on site has access to it all, because only he can actually see where the work will be performed. However, creating job plans is a lot of work. The average fully trained planner who is actually dedicated to planning (not scheduling), can produce maybe 4 or 5 good plans in a week. With hundreds or even thousands of jobs to plan, he can be planning for his whole career. Using old Work Orders as a sort of template helps, but planner productivity can still be low.
Introducing artificial intelligence to generate draft job plans quickly, gives the planner a huge boost in productivity – how about 40 good plans in a week, instead of 4 or 5? Combined with proper use of your CMMS / EAM’s capability to save standard job plans, your operation can rapidly move away from low single digit % planned work to reach benchmark levels > 95%. That can boost worker (trades) productivity from 30% (typical) to nearly double that. Considering the skilled trades shortages and trouble hiring them that everyone is experiencing these days, that’s a huge spin off benefit!
Conscious Asset has teamed with Perspect Analytics and Cato AI Solutions to create AIJobPlanner(tm). This cloud based tool takes seconds (up to a couple of minutes for very complicated jobs) to generate draft maintenance job plans that include: tasks / activities complete with sequencing, timing, resources (parts, special tools, materials, trades) all that are needed to complete the job. It automatically searches the web and our library for technical manuals and other information relevant to the equipment you specify. Our advanced tool will also accept input of your site specific information such as technical manuals, Bills of Materials, etc. The tool produces a very comprehensive DRAFT job plan in seconds.
Caution: These DRAFT plans are very complete, but they still need review and possibly editing by a real planner. That effort to review and edit takes minutes, not the hours it usually takes to create a new plan from scratch.
Click here: aijobplanner.net To see the tool, a demo that loads automatically, to sign up for a free trial, or as a Beta Tester.
We are accepting up to 100 Beta Testers and have some special offers to make it more enticing for you to try the tool. Use the link above or the QR code below to go to the Beta Test site and sign up. Click on the “sign up free” button at the upper right of the screen. To get the special offers, we only ask that you try it, and give us your feedback.
The special offers are:
If you like the tool, here are our subscription plans:
Assets are crucial in the production of goods and services. These assets must have minimal to no failures. However, assets tend to fail frequently, and reliability improvement projects do not always provide the expected results. This has been documented in numerous case studies.
This webinar will explore the reasons why assets continue to fail and why reliability projects do not always yield the desired outcomes. What steps can we take to ensure a successful reliability journey
In this insightful webinar, discover how we can equip our workforce with the necessary tools and techniques to decrease failures and increase reliability, ultimately maximizing the return from our assets.
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Hi everyone, I’m Nancy Regan, coming to you from beautiful Key Largo, Florida! ☀️ In today’s video, I’m discussing who’s responsible for reliability in an organization. Just like the intricate root systems of mangroves, every part of your organization plays a role in creating a strong and effective Reliability Culture.
From operators and maintainers to engineers and management, everyone must be involved to achieve the reliability you need from your equipment. Watch the full video to learn why building an effective Reliability Culture is essential and learn how to do it!
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In this short video, I explain the key concept of Failure Modes—the specific causes of Functional Failures—and why they are the foundation of Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM).
Just like not all dollar bills are created equal, Failure Modes vary in severity, and some can have a much greater impact on your equipment’s Reliability.
Learn why proactively identifying Failure Modes is critical to managing your assets effectively and how RCM can help you achieve the Reliability you need—without overpaying for it.
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The reality: Savings in work execution can easily be 30 to 60% of what you are spending today! That’s less labor, less overtime, less contracting, less consumption of parts and materials, less spend on delivery logistics, and less procurement activity. If your maintenance costs are in the range of 10 to 30% of your operating spend, you can save 3 to 18% of your operating labor costs by focusing on maintenance planning, scheduling and improving your proactive maintenance program.
The myth: many believe that planning and scheduling will solve their maintenance productivity problems, so they focus efforts to improve them. But despite their efforts, results don’t change. Time and again, we see reports showing relatively high levels of planned work but low schedule compliance, and production outputs don’t change. What’s going on?
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In this session, we will delve into essential strategies for gaining clarity in the midst of reactive maintenance challenges.
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Why Do Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) Analyses Fail?
Hi everyone, I’m Nancy Regan, and in today’s video, I’m coming to you from the ancient ruins of Chichen Itza in Mexico! Standing in front of the “ball game” court, I’m reminded of one of the biggest reasons why Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) analyses often fail.
Just like trying to learn everything about this historic site in a few minutes, many organizations attempt to implement RCM after reading a book or taking a quick course, without truly understanding the process. In this video, I explain why having a deep understanding of RCM is crucial to carrying out a successful analysis—and how going into too little or too much detail can cause problems.
