Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
Find all articles across all article series listed in reverse chronological order.
Preventive maintenance is a proactive approach used by industries to ensure the longevity and optimal performance of their assets. It involves regular maintenance tasks such as cleaning, lubrication, parts replacement, and equipment repairs to prevent unplanned downtime and costly breakdowns.
[Read more…]“If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.” – Yogi Berra
In this article, I will outline how to evaluate an individual FMEA against the FMEA Quality Objective for Scope.
Excerpting from the article “Determining the Scope of the FMEA.”
Every journey begins with a statement of the goal or objective. Why would it be any different for FMEA? Yet, some FMEA teams do not clearly identify the focus of the analysis. This sounds simple, and it is. But, it is very important.
The Oxford English dictionary defines “scope” as “the extent of the area or subject matter that something deals with or to which it is relevant.”
Determining the scope of the analysis is an important step because clearly defined boundaries establish the issues that are to be considered and the approach that the team will take during the analysis. The scope needs to define the major elements of the FMEA project, such as the subsystems or components that will be analyzed, interfaces between lower level subsystems or components, interfaces with environment and/or humans, and other elements.
There are two ways to assess Scope, when reviewing or auditing an FMEA. This assessment is best done by interviewing the FMEA team, in addition to reviewing the FMEA documents.
The first way to assess FMEA Scope is to determine if the FMEA focus areas and boundaries are clearly defined:
The second way to assess FMEA Scope is to review the visual depiction of the scope of the FMEA.
For Design FMEAs, this is called FMEA Block Diagram. For Process FMEAs, this is called Process Flow Diagram. Reference article titled “Making the FMEA Scope Visible,” which covers the essential elements of an FMEA Block Diagram, including an example.
Does the FMEA Block Diagram include . . .
As covered in the first article in this series, each FMEA Quality Objective can be assessed for how well it is in place, and can be rated on a 1 to 3 or 1 to 5 scale. It is up to your company or organization what scale to use. Review the FMEA Scope and assess how well it meets the objectives described above. See if it makes sense, and can be readily implemented.
Once you have assessed these aspects of scope, you can determine how well the FMEA preparation meets the quality Objective for Scope.
Below is an example of an FMEA Scope and FMEA Block Diagram that is evaluated for FMEA Quality Objective # 2: FMEA Scope.
Many FMEA projects suffer the effects of “scope creep,” in which the project begins without agreed-upon boundaries, and then expands as the meetings go on. If this happens, the team must go back and redo the early work to take into account the larger scope and the project becomes “endless.”
One of the most important steps in FMEA preparation is to clearly define the scope of the FMEA project and make the scope visible. This step is one of the FMEA Quality Objectives and can be assessed by following the advises in this article.
The vital difference between using consequence or chance reduction strategies if you want operational excellence results, is consequence reduction requires repairs and maintenance, whereas chance reduction removes repairs and maintenance.
In reading “Enterprise Asset Management Success the Plant Wellness Way for CEOs and Senior Executives” I was interested in your table on page 15 that showed risk based inspection and condition based monitoring techniques as consequence reduction strategies.
My understanding is that both RBI and CBM are specifically designed to prevent failure through reducing the likelihood of failure i.e. by detecting failure before it happens within timescales that allow mitigation action to be taken. In the API 581 RBI standard, consequence is treated as a constant over time so the methodology specifically targets risk reduction through more effective inspection or design changes. [Read more…]
This article shows reductio ad absurdum in action. Yes you can achieve any MTBF you want, by mixing products with Weibull life distributions, but you won’t want the consequences. The article also shows the absurdity of specifying MTBF, alone.
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Mental Health Awareness week is fast approaching. This year [2022] it is from 9th-15th May, and the theme is Loneliness, Anna Neagle is right, in her book Cultivating and being happy in our own company is important, but even the most introverted among us benefit from human connection and where increasingly people have started working from home, or in a hybrid home/workplace setting, we need to proactively seek that connection out. Connection can be with our close circle, or even from small talk with strangers the research shows that both are helpful for our well-being. [Read more…]
Hi everyone, I’m Nancy Regan, and in today’s video, I’m breaking down what makes Reliability Centered Maintenance truly “Centered.” Using a real-life example from my own vehicle—where my fan only works on level four, causing all sorts of noise issues—I explain how defining the function of an asset is the key to understanding its reliability needs.
