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What Can’t Be Replaced by Technology

What Can’t Be Replaced by Technology

Article first posted at Conscious Reliability by James Reyes-Picknell, Jesus Sifonte, and team.

The Phonograph came first in 1877, cassette players arrived in 1971, CDs made it to the market in 1982 and the just arrived ultra-modern solid state hard drives are devices all capable of recording sound. Likewise, the 1876 telephone and the 2 decades old cell phone are all good for making possible long-distance conversations. Certainly, sometimes technology changes faster than our ability to adapt to it. When you are still getting used to a specific computer operating system X.1 its creator is already announcing the launch of the newer version X.2 and the extra features it brings making it a better option than its predecessor. A change to the new version’s ‘toy’ always seems more convenient than keeping the current stuff – just think of Apple’s product development trajectory!

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Behaviour Based Safety Culture

Behaviour Based Safety Culture

The Most Successful Workplace Safety Improvement Program

Guest post by Aaron Derby

Behaviour Based Safety (BBS) programs address safety culture barriers with effective solutions for changing safety culture and securing a positive safety behaviour change.

Behaviour Based Safety passively and positively changes existing unsafe workplace behaviours by identifying and reinforcing the use of the right behaviours that protect people in real-world safety problems.

In workplaces that want high safety performance, behaviour based safety programs, when properly implemented, significantly improve personal safe performance and greatly reduce workplace injury and illness.

Behavioral Observation Programs using behavior based safety management reduce safety incidents by bringing beneficial workforce safety behavior change.

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Project Communications Risk: Matter of Resistance

Project Communications Risk: Matter of Resistance

Guest Post by Malcolm Peart (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

In conflicts, or just differences of opinion, people push-back when opinions or ideas are different to theirs.  These differences may not necessarily be wrong, but, a mere difference can constitute change to somebody and, as with any change there is inevitably some resistance to a greater or lesser extent.

As Newton discovered, ‘For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction’ and the same is true of people.  This reaction, in the absence of open minds, may not only be opposite but, if coupled with ineffective communication produces increased resistance to change and, inevitably, friction.

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Cultivating Excellence: The Art of Building a Reliability Culture

Cultivating Excellence: The Art of Building a Reliability Culture

In the realm of industrial operations, a culture of reliability isn’t just a preference; it’s a necessity. It’s the bedrock of efficiency, safety, and sustainability, providing the fertile ground for organizations to thrive and adapt in an ever-evolving world. In this blog, we will explore the methods and principles that guide the development of a reliability culture, the essence of operational excellence.

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Enhancing the Performance and Durability of Forged Steel with Annealing

Enhancing the Performance and Durability of Forged Steel with Annealing

with co-author Dr. Jay Desai

Steel forging holds significant importance in developed economies around the world. It is used to shape raw materials into precisely designed components that often have critical performance requirements. Due to their strength, durability, and reliability in harsh environments, forged steel components are utilized in a wide range of industries including aerospace, automotive, defense, and construction.

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Evaluating Equipment Overhauls – are they Really Worth it?

Evaluating Equipment Overhauls – are they Really Worth it?

The Equipment Overhaul Paradigm

Overhauling equipment is expected to bring it to an “as good as new” state. But is this really the case in reality? Equipment will deteriorate over time and progressively lose its ability to function. No matter how extensive the overhaul, the equipment will unlikely be up to the level of “newness” as when it rolled out of the assembly line.  Sure, if you have this vintage automobile from the 1930s, and spend an absolute fortune on its overhaul, it might come close to being new again. But somewhere in the structure of this automobile, there will an element that is “as good as old” and vulnerable to imminent failure. Also remember that this vintage automobile is not out there generating revenue. There is no accountant running after you with regards to budget constraints or revenue increases. Where there is passion, cost might not matter.  

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Bathtub Curve and Human Mortality

Bathtub Curve and Human Mortality

The bathtub curve is one of the most famous graphical representations in reliability. It shows the typical trend of failure rate over time (Figure 1). This curve can be divided into three parts corresponding to decreasing, constant and increasing failure rate. 

High but decreasing failure rate in the first part of the curve (1) indicates products defective or prone to fail due to manufacturing or design issues. The middle section (2) is characterized by low and constant failure rate. Failures in this phase are caused by unpredictable external events like flatting tire or power surge causing electronic failures. The right-hand side of the bathtub curve (3) shows increasing failure rate. In this stage, failures occur due to wear-out damage mechanisms such as fatigue, creep, ageing, wear and corrosion.

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Crazy Risk Management with a Risk Matrix

Crazy Risk Management with a Risk Matrix

A risk management risk matrix can trick you into leaving high consequences uncontrolled and convince you it is fine to do nothing to reduce the impacts of failure. Whether you think a bad event cannot happen has no standing in Law. The likelihood of an adverse event is unimportant; only the resultant severity is how the Law will gauge your risk abatement efforts. Did you do ‘reasonably practicable’ risk control?

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Job Safety Analysis – Part 1

Job Safety Analysis – Part 1

Guest Post by Bill Pomfret (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

Job safety has come a long way in 50 years since the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSH Act) was enacted. The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) says “more than 627,000 workers now can say their lives have been saved since the passage of the OSH Act.”

But the journey is ongoing and there’s much farther to go in eliminating death and injuries on the job.

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1833 Faraday and a HALT Experiment on Dry Rot

1833 Faraday and a HALT Experiment on Dry Rot

Accelerated life tests are used to help predict the rate of failure of components. Capacitors are frequent victims of accelerated life testing, and have a distant relationship with one of the earliest documented accelerated life tests: the unit of capacitance, the farad, is named for Sir Michael Faraday. 

Michael Faraday remains one of the most important scientists of all time. He made foundational discoveries in electricity, magnetism, and electrochemistry. Today, Faraday is less well known for documenting the Royal Navy’s results of accelerated life tests on dry rot of wood.

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Reliability Engineers: Use Caution When Using Readability Formulas like Flesch Reading Ease

Reliability Engineers: Use Caution When Using Readability Formulas like Flesch Reading Ease

Readability formulas determine how easily a specific audience can understand a text. There are more than a dozen readability formulas, such as Flesch Reading Ease, the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, the Simple Measure of Gobbledygook (SMOG), the Gunning-FOG Index, and the Coleman-Liau Index. Many Google, Microsoft, and Adobe products have a built-in readability formula. Editing tools such as Grammarly do, too. The one big thing to remember is that too much attention to readability scores does not mean your writing is easier to comprehend or understand.

How it Works

Most readability formulas use some combination of sentence length, the average number of words per sentence, the average number of characters per word, or the number of words with three or more syllables. You can use the formulas to score text by hand. The results from these formulas are often given as a grade level, such as “4th grade” or “12th grade.”

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