Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
A listing in reverse chronological order of these article series:
All organizations are made up of individuals. Invariably they reflect each other – the organization reflects the choices of its people, and vice versa. For any organization to thrive and achieve, so too must its people. Without them you’re dead. [Read more…]
Protective Devices are important for our equipment and for our own safety. My guest, Miles, shows us a real-world Protective Device and explains how it could prevent disaster. Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) gives us powerful tools to decide how to maintain Protective Devices so they are ready to protect us in the event things go wrong. [Read more…]
As maintenance, reliability, and asset management professionals, we are in an amazing time. We can collect virtually limitless amounts of data on the condition of our assets. With this data, we can determine the exact condition of the assets, predict when the next failure is likely to occur and how it will occur. Besides, with all of this data, we can move to prescriptive maintenance, where the maintenance actions are determined based on the asset condition, not a predetermined strategy. I’ll touch more on prescriptive maintenance in next week’s post. [Read more…]
Reliable operations are far less expensive to maintain and operate and they produce more consistently. Yet most industrial operations are far from achieving high reliability. Getting there will require effort and that effort goes well beyond the maintenance department alone. They will need to change from reactive, break it then fix it thinking and un-informed cost-cutting measures that undermine reliability. They will need leadership, not management. Leadership is all about making change and taking your organization in new directions. It will be disruptive, or it won’t be much of a change. Leaders are the ones who rock the boat, managers will keep it stable. In choosing excellence you’ll be choosing a path of constant change and improvement. Leadership is needed – it’s about strategy, effective execution, and it’s about your people – without whom you will accomplish very little. If you want excellence, it begins with leadership. [Read more…]
Identifying the right Failure Modes is an essential part of a Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA). One of the criteria for including a Failure Mode in an FMEA is if the Failure Mode is unlikely to occur, but has severe consequences. Doing so puts you in a position of strength to decide what, or if anything at all, should be done proactively to manage it. [Read more…]
Imagine being able to adjust your maintenance actions on the fly to provide the exact maintenance where and when it is needed. However, you are not reacting to significant changes in the condition of the equipment (like PdM), but instead, you are taking many sources of information in real-time from the equipment using Internet of Things (IoT) and using analytics to analyze and understand the condition of the equipment. This allows for a flexible maintenance strategy in which maintenance is only applied when and where it is needed. This virtually eliminates the traditional PM Schedule. This type of maintenance is available now, and it is called Prescriptive Maintenance. [Read more…]
Want to achieve a worthwhile return-on-investment (ROI) from your software? Then it’s important to learn about some of the most commonly underused computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) functions. Many organizations do not use all of the features their preventive maintenance software provides, or don’t use the functions to their full capacity. In fact, a majority of plant maintenance managers feel they aren’t using their preventive maintenance software to its maximum capability.
Modern-day CMMS systems are crammed with various features, and users don’t necessarily need to access and master every feature of the system. However, it becomes a problem when users get so comfortable with their way of doing things that they avoid features they’re not familiar with. Especially if those features could potentially improve their productivity. Understanding what impact underutilized CMMS functions can have on your maintenance department will help you make the most of your software.
Entropy and economics, like entropy and maintenance, are related. In part 1 there is a simple 3 legged stool model: design, maintenance, and operations being its 3 legs. It can deliver high performance at low cost and risk – i.e.: high productivity. It is important to keep the legs balanced and indeed intact! Doing so requires a bit of investment. In thermodynamic terms, we need to put some energy into the system to keep the entropy from growing. That energy is an investment in maintenance and the payoff comes in the form of steady, predictable revenues with a high margin for profit. Those words should be music to accountants’ ears. [Read more…]
What is a Protective Device? Why are Protective Devices important? And how do you properly take care of them? Watch as I explain all three. [Read more…]
To increase your knowledge, you need to learn new things, try new things and generally push outside of your comfort zone. One of the key components of growing your knowledge is knowing what is new and happening in Maintenance, Reliability, and Asset Management.
I recently had the privilege to attend and present two papers at the Society of Maintenance & Reliability Professional’s 2016 Annual Conference in Jacksonville. This premier event was 5 days long. The conference had 3 Days of workshops and courses, with 2 days of presentations. Many certification exams were held, such as the CMRT, CMRP, CAMA. [Read more…]
Entropy fundamentals for more Uptime can help us understand maintenance and reliability a little bit better. Reliability requires good execution of the right maintenance (energy), otherwise we will see reactive maintenance (entropy and chaos) increase. Engineers are familiar with the concept of “entropy” and the laws of thermodynamics. The second law of thermodynamics states that the total entropy of an isolated system always increases over time. It can remain constant in ideal cases where the system is at a steady-state or undergoing a reversible process. So what does that mean for us in the world of asset management and maintenance? [Read more…]
Imagine not have the right spare parts to make a repair, or maybe you don’t have to imagine it. It has already happened. Now imagine having to go through the storeroom and throw out $300,000 worth of parts because they were obsolete. Once again, you may not have to imagine it. [Read more…]
Asset Management in Public and Private Sectors have some similarities and some contrasts. Most of our clients are in the private sector but occasionally we do some public sector work so we see both sides. Often, we notice distinct differences in practices and in what motivates those practices. Both have strengths and weaknesses. Both can learn a lot from each other. [Read more…]
“There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things, because the innovator has for enemies, all of those who have done well under the old conditions, and luke-warm defenders in those who will do well under the new.”
– Niccole Machiavelli
This quote is appropriate when we seek a paradigm shift towards a proactive culture, after spending our careers trained to become the best ‘react-ors’ or responders, we can be. I encourage you to read this lengthy article to the end for a surprise and to ask you a couple of questions about your experience with reliability. [Read more…]
You begin your day by looking for a part in the storeroom. You are looking for a common bearing used on multiple pieces of equipment on the site. You look up the part in the CMMS and it does not have a bin number associated with it. You walk into the storeroom and beginning going through the “bearing section”. Only the bearing is not there. You wander over the equipment section and find it buried in the equipment specific drawer, but you know that it is used elsewhere. Is this the best way to organize materials, by equipment? [Read more…]