Articles

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

Hit Your Budgeted Monthly Production Costs and Targets

For industrial operations struggling to get budgeted monthly operating results, we have a new book about building a “success system” in your company. If you want to ensure your monthly production targets and operating costs are always hit, read Industrial and Manufacturing Wellness.

Developed from the Plant Wellness Way, the Industrial and Manufacturing Wellness Enterprise Asset Management methodology gives you a systematic, structured approach to build a holistic, lifecycle business system that consistently gets you the best possible monthly production successes.

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by James Reyes-Picknell Leave a Comment

Digital Transformations – can they succeed?

Hot on the heels of my two articles (part 1 and part 2) about Data being unfit for purpose is another article by my colleague, Paul Daoust, just published in Canadian Business Quarterly.

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by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

Annette Davison Ph.D – Future of Work – Risk Management

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

Dr. Davison has more than 30 years’ experience in environmental management, integrated water cycle management and risk assessment. Davison has more than 30 years’ experience in environmental management, integrated water cycle management and risk assessment. She is the Principal Risk Analyst and founding Director of Risk Edge® Pty Ltd. and co-founder and R&D Manager, D2K Information Pty Ltd. She received her PhD in Environmental Biochemistry and Microbiology from Macquarie University. Her most recent book is entitled: The Application of ISO 31000 to Drinking Water Quality Risk Management: A Practical Approach. It is published by Edge Pty Ltd, Sydney Australia.

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by Ray Harkins Leave a Comment

The Hard Facts About Soft Skills

A version of this article was previously published in the December 2015 edition of Quality Progress magazine.

Last summer while visiting my hometown, I ran into Sam, an old friend who works in a senior technical position for a very large organization. In the course of our conversation, Sam told me about a recent discussion he had with his division’s manager about the possibility of moving up in the company. He was trying to find out if his boss would recommend him for a promotion to a particular supervisory level position that had just opened. His manager’s reply was provocative. He said, “Sam, you’re excellent at your job. I don’t know what we’d do without you. But before I could recommend you for a team leader position, you’re going to have to work on your soft skills.”

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by Sanjeev Saraf Leave a Comment

Safety Forecast For The 21st Century

The 20th century was a time of great technological change that forever transformed how we live and work – changes that necessitated the birth and development of the field of Process Safety Management. The early years saw the evolution of mechanization into assembly lines and true industrialization. Lack of access to South American nitrate during World War I, led to the creation of the synthetic chemical industry. World War II fostered increased industrial growth and sophistication. By the 1960s, we were building computers and beginning our race to the moon. Industries grew becoming increasingly sophisticated and reliant on automated systems. The 1970s brought the creation of the US EPA and OSHA. The 1980s witnessed one of the greatest tragedies in the last century – an estimated 4,000 people died in the 1984 Bhopal accident. Since then, the process safety community has evolved in its approaches and methodologies to better manage risks.

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by Doug Lehr Leave a Comment

Designing with Margin

Do you need design margin in your product? A composite frac plug may need margin as a mitigation against uncertainty in material properties. Long service life products used in offshore wells are sometimes designed with structural margin as a mitigation against changing downhole conditions. But can margin be used for other parameters?

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by JD Solomon Leave a Comment

Five Ways to More Effectively Facilitate Business Cases

The foundations of systems thinking and facilitation apply to business cases because the analysis requires a group to establish the nature of separate and inter-related components. This article discusses five ways to effectively facilitate business cases by conducting pre-session exchanges, asking powerful questions, using exercises that engage, anticipating disruption, and controlling the tempo.

Is There Really a Direct Correlation Between Reliability & Safety?[Updated]

Safety is often directly correlated with system or component reliability. Is that really the case?

Find out what the experts and their data really says.

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by Mike Sondalini Leave a Comment

Get More Operating Profit and Stop Problems by Setting Tighter Quality Standards

Adopting the business strategy of intentionally tightening process and work quality standards will drive operating profits higher. You get most operating profits when process and work quality variables are sitting on their optimal cost points. The Taguchi Loss Functions of your operation show the connection between your operating costs and your process and work quality.

Keywords: Taguchi Loss Function, quality verses cost, Quality Cost Function

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by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

Project Management Future of Work Risks

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

What does the future hold for project management? Remote and flexible work arrangements were trends prior to COVID-19. The pandemic greatly accelerated the trends and a lot of it will be permanent well after the virus is tamed. Remote work arrangement means any work you do that dose not require commuting into an office. A flexible work arrangement are alternate arrangements or schedules from the traditional working day and week. Employees may choose a different work schedule to meet personal or family needs

This paper discusses the risks these changes will have on project management for future work. It does not present new technologies and the risks they will impose on projects. This is a subject for another paper.

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by Nancy Regan Leave a Comment

Consider Plausible Failure Modes for Your Operating Environment

𝗔𝗿𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗙𝗮𝗶𝗹𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗠𝗼𝗱𝗲𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗘𝗻𝘃𝗶𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁?

I’ve driven this route at least 3,000 times in the last 12 years. If you asked me if I would ever see a Tupperware-bowl-full of cut honeydew melon…or a pair of sneakers and an orange sitting atop a highway barrier, I would have said “𝘯𝘰.”

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by Sanjeev Saraf Leave a Comment

External Damage: The Number 1 Cause Of Natural Gas Pipeline Incidents

I recently came across a report from European Gas Pipeline Incident Data Group (EGIG) titled “Safety Performance Determines The Acceptability of Cross Country Gas Transmission Systems”. The paper presents incident data contributed by six European gas transmission operators over a 30-year period of 1970-2001.

Why True RCA Works on Any Undesirable Outcome!

During a recent webinar I presented with SMRP, entitled “Root Cause Analysis: It’s a Money Maker, Not a Money Taker”, I was fortunate to have many deep thinkers in my virtual audience.

They floated some questions related to conducting ‘RCA’s on non-mechanical situations. To my fellow veterans in this RCA space, this is a relatively easy question to properly address, but it did get me to thinking. I think those of us who do this for a living, take for granted that we know a properly facilitated RCA, can apply to any undesirable outcome, no matter the industry or the bad outcome.

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by JD Solomon Leave a Comment

Five Ways to More Effectively Facilitate Capital Program Prioritization

The foundations of systems thinking and facilitation apply to capital programs because the analysis requires a group to establish the nature of separate and inter-related components (the projects). This article discusses five ways to effectively facilitate capital programs prioritization by conducting pre-session exchanges, asking powerful questions, using exercises that engage, anticipating disruption, and controlling the tempo. [Read more…]

by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

From Quality to Risk: Local Government’s Journey

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

This piece will examine how the move away from quality management to risk management in United Kingdom local governments developed and how risk management became a mandate. It will then move to the specific by looking at Cheltenham Borough Council’s risk management policy and aspects of the 2018 Audit Committee Annual Risk Management Report. It will close with some observation on where risk and quality management are being used together.

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