WHEN YOU DO A RELIABILITY FAILURE STUDY LOOKING TO PROTECT YOUR BUSINESS AGAINST LARGE UNCOMMON FAILURES, AND THOSE FAILURES THAT ARE VERY COMMON BUT THOUGHT TO BE TOO SMALL TO BE A SERIOUS PROBLEM, BE SURE TO DO LIFETIME FINANCIAL ANALYSIS WHEN DECIDING THE FAILURES TO INVESTIGATE

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I am to do a reliability failure study and would like to know the definition of repetitive failure with respect to some recognized reliability standard.
We want to apply the recommendations in the standard for failure codes in our CMMS system to decide which equipment failures need a reliability failure study. For example, we have a centrifugal pump bearing fail twice in a year. I am of the opinion this is a repetitive failure.

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by Nancy Regan Leave a Comment

Is Your Greatest Reliability Asset Underutilized?

In today’s short video, I share how the delivery of our new metal building reminded me of a key aspect of Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM). RCM was designed to be carried out with a Facilitated Working Group approach, bringing together a team of equipment experts to answer the RCM questions.

By using this approach, not only do you get comprehensive answers, but you also capture and memorialize the knowledge and experience of your experts—something that could amount to over 100 cumulative years’ experience in the room!

Even if one of your team members retires or moves on, their knowledge remains. Watch to find out how you can make the most of this valuable resource.

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by Mike Sondalini Leave a Comment

The Role of Chance and Luck in Your Equipment Failures

Plant and equipment do not fail by accident. There are causes. Whether equipment fails depends on the capacity of their parts to handle stresses, when stresses are applied and the size of those stresses. These are probabilistic events – they are random, with many possibilities. Timing the start of failure, or its continuation to a breakdown, is mostly speculation because it depends on which past and future scenarios occur. It seems that luck and chance has a large say on the lifetime reliability of equipment. But there is a way to guide equipment reliability and performance toward the results you want.

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by James Reyes-Picknell Leave a Comment

Today’s Gremlin – Cheap Charlie

Today’s Gremlin – Cheap Charlie, is a well intentioned but often mis-guided Gremlin. He or she can be many people and we’ve all dealt with them before. “Cheap Charlie” is someone who truly believes that not spending leads to profits. This is one of the many gremlins we talked about when we introduced this series of articles.

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by Joe Anderson Leave a Comment

Leadership Values in Maintenance and Operations

The Importance of Having, Setting, and Living Values as a Leader

Leadership is not just about making decisions or achieving results—it’s about setting an example and guiding others toward a common purpose. One of the most powerful ways a leader can do this is by having, setting, and living values that resonate with both themselves and their team. Values are the principles and beliefs that guide actions, shape behaviors, and define the culture of an organization. For leaders in any field, including maintenance and operations, these values become the foundation upon which everything else is built. In the context of Leadership Values in Maintenance and Operations, this foundation is especially critical, as it ensures safety, reliability, and collaboration in high-stakes environments.

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by Nancy Regan Leave a Comment

What Is RCM? It’s NOT a Maintenance Plan

Is Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) a maintenance plan?

In this short video, I explain why RCM is NOT a maintenance plan. It’s a process designed to help YOU determine the most effective proactive maintenance tasks and how often to perform them. But that’s not all! In this video I give a quick overview to answer the question: “What is Reliability Centered Maintenance?”

You start by creating a Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA). Then, you analyze each Failure Mode using the RCM Decision Diagram—one at a time. First, you assess the consequences, then you consider Condition-Based Maintenance or Preventive Maintenance. RCM also helps you formulate solutions for Failure Modes that can’t be predicted or prevented. You can develop solutions like Failure Finding tasks, procedure changes, or additional training.

With RCM, you’ll get the reliability you need, one Failure Mode at a time.

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by Mike Sondalini Leave a Comment

Minimum Maintenance Strategy by Physics of Failure Analysis

All machines and equipment fail for two reasons—distortion or degradation. Distortion causes parts to suffer such high stress or fatigue that their atomic structures fail. When parts degrade their atomic structure is attacked by environmental elements. Physics of Failure methods lets us analyse equipment for situations that cause their parts’ atomic structures to suffer excessive stress, or to degrade. We can identify the real causes of atomic failure and so institute the fewest maintenance and operational activities to keep equipment at its highest reliability, and the operating plant at its highest availability.

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by Nancy Regan Leave a Comment

Are FMEA and RCM Separate Processes?

