Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
Short articles on maintenance and reliability engineering subjects.
James Kovacevic is the primary author writing articles for the series.
Never miss an article by signing up for the Maintenance & Reliability Series list to the right. Receive an update weekly highlighting the lastest article.
Let us know your reaction and thought, plus any questions. Please use the comments section below each article.
Does your team procure, setup and put into operation equipment with a single focus on reducing the initial capital expenditure?
Do you work with your equipment suppliers to fully specify the equipment’s functions, performance, and reliability? Maybe not the reliability? [Read more…]
With the design FMEA complete, the equipment should have high inherent reliability. The equipment can then be installed in the plant, and provide a high level of performance to the business, at least initially. This is where Maintenance comes in. Maintenance can enable a low Life Cycle Cost, by preserving the reliability of the equipment. [Read more…]
Products and equipment start with a design. The functions and performance occur or do not occur according to the capabilities designed into the system.
I learned early in my career, as a manufacturing engineer, that some products were much easier to manufacture (less yield loss) ten others, and it was often the design of the product that made the difference.
I also learned that once we purchased and installed factory equipment it was very difficult to improve the reliability performance. [Read more…]
Often time’s equipment is procured, setup and put into operation with a single focus on reducing the initial capital expenditure. This can be a fatal mistake as the reliability of the equipment is built into the design of the equipment. This called the inherent reliability. Once the equipment is designed and installed, there is little the maintenance department can do to improve the inherent reliability. [Read more…]
Nothing is worse than being in a meeting that completely wastes your time. Hopefully those meetings have been eliminated as part of the steps to making you, the maintenance professional, more effective. For the meetings that you could not eliminate, the meetings need to be effective, reducing wasted time and delivering benefits to the business.
To make meetings effective, the meetings should follow the 3 phases of effective meetings. The 3 phases ensure that meetings are effective, efficient and everyone knows what they are there to do. Lastly, it ensures that the any actions coming out of the meeting are addressed. [Read more…]
Another great method of becoming overwhelmed with work as a Maintenance Professional is to fill our day full of meetings. Worse, those meetings usually do not provide any value to you, nor do you have any inputs into the meeting.
We all know the meetings we dread going to, not because they are long, or the people in them, but because we know that it is a complete waste of time and is preventing you from accomplishing important maintenance & reliability tasks.
Next to emails, meetings are one of the most common complaints as a time waster that prevents the department and business from moving forward. Some meetings are required, and some need you the Maintenance Professional, but not all.
Throughout the rest of the article, we will cover how the Maintenance Professional can identify, evaluate and end those ineffective meetings. [Read more…]
A common complaint I hear and experience is as a maintenance professional, our inbox has exploded and grown rapidly with all the daily activities in a plant. All the emails are perceived to be important, but in reality, they are mostly urgent, or not important and not urgent.
Take a moment and think about how much time you spend reviewing and answer emails. Even those emails that do not need a response, need time to review and move or delete. I am guessing you spend at least an hour a day dealing with email. Now think about what you can do with that hour… you could move the department forward and achieve the department and business goals.
Thankfully there are 6 steps you can implement to reduce the number of emails you receive and reduce the amount of time it takes to manage the remaining email. [Read more…]
You are running from one meeting to another, to a breakdown, to the storeroom and at the end of the day you stop and think. What did I really get done today? The day was busy, but did you accomplish what you wanted to or will make a difference in the long run?
The organization needs to focus on effective maintenance, and as a maintenance professional you need to be effective with your time. Only if you are effective with your time, can you drive the organization and the maintenance program forward. Being a maintenance professional it can be difficult to discern between the urgent and important and it is easy to get caught up in the rat race.
This will be a 4-part series on how a maintenance professional can free up time in their day and be more effective in driving their goals forward. [Read more…]
Imagine being asked to discuss a breakdown during a production meeting. Only you are not aware of a breakdown, but production is claiming there was one and it could have been prevented by some Preventative Maintenance. You ask what equipment the breakdown was on and check the records. The records show there was a minor corrective action on the equipment last night, but not a breakdown.
After some discussion, the production manager explains that there was a leak, and the line had to be stopped to repair the leak. You know that a leak is not a breakdown, and will not impact production. The production manager saw a leak and assumed it was a breakdown. The end result was an unplanned outage lasting 30 minutes. [Read more…]
The CMMS is often looked at as a tool for planners, engineers and managers, but that is only partially true. The CMMS is a powerful tool for the technicians as well. But getting the technicians to use the CMMS can be a difficult journey, and can blow up in your face if is it not rolled out and communicated properly. As with other best practices, having the technicians use the CMMS is not easy, but by doing so you can dramatically improve the performance of the operation. [Read more…]
If you have properly selected and implemented your CMMS, you have the ability to truly make significant improvements in your operation. This is made a reality by using the data within the CMMS to make data driven decisions instead of intuition or feelings. This ensures the business resources are spent on the most important and strategic issues for the business.
In order to leverage the data within your CMMS, you have to ensure the data can be captured and reported easily. This is usually done during the implementation phase. [Read more…]
Most organizations only use 50% of their CMMS’s capabilities. This is for a variety of reasons, but one of the largest reasons, is that the CMMS was not setup, configured or implemented correctly. If the implementation of the CMMS was not done properly, the usability and information in the CMMS limits its potential.
How can you prevent the implementation from failing or delivering sub-par results? There are a few ways to ensure a successful CMMS implementation. This post will cover the 2 main ways to ensure a successful implementation. [Read more…]
Imagine spending $100,000s or $1,000,000s on a software package that is supposed to improve your maintenance operation. A few years later you still have not seen any improvement and you did not generate any return on investment with the software. This happens every day when businesses select the wrong the CMMS.
Selecting a CMMS can be an overwhelming task, especially when so much rides upon the success of CMMS. You can read reviews and select a CMMS based on those, but the CMMS may not be the right one for you. The CMMS has to be fit for your business / operation or you will not see the right results. Thankfully there are two ways to select the right CMMS. [Read more…]
Managing all the information and data in maintenance can be overwhelming, yet it is critical to the success of your organization. If you are not yet using a CMMS, or thinking of changing it, you could be in for some major improvements.
A recent study by Software Advice concluded that a cloud based CMMS can offer three main benefits to organizations. These benefits are the type of benefits that will make a difference in your organization and deliver bottom line results. These three benefits are: [Read more…]
This is the final post in the series on roles & responsibilities and is the final step in ensuring the team is working together. So far in the series we cover the importance of defining role & responsibilities. How to determine roles & responsibilities, and the major roles in the maintenance department. In the last post, we will cover how to tie it all together in a simple, easy to use document. A RACI. [Read more…]