Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
A listing in reverse chronological order of these article series:
Human error causes 80% of plant and equipment failures. It is the single factor, which if controlled, makes the most difference to achieving world class equipment reliability and operational success. With the introduction of low cost communication and visual devices it is now possible to assist maintenance workers proactively prevent human error. By using interactive audio-visual devices workers can be coached through a job error-free to get right-first-time quality every time.
No way. It helps if you have a love – or even a fondness – for equipment maintenance and reliability. But other than that, just put your thinking cap on and you’re good-to-go!
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In 1861, Royal Navy regulations updated the Captain’s responsibilities. Centralized management control of the technical system continued to grow. Regulations now prevented Captains from modifying the ship. Many new standard report forms were required to be routed to superior offices in the bureaucracy.
Many rules from the 1717 and 1731 regulations were kept, for example: managing ship surveys, tracking repair costs, written communications with the dockyard about defects and their status, and periodic caulking.
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Using a comprehensive and inclusive definition, risk may be defined as the cost of “failure to add value” per unit time. Such failure includes performance deficiencies for employees, equipment, material and method. It includes the types of “failure to add value” comprising traditional waste such as overproduction, wait time, transportation, processing, inventory, motion and defects. It includes the cost of injury, litigation and damage to company reputation. It encompasses the total cost of failure and not just the cost of remediation. You must minimize risk to stay competitive. Risk is consuming the hidden wealth of your enterprise. It is disguised and concealed as the “cost of doing business.”
A proper CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management System) setup can make a world of difference in an organization’s asset management journey. Conversely, a substandard setup can be a living hell for Reliability Engineers like myself and other analysts. I have personally wasted hundreds of hours of my work life sifting through a poor CMMS structure trying to find records. Ever wanted to make your Reliability Analysts more productive and engaged? If yes, then this article highlights 10 highly recommended set-up requirements.
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Let a Plant Wellness Way EAM System-of-Reliability halve your Annual Maintenance Costs
A Plant Wellness Way enterprise asset management system is a powerful solution for world class enterprise asset management (EAM) success. There are three scenarios when it is justifiable for a business to adopt PWW EAM as your company’s EAM methodology.
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For conscientious plant managers and production leaders, achieving successful and sustainable Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) is a top priority. TPM is the key to reducing downtime, preventing breakdowns, and ensuring top-notch product quality during the process of manufacturing maintenance. But how do you put a TPM plan into action, and what steps should you follow to seamlessly integrate it into your existing operations and maintenance procedures? Keep reading, and we’ll break down what TPM is, how to implement it step by step, and why it matters. [Read more…]
Do you ever mutter to yourself: “Reliability Centered Maintenance, FMEA, FMECA, and CBM? I’m so confused! Where do I even start?” If so, don’t skip this one!
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Building a Reliability, Availability and Maintainability (RAM) model can provide numerous benefits to an Asset Management program. This includes conducting a Criticality Analysis. Criticality Analysis involves ranking assets based on their potential risk to the organization. It considers risk categories such as Production Impact, Safety, Environment, and Reputation, amongst others. The category list can vary and is a reflection of the organization’s structure. Organizations generally have a finite financial pool allocated to preserving asset function. A Criticality Analysis helps optimize the allocation of resources to each asset according to its importance in the system network. Ultimately this helps maximize revenue, minimize spend and maintain the organization’s license to operate.
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According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, one of the accepted definitions for standard is: “something established by authority, custom, or general consent as a model, for example.” In our case, a standard comprises a document or sets of documents providing requirements, specifications, guidelines, or characteristics that can be used consistently to ensure that materials, products, processes, and services fit their purpose. There exist international standards on quality (ISO 9,000), risk (ISO 31,000), environment (ISO 14,000), energy (ISO 50,000), management and many other fields providing information and guidance on the practices, methods, and processes designed by groups of highly qualified international experts. Most technical field professionals utilize international standards to base their practice on trusted mathematically and/or scientifically proven methods. Trial and error are no longer acceptable out of the laboratory anymore today. But, lessons learned from its practice in conjunction with regretful real-life incidents and accidents provide knowledge on their risks, mitigation, and prevention. Most asset and maintenance management best practices and techniques are standard-driven, meaning they have been carefully defined and established. The SAE JA1011 Standard on Evaluation Criteria for Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) Process has an exciting background, including disappointing and successful stories before its principles were conceived and eventually incorporated into an international engineering standard.
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Users of the Plant Wellness Way EAM methodology use accuracy-controlled procedures to turn their company into an Accuracy Controlled Enterprise: a quality driven, “learning organization” effectively using useful technologies.
A proper Computer Maintenance Management System (CMMS) setup can make a world of difference in an organization’s asset management journey. Conversely, a substandard setup can be a living hell for Reliability Engineers like myself and other analysts. This article highlights some practices to avoid in order to gain the most out of your CMMS in the long run. The examples given are based on my own experience in industry. There could be many more learnings out there. Reader comments and suggestions are most welcome as this will benefit the entire Maintenance and Reliability community.
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Estimating the money for commissioning spares allowance of a capital project using the maintenance cost in the RAV ratio is probably wrong, but it is often done. The allowance also depends on the life cycle asset management processes and practices in use.
