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Find all articles across all article series listed in reverse chronological order.

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What is the Connection between Equipment Risk and Equipment Reliability?

What is the Connection between Equipment Risk and Equipment Reliability?

When it comes to Risk we have simplified it so much that we have failed Einstein’s advice, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” It has been made too simple and missed the connection between risk and reliability.

Equipment risk has a direct impact on equipment reliability. What risks you allow your production plant and equipment to suffer will negatively impact its reliability. About 6 months ago I was playing about with the risk equation and a mathematical connection between risk and reliability revealed itself.

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Disengaged and Stressful Workplaces Create Risk for Organizations

Disengaged and Stressful Workplaces Create Risk for Organizations

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

Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace: 2022 Report found that only 21% of employees are engaged at work and 44% of employees experienced a lot of stress on the previous day – both findings are up 1% from 2021.

In one of the largest studies of burnout, Gallup found the biggest source was “unfair treatment at work.” That was followed by an unmanageable workload, unclear communication from managers, lack of manager support and unreasonable time pressure.

Disengagement and stress in workplaces are good indicators of an organisation’s workplace climate. They can also provide insights into potential issues with the organisation’s culture.

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“Our World,” a Book for your Children

“Our World,” a Book for your Children

Here’s one you probably don’t expect from me. A children’s book! “Our World” is intended to spark curiosity In children about the world around them. It asks questions like, where does the water in my shower come from, how does the electricity in my light bulb get there, and many more. It uses everyday childhood experiences to spark questions.

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How to Assign Preventive Maintenance Intervals with RCM

How to Assign Preventive Maintenance Intervals with RCM

Hi everyone, I’m Nancy Regan, coming to you from Key Largo, Florida! In today’s video, I’m breaking down how to determine if a preventive maintenance task is the right action to take and how often it should be done, using the principles of Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM).

I’ll walk you through a simple example—changing the engine oil in my 2014 Subaru Forester—and explain how preventive maintenance task intervals are assigned based on the Useful Life. You’ll learn how to assess the useful life of your assets and decide when to perform a scheduled replacement or a scheduled restoration task. I also demonstrate this using failure pattern B, showing you the conditional probability of failure.

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The Power of the Damage-Endurance Model

The Power of the Damage-Endurance Model

Unlocking Reliability: The Power of the Damage-Endurance Model in Product Development

Reliability is at the heart of robust product design. Engineers and reliability professionals continuously seek ways to predict, assess, and improve product longevity. One fundamental approach to achieving this is the Damage-Endurance Model, a powerful tool in reliability engineering that helps quantify failure risks and optimize designs.

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Equipment Failure Probability Density Functions

Equipment Failure Probability Density Functions

Charting historic equipment failure events visually shows the Failure Probability Density Function curve for that equipment. It is also known as a Failure Density Distribution Curve.

VALUE OF A DISTRIBUTION CURVE

Failure Probability Density Function curves, Failure Density Distribution Curves contain useful information about what has happened to equipment. These curves illustrate the chance of failure of an equipment over a period. Here, our fixed variables are the equipment’s components’ material-of-construction and design. As such, the only changing variable is the operating and maintenance strategies, including work processes, used by the company.

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The Two Types of Agility You Need

The Two Types of Agility You Need

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

If your business is going to survive, you must be able to read and react to changes in your markets and continuously improve your competitive position.  It’s more important now than it’s ever been.

SWOT is a model often employed to characterize a company’s competitive position in terms of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.  If a competitor creates a new offering that you can’t match, that’s a weakness.  If you have one that they can’t match, it’s a strength. 

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How RCM Transforms Your Reliability Culture

In today’s video, I’m at Lover’s Leap in Chattanooga, Tennessee, exploring how to build an effective Reliability Culture using Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM). A common challenge in many organizations is the disconnect between teams — Maintenance, Operations, and upper management aren’t always on the same page, which can lead to costly downtime, safety issues, and inefficiencies.

But there’s hope. By adopting a Facilitated working group approach to RCM, you can bring your teams together with a shared goal — good Reliability. In this video, I share how RCM can foster understanding amongst team members, break down silos, and create an effective Reliability Culture that leads to better performance and a solid Return on Investment (ROI).

Key Points Covered:

  • The impact of team misalignment on Reliability
  • How RCM brings Maintenance, Operations, and Management together
  • Why cultural change is a powerful outcome of RCM
  • The long-term benefits of implementing RCM for your organization
  • Don’t let your teams operate like feuding families!

Watch the full video to see how RCM can help transform your organization over time.

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Quality Objective 1: FMEA PLAN

Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning   Thomas Edison

As summarized in the first article in this series, “New Series – The Quality of FMEAs,” each month, I will write an article focusing on one of the 14 FMEA Quality Objectives. The intent is to provide insights and application tips for evaluating how well an FMEA meets the quality objectives. By learning to apply FMEA quality objectives, you can help to ensure that product designs and manufacturing processes are safe and reliable. If you didn’t read the introductory article, now is a good time to read it, since it explains FMEA Quality Objectives, and how they are used to create high-quality FMEAs.

In this article, I will outline how to evaluate an FMEA Plan against the FMEA Quality Objective for FMEA Plans.

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What is GR&R (video)

What is GR&R (video)

Gage repeatability and reproducibility (GR&R) is a statistical tool used in quality control to assess a measurement system’s capability. It evaluates the amount of variation in the measurement data that is due to the measurement system itself rather than the product being measured. GR&R helps to determine if a measurement system is reliable and whether it’s producing repeatable and reproducible measurements.

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