I walk through how writing Functions is the foundation of the RCM process, ensuring assets are maintained to meet the specific needs of their operating context. From there, I explain how this noisy fan failure creates non-operational consequences in my case, and why, in this situation, it’s okay to run this particular Failure Mode to failure. What does the “Centered” in Reliability Centered Maintenance mean? Watch to find out!
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Institute of Quality and Reliability is happy to release this video on Power and Sample Size in the context of hypothesis testing. The video also contains application examples of power and sample size calculation for one-sample z-test using Minitab software.
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A sometimes overlooked function of production planning, is materials management for new product introduction (NPI).
In our previous article, we covered fundamentals of managing contract manufacturers (CM) value streams. The goal for NPI is similar: we want NPI prototypes available per a prototype plan and (eventually) a production plan.
Below is a simplified value stream map for a managing a contract manufacturer using “plan, source, order, make, deliver” as major subprocesses. The planning function “NPI Materials Manager” is shown with corresponding interfaces and is the focus of this article.
H.L. Mencken, the sharp-witted satirist and critic of early 20th-century American life, once wrote, “For every complex problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”1 Mencken, born in Baltimore in 1880, was known for his incisive critiques of societal norms and his skepticism of simplistic solutions to complex issues.
Mencken’s wisdom applies to both everyday life and technical fields. His insights are particularly relevant in the engineering, manufacturing, and reliability disciplines, where the temptation to seek easy answers can lead to costly errors. We’ll start with a relatable everyday example before exploring documented cases in engineering and manufacturing that demonstrate the pitfalls of oversimplified solutions.
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You get a few raised eyebrows when you claim to be Communicating with FINESSE. Well, at least you do if the person on the other end does not understand that FINESSE stands for something. Or if they do not understand what a fishbone diagram is. Here’s a short review of the origins of FINESSE and how the FINESSE fishbone diagram powers the communication of reliability engineers.
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Over the past couple of days, like most days, have received questions and comments concerning MTBF. I do try to respond to all questions and acknowledge the comments.
Glad to help in anyway I can, so please feel free to send me your questions. Certainly do appreciate the supporting comments, or any comments for that matter.
Let’s take a look a few such discussion that occurred over the past two days. [Read more…]
Software reliability and Hardware reliability are two distinct Concepts within the field of engineering each with its own unique characteristics and measurement challenges.
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“Department of Defense (D0D) acquisition must improve program while working within budgetary constraints. The DoD community shows an interest in utilizing Agile methodologies, but struggles to reap Agile’s benefits. They encountered challenges including the historically built-up processes that enforce heavy-weight oversight, the outdated, manufacturing focused Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) provided in DoD Handbook: Work Breakdown Structures (WBS) for defense Material Items (MIL-STD-881C), and the inability of traditional waterfall-based process to accommodate iterative development.
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The advent of the microprocessor has enormously advanced the process of vibration data acquisition and analysis in recent years. Measurement tasks that took hours only two decades ago can now be completed in minutes and better decisions made because of better data presentation.
However, the basic processes of measurement and analysis have remained essentially unchanged, just like the machines from which the vibration is measured. The results of the measurement and data analysis need to be compared with known standards or guidelines and decisions made as to whether the machine is acceptable for service or maintenance should be planned. Increasingly these processes are being handled electronically but we are still a long way from replacing the fundamental knowledge and experience of the vibration analyst.
In this article we will review the basic principles of vibration measurement and analysis in order to lay the foundation for capable fault diagnosis to be considered later.
[Read more…]Imagine, 6 operational locations with a combined maintenance spend of $438 million and acceptable but mediocre performance. Production outputs ranged from 70% to 94% of nameplate values.
That’s faster than the current mine permitting processes. Revenue was equivalent to adding a new mine at about 3% of the typical capital investment. Yes, this was a real customer in the mining industry with operations throughout North America.
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