Skilled labor is in short supply. Companies are struggling to find talent. Education systems throughout North America have done a poor job of producing ‘job ready’ graduates. Companies have cut back on training and apprentice program funding. Immigration programs did not prioritize the intake of needed and ready-to-us skills. Governments have been slow to see the problem and even slower to act on it. [Read more…]

Some organizations are poor or marginal performers, some high, and some truly great. Jim Collins, in “Good to Great” (2001) describes the differences among the latter two. Much of the difference boils down to people and the culture that is fostered within the organization. They foster learning in all forms, including learning from mistakes. They are typically “humble” and accept helpful input from outside, admitting when and where they need to improve. [Read more…]

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In my book, Uptime, I talk about doing a review or assessment to determine your current state as compared with your vision of some desired future state. This suggests to many that a formal assessment is needed. However, you might also notice that I removed the Appendix containing sample assessment questions. Here’s why… [Read more…]

Reliability Centered Maintenance is an analytical process used in decision making about how best to manage equipment and system failures, and their consequences. Much of its output comprises maintenance tasks with assigned task frequencies. Those tasks will ultimately be managed in your Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) or Enterprise Asset Management Systems (EAM). You don’t need software to perform RCM analysis, but it is helpful. Given the link between RCM output tasks and the proactive maintenance program you will manage using your CMMS / EAM, it seems to make sense to link or integrate the two software tools. Integration should enable automatic updates of the PM program stored in your CMMS/EAM whenever the RCM analysis is updated and possibly feed failure event historical data back to your RCM analysis with a notification that perhaps the analysis should be reviewed. Alas, that’s not going to happen. [Read more…]

Many of you may be surprised to learn that Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) was actually developed with cost cutting in mind! Aircraft maintenance costs were huge. For example the Douglas DC-8-32 aircraft (a four engine narrow body jet liner built from 1958 to 1967 that carried 150 passengers) required upwards of 4,000,000 man hours of maintenance work for only 20,000 hours of flying time! That’s 200 maintenance hours per operational revenue earning hour. With growing demand for air travel in those years, wide bodied aircraft were being designed (B747, DC-10 and L-1011). But air travel was prohibitively expensive. That limits the size of the market and growth potential. A solution was needed. [Read more…]

Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) was developed in the airline industry to be used for developing maintenance programs for new aircraft. There’s no doubting it – originally RCM was intended for new designs and arguably where the results of failure could be catastrophic, specifically the loss of life and where costs of maintaining had grown ridiculously high. Aircraft maintenance costs had indeed grown very high by the 1960’s and 70’s before RCM came along. In fact, one of the big drivers behind RCM was cost reduction. It worked too – in both the aerospace and nuclear power industries! Safety and other benefits were there too, but they were not primary drivers. Then, as today, cost was the problem that got the attention. [Read more…]

Educational institutions realize that we all learn differently and combinations of learning styles will reach most of us. Some of us learn by seeing (reading), some by doing (tactile), some by hearing (aural). Most of us have a bit of each of these and rarely only one is enough. In college and university there is reading as well as assignment and lab work. We need both, so, how do we learn once we leave the academic world? [Read more…]

Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) is method for determining the most appropriate failure and consequence management strategies. It deals with your physical assets in your current operating context. The first four questions in the RCM method, are defined in standard, SAE JA-1011, “Evaluation Criteria for Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) Processes.” They utilize the time proven engineering method, Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA). [Read more…]

Root Cause Failure Analysis (also called, Root Cause Analysis) is great for eliminating the causes of failures. It’s usually used where there are major production, cost, safety, or environmental consequences. But it only deals with failures that have already happened – it is usually triggered by the very consequences you would have been better off avoiding altogether. [Read more…]

Reliability Centered Maintenance has been around since the 1970’s and it has proven to achieve amazing results wherever it has been used properly. As a reliability method, it guides decision making based on available evidence about past, and expected future, failures. It makes sense that failure data be part of that evidence. But do you need a lot of data? [Read more…]

In the late 90’s, the show “60 Minutes” did showed that an average economy car worth $15,000 new would cost about $95,000 if it was to be built from aftermarket parts, and adding in an allowance for your own labor, excluding the uni-body (which wasn’t for sale). It is more or less a given that manufacturer’s make more money on parts for their products than on the initial sale of the product. The parts market is so lucrative that there is an entire industry of aftermarket, non-OEM parts manufacturers with their own reverse engineering capabilities to sell parts at costs lower than the OEMs. If you’ve ever needed an OEM part in a hurry, the premiums are even higher and lead times can be longer than the aftermarket parts “pirates,” as they are sometimes called. [Read more…]

Many believe strongly in the value of warranties on new / refurbished equipment. They go to great lengths talking about how important it is to do the manufacturer’s recommended maintenance to maintain validity of the warranty. This is a continuation of the last blog article on having too many failures despite following manufacturer’s recommendations. Manufacturer’s usually recommend maintenance and spare parts for their products. In our last blog we can see that those recommendations are often flawed. So what about their warranty? [Read more…]

Manufacturers always publish recommended maintenance for users of their products. There are a few myths about this maintenance – one is that it will result in reliable operation of the equipment. In some cases it does, but in most, it does not. Why? [Read more…]

These days everyone seems to be cutting spending. It’s entirely discretionary, so it’s easy to eliminate. But is that a smart move?

But today, times are tough. Trade wars, protectionism, and generally sluggish economies before those were a factor have all contributed to poor corporate performance. Shareholders want more. But can you really cut costs to become profitable? No – of course not, at least not in the long term. Cost cutting, if not done intelligently, is an immediate measure that often ends up reducing capability and / or capacity and leaves the organization weaker than it was before. [Read more…]