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THE VITAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN USING CONSEQUENCE OR CHANCE REDUCTION STRATEGIES IF YOU WANT OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE RESULTS, IS CONSEQUENCE REDUCTION REQUIRES REPAIRS AND MAINTENANCE, WHEREAS CHANCE REDUCTION REMOVES REPAIRS AND MAINTENANCE.
In reading “Enterprise Asset Management Success the Plant Wellness Way for CEOs and Senior Executives” I was interested in your table on page 15 that showed risk based inspection and condition based monitoring techniques as consequence reduction strategies.
My understanding is that both RBI and CBM are specifically designed to prevent failure through reducing the likelihood of failure i.e. by detecting failure before it happens within timescales that allow mitigation action to be taken. In the API 581 RBI standard, consequence is treated as a constant over time so the methodology specifically targets risk reduction through more effective inspection or design changes.
I appreciate that this is only a small point in terms of the overall approach and key messages challenging readers, but if you have time to reply I would like to understand the reasoning behind not viewing RBI and CBM as chance reduction.
Hello Paul,
When I developed the table I decided that if a technique or methodology required a failure to start in order to provide evidence that failure had been initiated, then it fell into the consequence reduction strategy. Once an embryonic failure existed then the eventual outcome COULD be complete failure if circumstances went badly. CBM and RBI look for evidence of failure, in fact they need a failure to have started in order to provide the signal that the P-F degradation has begun.
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Hi everyone, I’m Nancy Regan, and in today’s video, I’m breaking down what makes Reliability Centered Maintenance truly “Centered.” Using a real-life example from my own vehicle—where my fan only works on level four, causing all sorts of noise issues—I explain how defining the function of an asset is the key to understanding its reliability needs.
I walk through how writing Functions is the foundation of the RCM process, ensuring assets are maintained to meet the specific needs of their operating context. From there, I explain how this noisy fan failure creates non-operational consequences in my case, and why, in this situation, it’s okay to run this particular Failure Mode to failure. What does the “Centered” in Reliability Centered Maintenance mean? Watch to find out!
[Read more…]The advent of the microprocessor has enormously advanced the process of vibration data acquisition and analysis in recent years. Measurement tasks that took hours only two decades ago can now be completed in minutes and better decisions made because of better data presentation.
However, the basic processes of measurement and analysis have remained essentially unchanged, just like the machines from which the vibration is measured. The results of the measurement and data analysis need to be compared with known standards or guidelines and decisions made as to whether the machine is acceptable for service or maintenance should be planned. Increasingly these processes are being handled electronically but we are still a long way from replacing the fundamental knowledge and experience of the vibration analyst.
In this article we will review the basic principles of vibration measurement and analysis in order to lay the foundation for capable fault diagnosis to be considered later.
[Read more…]Imagine, 6 operational locations with a combined maintenance spend of $438 million and acceptable but mediocre performance. Production outputs ranged from 70% to 94% of nameplate values.
That’s faster than the current mine permitting processes. Revenue was equivalent to adding a new mine at about 3% of the typical capital investment. Yes, this was a real customer in the mining industry with operations throughout North America.
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In today’s industrial environment, the efficiency and reliability of maintenance operations are crucial. This is where Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS) and Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) systems come into play. These systems are designed to manage the maintenance function by tracking maintenance work, parts used, failure codes, and more.
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Hi everyone, I’m Nancy Regan, coming to you from the Watermelon Festival in Russellville, Alabama! In today’s video, I talk about how Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) can help you find the “sweet spot” when choosing proactive maintenance tasks for your equipment.
Just like every watermelon has a sweet spot, RCM helps you pinpoint the best maintenance task for each Failure Mode. Using a simple example like “oil degrades due to normal use,” I explain how RCM guides you to decide between different options, such as Scheduled Replacements or Condition Based Maintenance. By answering the RCM questions, you can figure out which task is the most cost-effective or reduces the risk of failure to an acceptable level.
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Reliability Analysis or Life Analysis is a process where asset records are used to build a statistical model for the asset. The model will in turn provide information of its future performance. It becomes an indispensable tool for asset managers in terms of making life cycle decisions with regards to the asset preservation and eventually replacement. Let alone the safety of employees. Typically, though not necessarily always, those records are obtained from the Computer Maintenance Management System (CMMS).
The basis of the model is a statistical distribution. An example of the process is illustrated in Diagram 1 where a number of “n” centrifugal pumps are run on a test bench until they fail. Each time interval to failure is recorded and once all the failure records are collected, a normalized frequency graph can be constructed. This frequency graph helps define the statistical distribution that best represents the life cycle of a typical component in the population. Using specific mathematical transformations applied to the distribution, the probability of failure after a defined mission time can be derived. And much more information as we will discover in this article.
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