In the end it‟s the people „on the shopfloor‟ who have the task of making the products and keeping the machines going which produce the goods that the business sells. If you have the wrong people in the wrong places, if they are under trained and under motivated, then you will not turn the profits that the operation is capable of delivering. You may even have a disaster on your hands with people destroying economic value faster than they make it.

How to get the very best performance from people, developing great attitudes, motivating them to continually strive to improve themselves and their work is what you will learn in this one-day workshop.

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by James Reyes-Picknell Leave a Comment

Inspect and Repair as Required – Myths and Reality

“Inspect and repair as required” are well intentioned but make up what is usually an ill-informed instruction to maintenance workers. On 10 April 2024, our Principal Consultant, James Reyes-Picknell, delivered a 1 hour “lunch and learn” webinar for PEMAC – Canada’s Asset Management Association. The subject is inspired by the words often seen in work orders that often lead to a whole lot of unnecessary misery. There’s a long introduction by PEMAC, which I strongly encourage my readers to join if you are not already a member. The content of the presentation begins at: 10:49.

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by Nancy Regan Leave a Comment

How Often Should You Schedule Preventive Maintenance?

Ever wondered how often you should perform preventive maintenance tasks? In just 31 seconds, learn the key concept of Useful Life and how it determines the intervals for Scheduled Replacement and Scheduled Restoration tasks. And learn that Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) does not govern how often you do them.

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by Joe Anderson Leave a Comment

Mastering Time Management: Essential Skills for Maintenance Managers

Effective time management is crucial for maintenance managers, who are responsible for overseeing maintenance operations, coordinating schedules, and ensuring that equipment and facilities are well-maintained. In this blog, we’ll explore some essential time management skills that can help maintenance managers optimize their productivity and achieve their goals.

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by André-Michel Ferrari Leave a Comment

Reliability Analysis and Sound Engineering Judgment

Introduction

Sometimes, non reliability practitioners assume that a Reliability Analysis is just about “tossing” a distribution at a set of data. It is a little bit more complex than this. There needs to be some sort of engineering validation on the final outcome. The question to be asked is: “does this life model used make engineering sense?” This article highlights the importance of choosing the correct statistical distribution. The alternative leads to flawed decision making and can be detrimental especially when dealing with critical equipment or million-dollar decisions. A worked example is also provided.

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by Mike Sondalini Leave a Comment

Maintenance, Economics, Risk and Reliability

There is only one reason companies do maintenance on their physical assets—because it’s cheaper than not doing it. Unless doing maintenance makes a profit by saving money, it is wasting money. In the end, maintenance is about getting the best economics from physical assets.

Keywords: plant maintenance management, equipment reliability, production risk management

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by Nancy Regan Leave a Comment

What is Reliability Centered Maintenance in 60 Seconds

Discover what Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) is in just 60 seconds! Learn the seven steps of RCM and how they help you achieve the reliability you need from your equipment.

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by Mike Sondalini 1 Comment

List of 600+ Centrifugal Pump Failure Modes and How to Prevent Pump Failures

Prevent centrifugal pump failure modes starting by removing their failure causes and make your pumps highly reliable.

There are over 600 failure causes that will make a centrifugal pump set fail. How many of them apply to your operation?

A rather interesting insight happens when you first look at this spreadsheet listing over 600 failure modes in a centrifugal pump set—there are so, so many of them. Luckily you have a second, hugely more profound insight once you realise what you are up against.

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by Joe Anderson Leave a Comment

Creating a Departmental Plan: Your Roadmap to Success

In any organization, departmental success is key to overall success. To achieve this, it’s essential to have a clear roadmap that outlines your department’s goals, priorities, and strategies. A departmental plan serves as this roadmap, guiding your team towards success and ensuring alignment with the organization’s objectives. In this blog, we’ll explore the importance of creating a departmental plan and provide a step-by-step guide to help you create one for your team.

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by Nancy Regan Leave a Comment

What Decisions Can RCM Help You Make?

Join me, Nancy Regan, on the rocky shores of Key Largo as we explore the concept of nurturing our equipment through Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM). In this video, I draw parallels between the discomfort of laying on a rocky beach and the consequences of neglecting equipment maintenance. RCM not only guides us in establishing proactive maintenance plans but also in determining necessary actions like preventive and condition-based maintenance tasks, equipment redesigns, or modifications to operating procedures. Dive into the practical aspects of RCM with me and discover how to make your equipment as comfortable and reliable as a perfect beach day.

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by André-Michel Ferrari Leave a Comment

Equipment Maintenance Terminology Simplified

Introduction

This article is a highly simplified overview of Equipment Maintenance Strategies. Its objective is to categorize the types of maintenance approaches for the lay person. Sometimes, explaining the basics using simple terminologies, initiates dialogues with others that are outside of our field of expertise. And as such improve collaboration between teams. How about making this accountant who somewhat controls the maintenance budget, understand what maintenance is really about? On the other hand, that same accountant can educate us on their work practices.

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by Mike Sondalini Leave a Comment

Selecting a Depreciation Rate for Plant and Equipment

The depreciation rate for equipment varies depending on the operational situation of the asset and the tax laws that apply to your company. The depreciation rate is more an accounting decision than an engineering one. The engineering aspect in the depreciation rate for equipment choice is deciding how long is the operating lifetime for an equipment item.

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I want to know how we calculate the value for the depreciation rate of equipment. Want is done on other industrial sites, we apply an depreciation rate of 8 percent per year?

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by Nancy Regan Leave a Comment

The P-F Interval: Quick Tutorial

Welcome back to the channel! I’m Nancy Regan, and today I’m bringing you a special tutorial from Key Largo, Florida. Join me as we dig into Condition Based Maintenance (CBM) and uncover the vital concept of the P-F Interval right here in the sand.

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by Lindsay Walker Leave a Comment

Steps to Performing an Effective Root Cause Analysis

Root Cause Analysis (RCA) is a systematic process for identifying the underlying causes of problems and preventing their recurrence. An effective RCA not only resolves the current issue but also provides insights for improving processes and systems. This comprehensive guide explores the detailed steps involved in performing an expert-level RCA.
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by James Reyes-Picknell Leave a Comment

How Maintenance Contributes to Financial Performance

Industrial operations that use physical assets for production or service delivery need their assets to run optimally, and cause minimal operational disruptions when they don’t. Spending too little overall, or on doing the wrong things, always backfires. These short-term savings inevitably lead to breakdowns disrupting operations that cost much more in lost revenue than was saved by under-spending.

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