Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
A listing in reverse chronological order of these article series:
Time-based PM variation.
The First Maintenance Lesson I Ever Learned—and How It Applies to Reliability Today
In today’s storytime, I’m sharing the first maintenance lesson I ever learned, back when I was eleven years old and eager to change the oil in my father’s car. As you’ll see, this experience taught me a valuable lesson about quality assurance and accountability—and it reveals one of the biggest mistakes many Reliability Teams make today.
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First develop maintenance strategy—what you want to achieve with your equipment maintenance, why it is necessary, and how to do it.
Then turn strategy into the plans to maintain production asset reliability with the equipment maintenance program.
Often maintenance managers and maintenance engineers are asked to develop a maintenance strategy for their plant and equipment. They need to develop a document. In it you explain how you are going to use the least plant and equipment maintenance expenditure and efforts to ensure the necessary production performance from your production plant and equipment.
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It’s 2 AM. Your SAG mill gearbox just failed. The plant is down, losing $95,000 every hour. You call the warehouse: “Do we have a spare?”
That answer could mean the difference between a 4-hour repair and a 4-week nightmare waiting for an emergency shipment from overseas. The frustrating thing is, someone made a decision months or years ago about whether to stock that gearbox. They either got it right, or they didn’t. Tonight you find out which.
This scenario plays out daily across mining and processing operations worldwide, and most organizations don’t know they’ve got it wrong until that phone call comes. They’re either sitting on millions in dusty inventory that’ll never be used, or they’re one failure away from catastrophe. The sweet spot in the middle is surprisingly hard to find. [Read more…]
True or False? Is an Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) Analysis Ever Really Complete?
In this video, I tackle a common question: Once you’ve completed a Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) analysis, is there any need to revisit it? The answer is False! RCM is a living program that should be reviewed whenever key circumstances change, like operational tempo, the operating environment, or even what’s required from the equipment.
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Today, the use of a Computerised Maintenance Management System (CMMS) and user-friendly software packages have made the job of the maintenance crew relatively easier. The entire maintenance system seems to be at your fingertips, with Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in flashy dashboards on a computer screen. But is that the absolute best use of your maintenance information?
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Operations / production problems often have their roots in the lack of performance, or outright failure, of their physical assets. The costs (both real and opportunity) are huge and it can impact environmental compliance as well as safety.
Loss management is a critical yet often overlooked component of operational excellence. Understanding and addressing the various types of losses—minor stops, speed losses, setup and adjustment losses, process failures, and quality losses—are essential to maximizing equipment effectiveness and productivity. By identifying these losses and taking proactive steps to mitigate them, organizations can transform their operations, reduce waste, and enhance profitability.
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True or False? Is Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) a Proprietary Process?
In this video, I explore a common question: Is Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) proprietary? The answer is False! While the foundational book on RCM was written by Stanley Nowlan and Howard Heap of United Airlines, it was funded by the U.S. government, making RCM a public domain process. Although you’ll find various proprietary training materials, the core principles of RCM are accessible for any organization to apply.
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Maintenance Strategy 101: Correct Equipment Maintenance Management Strategy Selection makes All the Difference
You select and apply maintenance strategy with the purpose of controlling failure. Your maintenance management starts on the project drawing board. If you only select your maintenance management strategies when the equipment is installed, you will always be fighting a losing battle!
Maintenance is a risk management practice used to maximise production and minimise loss and waste. Selecting a successful maintenance strategy requires a good knowledge of equipment failure behaviour and maintenance management practices. Once you appreciate why equipment fails, how equipment fails and when equipment fails you can select the right mix of maintenance strategies to extend and maximise its service and performance.This article takes you through the factors which affect equipment performance and service life. It also introduces you to the maintenance strategies available to you today and how they work. You will also discover within the article many maintenance management benefits that each maintenance strategy will bring you.
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Test your knowledge of Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) with this quick quiz! Which of the following are part of the RCM process? Is it:
A) CBM
B) FMEA
C) CBM and FMEA
D) None of the above
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Many years back when I started my Asset Management journey, the ISO55000 series of standards was always lingering overhead as the “bible” of asset management. The problem was that the systems and processes we tend to learn in this field stem from those standards, but rarely do we deep dive into the documentation and try to mind map for ourselves how it all fits together. [Read more…]
Developing Maintenance KPIs, Reliability KPIs, And Enterprise Asset Management KPIs Of Value For Good Decision Making
When developing maintenance KPIs, or any performance measure, you will have no real ‘grass-roots’ support, nor lasting success, until people are involved in setting their own measures and key performance indicators.
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[Read more…]I’ve been tasked with developing maintenance KPIs and equipment reliability KPIs.
I would be thankful if you guide me to a proven list of maintenance and reliability KPI’s. We would like to measure performance on individual plant and corporate levels.
We have 120 plants for various products: metals, chemicals, petrochemicals, fertilizers.
We are not currently using unified measures, i.e. every plant is going in its own direction, and we now are looking to unify maintenance and reliability across the corporation by introducing a reliability solution to create a scientific maintenance strategy. Part of our strategy is to introduce specific KPIs which have to be achieved by all plants.
Perfection is difficult to achieve. It takes a lot of work and that delays progress. In operational environments that can lead to lost or deferred opportunities, and leave money on the table.
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True or False? Can RCM Be Applied at Any Stage in an Asset’s Lifecycle.
In this video, I tackle a common question: Can Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) be applied at any point in an asset’s lifecycle? The answer is True! While it’s best to start RCM as early as possible—ideally at the design stage—many successful RCM programs around the world have been implemented long after systems were fielded.
Because RCM is a zero-based process, applying it to legacy equipment offers a chance to reevaluate years of tradition and habits, ensuring that the most safe and cost-effective Failure Management Strategies are in place. RCM’s flexibility means it can deliver great results at any point in an asset’s lifecycle.
I’m Nancy Regan, and I hope you enjoy this quick dive into the versatility of RCM. Thank you for watching!
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