Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
A listing in reverse chronological order of these article series:
What you will learn from this article.
Fixing plant and equipment about which you know little is daunting.
Here are a few ideas to help you successfully fault find failed equipment. [Read more…]
As seen in the previous articles, you can easily use the data you already have to conduct a meaningful analysis. This includes Weibull, Crow-AMSAA or a Mean Cumulative Function analysis.
Digging into a well manage dataset promises to reveal insights, trends, and patterns that will help improve the line, process, or plant.
Creating a plot or calculating summaries is pretty easy with today’s tools. Yet, are you doing the right analysis or are the various assumptions valid?
One critical step in the data analysis process is making sure you are doing a valid and appropriate analysis. [Read more…]
Today’s world contains a myriad of choices for instant gratification.
Regardless of our age, we have grown used to getting what we want, when we want it, and how we want it limited only by our ability and willingness to pay for it. [Read more…]
Some quality paradigms are expensive.
Quality is a mindset! When a wise man is given the chance to buy quality items he does so because quality pays for itself.
A quality item lasts longer, runs better and looks good when others fade. To change the way you think about quality takes a lot of experience with using poorer options. When you are sitting down with your head in your hands wondering what can be done to get costs down, to get production up and how you are going to hit the key performance indicators, remember the importance of quality equipment, quality systems, quality training and your quality mindset!
Keywords: quality control [Read more…]
A few years into your reliability journey, you start to struggle to make the improvements you were able to when you first started.
Why is this? You were able to systematically eliminate all of the low hanging fruit using the existing data in your CMMS. But now you have to dig deeper to realize the improvements and that requires better data. [Read more…]
In the first installment of this series, we described the basics behind proactive maintenance and some of the considerations users need to make.
The second installment described RCM programs – the “gold standard” if you like for program development. This third installment describes what you can do if you realize you need a program but have nothing. It would also work if you’ve got a PM program but you are unhappy with the results you are getting. Chances are that something is missing or not being done often enough.
We’ve often encountered maintenance programs that are lacking. They need a stronger proactive component and they need it quickly to get things under control.
This guideline is intended to help to get things under control. [Read more…]
What you will learn from this article:
Your facility has data and maybe too much data. Using simple plotting may be the key to unlocking how well your maintenance program is performing.
Building on the concept of reliability growth modeling James Kovacevic described a convenient way to quickly visualize your repairable system failure data is with a mean cumulative function (MCF) plot. [Read more…]
This article is Part Two in my three part series about “PM” programs.
Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) is the world’s leading method for identifying maintenance and other activities required to sustain reliable performance of physical assets. If you want a proactive maintenance program that really works, then Reliability Centered Maintenance is the most thorough approach you can take to get there. [Read more…]
Chemical corrosion can destroy the containment materials in contact with a process.
Means exist to mitigate and even prevent chemical corrosion. This article focuses on several such methods.
At times chemical corrosion is acceptable and one need only allow for it by using thicker materials. An example is the storage of sulphuric acid in mild steel tanks at ambient conditions and concentrations [Read more…]
Imagine being able to predict the next time a failure will occur for a piece of equipment without a huge amount of work. Wouldn’t it be nice to know the approximate point in time that a failure will occur on a critical piece of equipment? It is possible, but I am not talking about using MTBF, as it is not a good measure (if you need to understand why, please visit http://www.NoMTBF.com). What I am talking about is a Crow-AMSAA analysis. [Read more…]
Do you replace your car headlights at regular intervals of six months? Do you wait to replace your tires until they wear through? Do you check your car engine oil with some sort of oil analysis before replacing it? Each component and system in your car has a function that is prone to failure. Each of those has consequences – some with little importance and others with great importance. [Read more…]
What you will learn from this article.
Every failure is part of a puzzle. The equipment we are maintaining is trying to communicate with the use of each and every failure.
Often the message is not obvious.
There is the immediate failure. And, if we’re paying attention we can sort out the root cause of the failure along with replacing or repairing the damaged parts. Sometimes though the damage is caused by another issue with the system. [Read more…]
What you will learn from this article: