Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
A listing in reverse chronological order of these article series:
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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The Physics of Failure Factors Analysis for selecting maintenance strategy is a one-person exercise that identifies all ways a component can physically fail. Equally important to its simplicity is its ability to select the most effective life cycle strategies for maximising reliability. Another powerful business advantage is the failure-addressing solutions arrived at are universal solutions that apply to every other identical component, whatever equipment it is in. Do a Physics of Failure Factors Analysis for one part and you do it for all identical parts for the life of your operation. It is a highly accurate and cost-effective maintenance strategy selection methodology.
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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 share one of the most common mistakes organizations make when it comes to Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM)—and why this often leads to failed analyses.
Using a simple analogy of growing watermelons, I explain how RCM can go wrong when the right people aren’t involved. Just like watermelons need the right conditions to grow, RCM needs experienced facilitators and equipment experts to ensure the process succeeds.
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When it comes to Risk we have simplified it so much that we have failed Einstein’s advice, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” It has been made too simple and missed the connection between risk and reliability.
Equipment risk has a direct impact on equipment reliability. What risks you allow your production plant and equipment to suffer will negatively impact its reliability. About 6 months ago I was playing about with the risk equation and a mathematical connection between risk and reliability revealed itself.
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Here’s one you probably don’t expect from me. A children’s book! “Our World” is intended to spark curiosity In children about the world around them. It asks questions like, where does the water in my shower come from, how does the electricity in my light bulb get there, and many more. It uses everyday childhood experiences to spark questions.
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Implementing a CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management System) or EAM (Enterprise Asset Management) system can be a complex process fraught with challenges. However, organizations can effectively navigate these hurdles with the right strategies and tools.
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Hi everyone, I’m Nancy Regan, coming to you from Key Largo, Florida! In today’s video, I’m breaking down how to determine if a preventive maintenance task is the right action to take and how often it should be done, using the principles of Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM).
I’ll walk you through a simple example—changing the engine oil in my 2014 Subaru Forester—and explain how preventive maintenance task intervals are assigned based on the Useful Life. You’ll learn how to assess the useful life of your assets and decide when to perform a scheduled replacement or a scheduled restoration task. I also demonstrate this using failure pattern B, showing you the conditional probability of failure.
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Charting historic equipment failure events visually shows the Failure Probability Density Function curve for that equipment. It is also known as a Failure Density Distribution Curve.
Failure Probability Density Function curves, Failure Density Distribution Curves contain useful information about what has happened to equipment. These curves illustrate the chance of failure of an equipment over a period. Here, our fixed variables are the equipment’s components’ material-of-construction and design. As such, the only changing variable is the operating and maintenance strategies, including work processes, used by the company.
[Read more…]In today’s video, I’m at Lover’s Leap in Chattanooga, Tennessee, exploring how to build an effective Reliability Culture using Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM). A common challenge in many organizations is the disconnect between teams — Maintenance, Operations, and upper management aren’t always on the same page, which can lead to costly downtime, safety issues, and inefficiencies.
But there’s hope. By adopting a Facilitated working group approach to RCM, you can bring your teams together with a shared goal — good Reliability. In this video, I share how RCM can foster understanding amongst team members, break down silos, and create an effective Reliability Culture that leads to better performance and a solid Return on Investment (ROI).
Key Points Covered:
Watch the full video to see how RCM can help transform your organization over time.
[Read more…]You probably have a computerized system for managing maintenance. It might be part of your integrated management software, like Oracle, or SAP. The business cases for initial purchase of these systems often include forecast cost savings of 20% or more. Most of the time, they fall far short of that. In fact, the costs of the new system, its implementation, the staff required to support and run it, the training needed for users, can easily grow bigger than the costs you had before the system was implemented.
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Reliability Centred Maintenance (RCM) was developed by the aircraft industry and it has now migrated into industries across the world. The aircraft industry does RCM differently to other industries. RCM fails in general industry because inherent problems in the business design of most organisations are prevented in the airline industry with business processes imposed by legal regulation. Using the RCM methodology does not instil the business disciplines needed for RCM to deliver its benefits.
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In the world of work, execution is key. It’s not just about having great ideas or making ambitious plans; it’s about turning those ideas into action and seeing plans through to completion. However, despite our best intentions, many of us struggle to execute work effectively. So, why is this? What causes the execution gap? Let’s explore some common reasons why people fail to execute work and how we can overcome these challenges.
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In this short video, I explain the concept of the P-F Interval and its crucial role in Condition Based Maintenance (CBM). Understanding the P-F Interval is essential for determining how often to perform CBM tasks (and Predictive Maintenance task intervals) to catch Potential Failures before they become full-blown failures. Learn how the time between detecting a Potential Failure Condition and the point of failure — known as the P-F Interval — guides your inspection intervals and helps ensure reliability.
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