When you do RCM you also create an FMEA.

In this video, I explain the connection between Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) and Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA). Many people wonder if these are two different processes, but when you perform RCM, the first four steps—defining functions, identifying functional failures, analyzing failure modes, and assessing failure effects—essentially fulfill the requirements of an FMEA. By following the RCM process, you’re already doing the work needed for an FMEA. I break this down and show how they align.

I’m Nancy Regan, and I hope this clears up the confusion! Thank you for watching.

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by Mike Sondalini Leave a Comment

Using Condition Monitoring as a Reliability Improvement Strategy

Condition Monitoring when used to drive reliability improvement offers diagnostics, information and data for Root Cause Analysis and equipment redesign, along with verification of defect or design correction.

Condition monitoring applied proactively is a context embracing world class reliability maintenance concepts.

Where condition monitoring is used as a proactive defect elimination strategy to drive failure prevention the benefits really add up with improved Reliability giving extended Mean Time Between Failures and additional Plant Availability. There have been recorded instances where the gains in improved plant uptime has lead to deferment of expensive plant expansion.

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by James Reyes-Picknell Leave a Comment

Today’s Gremlin – It’ll never work here

Today’s Gremlin – It’ll never work here is the first one we’ll deal with. We’ve all run into him at one point or another. “It’ll never work here” is someone, or many, who has / have been around for a long time. This is one of the many gremlins we talked about when we introduced this series of articles.

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by Joe Anderson Leave a Comment

How a Mission Statement Drives Behavioral Change in Organizations

A Guide to Aligning Values and Actions

A mission statement is more than just a set of words on a company’s website or a framed plaque on the wall. When crafted thoughtfully and embraced by leadership and employees alike, a mission statement can serve as a powerful tool for driving behavioral change within an organization. It’s the foundation upon which culture is built and provides direction for decision-making, aligning team efforts with the broader vision. But perhaps most importantly, a mission statement can be a catalyst for shifting behaviors and guiding individuals and teams toward shared goals.

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by Nancy Regan Leave a Comment

Do You Have to Do RCM on All Your Assets?

Do you have to apply Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) to every asset? Of course not! In this short video, I explain how RCM can be applied as broadly or as narrowly as you need, depending on your organization’s specific needs. Don’t worry about doing RCM for everything—just focus where it matters most!

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by Miguel Pengel Leave a Comment

A Free Jack-Knife Diagram Online Calculator

At Pardus Consulting, we’ve just launched an online Jack-Knife Diagram (JKD) calculator that transforms downtime data into a clear, actionable visual.

By entering failure codes, counts of interventions and MTTR values, you’ll see at a glance which issues are both frequent and severe—no manual plotting or spreadsheet gymnastics required.

We’ve previously talked about this method as a much needed upgrade from Pareto Charts when prioritising downtime events and focus areas in our article HERE. [Read more…]

by André-Michel Ferrari Leave a Comment

Reliability Engineering – It’s all about Models!

Definition of Reliability

The concept of Reliability is often misused, misunderstood, and misinterpreted. Reliability in its academic root, is defined as the probability that a system will perform its intended function in a specified mission time and within specific process conditions. So, it is in essence a probability.

The ageing variable is crucial in calculating the reliability of a system. Reliability is the Probability of Success. And 1 minus the Probability of Failure. In the equation below , the ageing variable is time (t).

$$ \displaystyle \large R\left(t\right) = 1 – F\left(t\right) \:\:\:\: (where \: F = Failure \: Probability) $$

Reliability engineering is based on building data models to predict future system performance accurately. Based on past performance records. The model is more or less precise depending on how many past records we have. The more data, the more precise the model. At the end of the day, a well defined model, even with a little data, is better than no model. At least we can proceed in the right direction. That is, make the best possible decision for our assets.

This article looks at a non exhaustive list of models in the Reliability Engineering realm.

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by Mike Sondalini Leave a Comment

Aiming for Operational Excellence

The aim of being in business is to satisfy customers in ethical ways while making a profit. To achieve this, variable and fixed costs should be as low as possible without sacrificing on quality products or customer experience.

The term Operational Excellence is often used to refer to a range of technical, soft-skills, and culture components. Regardless of how it is phrased, the core definition and goal are the same – to produce better operational results, and create value for customers and shareholders. In short, Operational Excellence performance is to produce the best quality products or services customers will buy for the lowest expenditure to maximize operating profit. The most successful businesses have built systems and processes that automatically keep their costs low and profits high

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