Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
A listing in reverse chronological order of these article series:
The awareness gap results from management having limited or no knowledge of the maintenance function and its ability to contribute to the manufacturing process; and maintenance personnel, managers included, having a limited understanding of the business side of manufacturing. The result is that management and maintenance are often unsure about how they together contribute to the company’s success. [Read more…]
By Guest Blogger Wesley Suplit, product manager, SDMyers
After my first year in college, I discovered my favorite curriculum – economics. This surprises my friends and family because that discipline is known for its dry content and difficult math concepts. However, I had a completely different and inspiring experience. The course, and, really, my professor, opened my eyes to the beauty of observing how people make decisions.
What rocked my world was how simple economics could be. Conclusions could be inferred simply by observing phenomena and then performing thought experiments related to the observations. The goal of a thought experiment is to explore the potential consequences of the principle in question. Surprisingly, no mathematical formulas or complex equations were needed. [Read more…]
According to the Institute of Asset Management, an asset management strategy is a “long-term optimized approach to management of the assets, derived from, and consistent with, the organizational strategic plan and the asset management policy.” Stated differently, an asset management strategy is a high-level but very important document that guides asset management activities within an organization.
Reliability Centered Maintenance methods compliant with the SAE standard JA-1011 (“Evaluation Criteria for RCM Processes”) all have common features – they must, or they won’t comply with the standard. Those requirements are “minimum” requirements, as they are with any standard. RCM-R complies. But what makes it different and why?
The RCM standard and most, if not all, of the established RCM methods are firmly rooted in the past as it was defined by those few individuals who wrote the SAE standard. The standard and those methods have stood the test of time because they work, but we asked, “Can they work better?” Answer – yes. [Read more…]
In December, I was doing cardio at the gym and watching the sports highlights. One of the highlights was Derrick Rose hitting a game winning shot. In the post-game interview, the reporter asked him about the shot. Derrick Rose’s response gave me chills.
“Excuse my English, but I’m born to do this sh**” [Read more…]
The limits of my language means the limits of my world. Ludwig Wittgenstein (Austrian-British Philosopher)
As an Engineer & a Reliability Professional I believe the biggest hurdle to success of my fraternity’s ideas, initiatives, programs, suggestions; is our collective inability to properly communicate their benefits to our different audiences. Instead of pointing any blame to the other side, we need to do a little self-assessment of ourselves to see what may be our own failings. [Read more…]
RCM-R® goes beyond what RCM alone can do. The basic successful method as defined in SAE JA-1011 remains intact. RCM-R® enhances that method, linking it to international standards for risk management and adding a degree of technical rigor rarely seen outside of the military, nuclear and aircraft industries. It adds a great deal of emphasis on what it takes to implement the method successfully – not only as a project (as has so often been done with other RCM methods), but as a sustainable program, and on leveraging the analysis results to maximize value generation and align closely with the intentions and precepts of the new international standard for Asset Management, ISO 55001. [Read more…]
I took last week off of work, not because I went on vacation, but because I needed time to take care of myself. I did fun activities, I had a few sessions with my coach, I slept as best as I could, I meditated, I did yoga and I took care of myself as best as I could. [Read more…]
In many dealings throughout my career, including myself, it seems commonplace that people do not want to admit they need help. From physically, mentally, in life, or in business, our egos seem to always keep us from reaching our full potential. [Read more…]
In all production facilities, the success of most business operations is closely tied to the performance of their maintenance operations. On a busy plant floor, for example, all it takes is for a critical machine to breakdown mid-production and the ripple effects begin; from lost deadlines to stressed staff, wasted materials, and so on.
Identifying exactly when an asset will fail still remains a big priority and “tools” like the p-f curve are here to guide us in the right direction.
At SDMyers, we can’t stress enough the importance of safety when testing high-voltage electric-power equipment. Our partners at IRISS share our passion for the safety of maintenance workers in the field, including our own mobile diagnostic technicians. We hope that this guest blog from them is educational. If you find value in it, please leave us a comment. And, if you enjoyed this article, then here’s information on the safest way to obtain oil samples from cabinet transformers without de-energizing them. [Read more…]
Maintenance, is already a big enough challenge for many of us, yet beyond lies the realm of Asset Management. Back in 2004, As the second edition of Uptime was being written, the UK was introducing a specification for Asset Management and requiring network utilities to implement it. Drivers included the justification of rates charged to customers by these natural monopolies, the need to convince regulators that good asset management was indeed being practiced and to avoid failures that were increasingly becoming more serious and more publicized. The UK’s Publicly Available Specifications, PAS 55-1 and -2, were the first in this field. Those specifications underwent revision a few years later (2008) and early implementations were successful. The Institute of Asset Management (IAM) in the UK became the primary proponent of PAS 55 and the driving force behind a movement to create a new international standard. Along the way various documents were written to explain asset management and various national and international groups were formed to promote good asset management – some from national groups that were focused predominantly on maintenance. [Read more…]
The buzzword, “continual improvement,” is a hard one to miss. No matter how it’s worded, the notion of making changes that positively affect your business isn’t new. If you’re exploring ways to continually improve your maintenance operations, consider the benefits of integrating your computerized maintenance management software (CMMS) with other business applications. Software integrations can vastly increase the efficiency of your everyday operations and processes. Read on to learn our top CMMS integrations for your business.
Combining CMMS software with other relevant components of your organization helps eliminate duplicate or redundant processes. For example, critical information that is typically only found in a CMMS can be utilized by additional departments to improve the accuracy of their operations. The likelihood of errors decreases dramatically when systems communicate directly with one another. [Read more…]
Ultrasound is an effective technology that can be used for a few different purposes, not only condition monitoring. Here are my thoughts on the top uses: [Read more…]
Lately, I’ve been struggling with poor quality sleep. Sleep has a huge impact on my mood and the insomnia has contributed to increased suicidal ideation and depression. Ironically, the reason why my sleep quality has decreased is due to the new medication I am taking for depression (when I’m through this, I will talk about this more. Right now, it’s too raw of a subject). [Read more…]