Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
Find all articles across all article series listed in reverse chronological order.
“Luck is not chance, it’s toil; fortune’s expensive smile is earned.”
Emily Dickinson
The Oxford English dictionary defines “occurrence” as “the fact or frequency of something happening.”
Reference the article Understanding FMEA Occurrence Risk – Part 1 which discusses how Occurrence is defined and applied in FMEA.
“You get pseudo-order when you seek order; you only get a measure of order and control when you embrace randomness.” Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Are you embracing randomness? There’s a misconception that once you determine a failure mode is random that your reliability work is over. That’s not the case, you’re just starting. [Read more…]
What types of equipment can you apply Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) to? (Hint: It’s NOT just for aircraft!) Watch to find out what Nowlan and Heap, the original architects of RCM, say about it! [Read more…]
Equipment failure is a reality that cuts across every industry. And when it occurs, its impact can vary from minimal inconveniences with localized damages that are easily contained and repaired, to significant incidents with damaging effects on the environment accompanied by several health and safety implications.
“The Perfect Reliability Program Plan”
We held the New England HALT Seminar this past week. It’s a little fun thing we like to put on every so often here in Boston. We do a few sessions where we talk about Reliability topics, we then play around with the HALT chambers and break a few things. It was great having sponsorship from Espec/Qualmark, and Air Liquide this year. In past years it has just been me doing a few 30 minute sessions (one man show). But this year we had four speakers and a diverse set of topics. Definitely our best one yet. This may grow to where we can’t do it at the lab any longer. Hopefully not, I don’t want to try and bring a HALT chamber to a conference center.
Let’s accept this with no uncertainty. We are living in times of extreme uncertainty. Be it the global politics or economics; our lives are clouded with a lot of uncertainty. Many economies & businesses around the world are stunned as to how to predict & plan for the future. Just see at the different predictions on oil prices made by renowned traders & analysts during last two years. Everyone seems to be so off-target. [Read more…]
In earlier articles, I discussed two risk-oriented surveys. One conducted at the World Economic Forum was of the world movers and shakers. The second was conducted by North Carolina State University. It reflected the responses of CEOs and senior managers. This article discusses the results of the Aon “Risk Management Survey” of risk managers. [Read more…]
When using a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS), proper naming conventions are important to its success. Although it may take time in the upfront planning phase to define IDs for assets, parts, resources, maintenance procedures, etc., the outcome will be well worth the extra effort. Appropriate CMMS naming conventions provide a streamlined process for easily finding information and reporting.
While a state of the art CMMS system provides extensive query capability by most data fields, it still makes sense to think about and craft proper naming standards. Your CMMS vendor should be able to provide recommendations that have stood the test of time and worked well for their customers. Most important to the success of a streamlined and efficient system is to document your organization’s conventions in the maintenance standard operating procedures (SOPs) and provide proper training on the SOPs, along with the software training provided by your CMMS vendor. Once users know the established standards and how to use their CMMS system, finding needed information is a snap.
Guest post by Suzane Greeman, ASQ-CMQ/OE, CAMA, CAMP, CMRP
It is certainly is refreshing to see that asset management education is on the uptake. Three points come to mind as I thought about asset management education for asset-dependent companies: [Read more…]
Who knew that good storytelling could contribute to our equipment’s Reliability! Watch as I explain how exploring a new city can be similar to exploring our equipment in an effort to improve Reliability. [Read more…]
Some may argue that just enough reliability data is just the right amount. Too much may lead to confusion, too little doesn’t inform well. The reliability work we do helps others make decisions, and recent work in how humans make decisions may help us prepare and present our results effectively.
If preparing reliability data-based recommendations, consider using less information. Ed O’Brien and Nadav Klein have found decision-makers tend to use much less data or information to make a decision than they think they will need.
If using data and the derived information to make a decision consider the situation carefully to know when to use a structured decision-making approach or to simply go with your gut. Daniel Kahneman and Gary Klein provide some insights and basic guidelines for decision making. [Read more…]
The concept of mindset has been around a long time. New findings from Carol Dweck take this to a new level (her book of the same title is amazing). How does it impact us with leading teams? Having and developing a Growth Mindset is essential. The impacts can be far-reaching. [Read more…]
We held the New England HALT Seminar this past week. It’s a little fun thing we like to put on every so often here in Boston. We do a few sessions where we talk about Reliability topics, we then play around with the HALT chambers and break a few things. It was great having sponsorship from Espec/Qualmark, and Air Liquide this year. In past years it has just been me doing a few 30 minute sessions (one man show). But this year we had four speakers and a diverse set of topics. Definitely our best one yet. This may grow to where we can’t do it at the lab any longer. Hopefully not, I don’t want to try and bring a HALT chamber to a conference center.
The World Economic Forum conducts a risk assessment survey annually. The 2019 survey is the 14th edition. It contains information from 2009 to 2019. The article looks at the results of the survey for these years and discusses some implications. [Read more…]
I have recently been diving into work orders and using Weibull analysis to determine optimal replacement times. During one of the analyses, we discovered a significant infant mortality problem where the equipment was failing under 1 year of operation. I’m not stopping there.
A common misconception with infant mortality is that there’s nothing we can do. I’ve heard people say that we can’t plan for infant mortality or we can’t reduce these types of failures without switching manufacturers.
That’s not the case [Read more…]