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A word that has several meanings- most think of an upcoming wedding, a young couple excited about the idea of getting married, starting a home and a family together and all the exciting things that come with being in love.
But this isn’t the kind of engagement I want to talk about today. [Read more…]
When it comes to information, entertainment, finding your way around and communications these days, we more or less literally have it all at our fingertips and available to us just about anywhere.
We can even order and pay for coffee to pick up on our way from the commuter train to the office – no lineups for delays. We can book hotels, airlines and rental cars at the touch of our fingers with apps that show us the cheapest options.
We live in a world where instant gratification is a reality in many aspects of our private lives.
Consumer electronics has transformed a great deal of business – basically, anything where there is a service or goods that a consumer might buy on their own, we can get it easily and immediately.
We’ve grown used to instant gratification in much [Read more…]
Maintenance planning = doing things right. Identifying and addressing any possible issues ahead of time enables our craft to complete work quickly and correctly.
Maintenance planning identifies the what, why and the how. These three items allow the planner to identify most potential issues and provide the information, and materials to avoid them. [Read more…]
Guest Post by Ed Perkins (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)
There is no end to helpful advice about making decisions.
Most of this advice assumes that decision-making is fact-based, procedural, and decision-makers can follow a process. You need to have proper “framing”, know desired outcomes, be objective, evaluate alternatives, etc.
In theory, this is very good advice. [Read more…]
Vertical tank agitator bearings are required to take both radial and thrust loads.
To protect the gearbox it is common practice to install intermediate bearings on the shaft. If these bearings are exposed to the process vapors then special care is needed to protect them from contamination and ensure adequate lubrication.
Keywords: thrust bearing, bearing stool, roller bearing. [Read more…]
From the simplest to the most complex system, building and using a reliability model permits the entire team to make better decisions.
Understanding and monitoring system reliability involves knowing both:
We use system reliability models to identify weak links, and focus resources, to meet our desired reliability goals.
Being able to build the right model to meet your team’s needs best is one of your roles as a reliability professional. [Read more…]
We just held the Annual Apex Ridge/NEHALT seminar, sponsored by Qualmark. We had a full house again which was great. This year’s seminar was in three sections.
The first section discussed the methodology for balancing reliability with other product goals during a development program.
The second session was on Reliability testing tools and how to use their outputs to steer program decisions and design improvement. The third session was on specialized HALT testing techniques. [Read more…]
Reliability initiatives are implemented to improve a company’s bottom line, period.
Root cause analysis is one of the fastest ways I know to achieve this improvement. My boss used to say “show me the money” because he realized that upper management was driven by ROI (Return on Investment) or ROC (Return on Capital).
You can argue all you want on whether that is good or bad, but it is the way things are. [Read more…]
A Crisis in the Home IT departmentIf you are the head of your home IT department, you may relate to this tale
Last night my wonderful wife Stacy was riddled with angst over the disruption of her binge watching a spy series, a mild crisis with our own IT hardware.
The cause of her disappointment was the failure of our new large screen Ultra High Definition (UHD) Smart TV to deliver a drama series with a reasonable picture and sound quality. [Read more…]
Having visited hundreds of manufacturing plants in the last 15 years, someone recently asked me if there were any traits the most reliable plants all had in common.
I have listed below the top 5 signs of a reliable plant.
The plants that are top performers are clean all of the time, clutter is unacceptable, and the tasks required to keep the plant clean are routine business. [Read more…]
What if you could improve your maintenance department to the point where you increase the efficiency and the amount of work completed of your department by 80%? Would this be something that interests you?
A properly setup and managed Maintenance Planning & Scheduling Program can enable that type of success and enable your operation to plan for profitability.
This type of increase in efficiency may seem farfetched, but it can be achieved. The typical maintenance department operates between an efficiency of 30-35%, with best in class departments operating at 55% or better. What separates these operations? Planning & Scheduling! [Read more…]
If you can’t sell all you can produce, then reducing costs is often the only way to improve margins, but that simplistic accounting perspective is not always the case.
Cost control is often thought to be key to attaining profitability but it the case of maintenance it can get you into trouble.
Cost control can have a big opportunity cost if you don’t take advantage of the opportunities you have. [Read more…]
Guest Post by Geary Sikich (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)
I was supposed to be in Boston presenting at “The Disaster Conferences” on 28 January 2015. Well, the weather just put us out to 19 March 2015 for the now rescheduled Boston conference.
I guess that they are still feeling the effects of this week’s blizzard, now named “Juno”; that left Boston with over 24 inches of snow.
According to the Weather Channel Winter Storm Juno pounded locations from Long Island to New England with heavy snow, high winds, and coastal flooding late Monday into Tuesday. The storm is now winding down.
The National Weather Service has dropped all winter storm and blizzard warnings for Juno. [Read more…]
Here are the things to watch out for when you need to fabricate platforms and walkways.
Stairs, walkways, platforms, and ladders are required to be made to the Australian Standard AS 1657-1992. This standard specifies the design requirements and the materials of construction to be used.
Keywords: deflection, allowable load, live load, guard rails, connections, treads. [Read more…]
The term variance is a statistical concept related to the spread or dispersion of a set of data. Second to the mean, it a common value we may calculate.
We find standard deviation easier to understand and use (it uses the same units as the data) whereas variance uses the units squared.
We use variance in quite a few different ways. Let’s review just a few. [Read more…]