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Find all articles across all article series listed in reverse chronological order.
“The effects of chance are the most accurately calculable, and the least doubtful of all factors in the evolutionary situation.”
R. A. Fisher, ca. 1953
COVID-19 vaccination claims have changed from “prevention” to “reduced severity.” FDA approved Pfizer’s vaccine for 95% efficacy, compared with the placebo control sample. Pfizer’s placebo sample had 86% efficacy, compared with the US population case rate! Sample subjects resembled each other but not the US population!
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Regardless of your technical background, the higher you move within an organization, the more you need to understand about the organization’s finances.
Accounting is often referred to as the language of business. And I believe it. Before I studied corporate finance and accounting, I often felt lost. I didn’t speak the language. I remember sitting in a board meeting where other managers and board members were reviewing the financials for the organization. And I simply didn’t understand what all the numbers meant. By the time I starting making some simple two connections, the meeting had moved onto the next topic.
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Maintenance does not mean the same thing to all people. Operations managers, maintenance supervisors, and reliability engineers can be heard struggling to come to a common understanding.
Historical definitions of maintenance are quite different. “Maintenance” was originally the crime of unlawful abuse of legal procedures and attempts to influence courts. The other historical definition is providing money for operating or living expenses. As a term applied to machinery, maintenance is less than about 150 years old. Preventive maintenance as a literal phrase is even more recent. So who invented this phrase?
[Read more…]While performing consequence modeling we are often required to evaluate damage to population and property from a fire.
Thermal radiation impact to humans from a fire should be based on the dosage – i.e. the intensity of exposure and the duration of exposure. Furthermore, such an impact from thermal radiation on population should consider the protection offered by clothing/buildings and the ability of a person to find a shelter from radiation.
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I recently presented a webinar for SMRP and Empowering Pumps, on the title above. There were several questions, post-presentation, that I felt were worthy of expanding on in the form of a blog.
Question #2 (of a total of 5)
How do you manage a situation where people just decide not to use simple tools like RCFA, just comfortable doing things same way? Even when you keep driving it.
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I knew it was going to be a long week when my co-facilitator asked the group, “So, what happens when a submersible pump fails.” Their eyes spoke louder than the deafening silence. The skinny guy on the front row responded, “Don’t YOU know?” “You are an idiot!” exclaimed the old guy on the left side with a deep stare. The slightly heavy woman in the middle, who looked like everyone’s big sister, retorted, “why don’t you just tell us.” The fat guy in the back looked around, cut his eyes back at me, and said, “Where are the doughnuts?”
Yup, it was going to be a long week. Facilitating Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is never fun. Tag teaming the facilitation usually helps everyone stay fresh. But as Forrest Gump said about the box of chocolates, when you co-facilitate in a Fortune 500 company you never know what you are going to get.
Powerful questions are enablers of better facilitation. Using powerful questions takes awareness, discipline, practice, and self-appraisal. Facilitators need powerful questions to get better participant answers and create better results.
[Read more…]Covid put many of our companies into a paralysis-like state. We’ve survived thanks to austerity measures, but we all know that we can’t cut our way to prosperity. As the recovery looms, we can act now to ensure sustained operational efficiency and organic growth post-pandemic.
Improving your maintenance program, as mundane as it may sound, can produce very high returns for very little investment. The first step – stop viewing maintenance as a cost to be minimized. Rather, view it as an ongoing investment in productive capacity.
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“Puttin’ wood in t’ole after ‘oss ‘as bolted“… this is actually English, it really is, and it’s a Yorkshire phrase meaning ‘shutting the gate after the horse has gone’.
How often are we wise after the fact? How often is more time and effort spent focusing on the gate rather than retrieving the horse? There is a tendency to try and find the person responsible for not closing the gate, requiring more people to check on gate closing, writing procedures for closing the gate and this is coupled with hours of pointless and misdirected discussions by every man along with their barking dogs. But what about catching the horse that now runs free and ensuring it can’t bolt again?
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The cyclo-drive gearbox is a variation of a planetary gearbox. They have the added advantage of not using gear teeth to drive the shafts; rather they use an internal offset cam arrangement to drive rolling pins that turn a cycloidal wheel inside the gearbox. The rollers are capable of taking 500% overload without breaking the gearbox. One other benefit of the cyclo-drive gearbox for users is that many models are grease filled and do not use oil.
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Sometimes we find inspiration in the most unlikely places! Join me for this impromptu LIVE as I share three important lessons about Productivity, Reliability, and Life.
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A great tool to help diagnose where these problems come into play is using the four quadrants from Stephen Covey’s great book, “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” or sometimes called “The Eisenhower Matrix” after the famous General and President.
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It is estimated that there are more than 500,000 Above ground storage tanks (ASTs) in the U.S. These tanks can leak gradually (more likely) or may collapse suddenly (low probability). The loss of tank content can lead to water contamination or may lead to a fire in case of a hydrocarbon.
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“I really liked the pre-workshop survey,” responded an executive team member. “It enabled us to have a fast start and it helped everyone get on the same page.”
No one wants to waste their time. As the leader of any workshop or series of meetings, it is crucial to understand what is effective and what is not. A well-executed pre-session exchange is one of the most frequently cited things that make a facilitated session more efficient, more effective, and more collaborative. [Read more…]
I recently presented a webinar for SMRP and Empowering Pumps, on the title above. There were several questions, post-presentation, that I felt were worthy of expanding on in the form of a blog.
Question #1 (of a total of 5)
Do we need to categorize the RCAs (based on actual/potential impacts) to decide on the need for the depth of RCA up to Latent Roots? Are all Failures supposed to be analyzed until we reach Latent Roots?
The established tools for process plant reliability engineering are:
QUESTION: Are you truly impressed by the measurable and significant performance increase that these tools have delivered?
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