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A listing in reverse chronological order of these article series:
An asset management system is comprised of all of the necessary processes, procedures, tools, systems, and methods necessary to meet business objectives in a manner which is controlled, measured, and improved upon. The system, more often than not, takes on some visual representation as in the graphic below. The purpose is to provide a simplified understanding of the overall process to meet asset management goals.
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I got a call last week from a friend I used to work with who called just to catch up on what I had going on in life. After a few minutes of conversation on what each of us had going on he asked me what I thought of the phrase “Precision Maintenance.”
I must admit, I was a bit confused by the question. I told him I think a lack of precision maintenance might me the leading cause of failure for nearly every company in the world. I don’t think we spend nearly enough time training and certifying tradespeople in precision maintenance techniques and that the reduction in skilled trades apprentice programs has made the problem worse.
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Author’s Note: I want to reiterate that this Series about reading the basic fracture surfaces, is for novices who often come into contact with such failed components. This Series is about the basics (101), and is intended to give readers an appreciation for the value of such ‘broken’ parts to an effective investigation/RCA. While this information will be rudimentary to seasoned materials engineers/investigators, I know they will all appreciate heightening awareness to the need to retain such failed parts for formal analysis, versus throwing them away and just replacing the part. Throwing away failed parts is a recipe for a repeat failure. When one does not understand why the part failed in the first place, they can’t prevent it from failing again.
In this article we will focus on how to actually incorporate the evidence (failed parts) from a failure, into a disciplined Root Cause Analysis (RCA) process.
There are two different perspectives on the maintenance storeroom. These perspectives are on who owns the operation of the storeroom. Some believe that Maintenance owns the storeroom and the operation of it. Others believe it is Procurement, or potentially Logistics or Warehousing. Some organizations require the storerooms to be operated by a consistent group, while others leave it up to the site.
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Asset Management is more than maintenance and reliability, yet many often think they are the same. Asset Management is far broader and considers the entire life cycle.
How does your organization differentiate between asset management, and maintenance and reliability?
Early in the discussions around asset management, some organizations simply renamed their Maintenance and Reliability departments to Asset Management departments, even though they continued to do the same tasks and activities they always did.
To those following this Series, I will apologize for the front-end redundancy. I am doing so for those that are NOT following the Series and will read these articles independent of each other. If you are following the series (Thank You!) and proceed past the front-end stuff and to the shaft pics below:-)
Abstract. In our last series highlighting the 4 primary Failure Modes (FM) of component failures (erosion, corrosion, fatigue and overload), we discussed how to read fractured surfaces. In this follow up series, we will take a look at tips on how to collect, preserve and examine such failed components.
Let’s face it, we as engineers, maintenance staff, etc. all love technology and the newest gadget. Our industry is never short of these new and shiny techniques, tools, sensors, etc. Now, this new tech can lead to significant improvements in availability, OEE, or uptime. But these are not the silver bullets many claim them to be… especially if the foundational elements are not in place.
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Do you really need an assessment? Will it help, or will it create problems?
Conventional consulting approaches begin with detailed assessments to determine your current state of affairs, judge what’s good and bad about it, give it a score, provide a long list of recommendations and then build an improvement strategy based on the outcome. A typical assessment can take up to a couple of weeks plus report generation time. Does it really add the value you might expect?
I recently attended a conference where I listened to a presentation on Human Performance Improvement (HPI) by Dr. Todd Conklin and other speakers advocating Dr. Conklin’s ‘Learning Team’ approach. This was the first time I had heard Root Cause Analysis (RCA) referred to as ‘old school’ and obsolete. This got me to thinking, given I have been in the RCA business for decades, is what I do for a living…obsolete?
An important part of the Reliability Centered Maintenance process, or used as a standalone approach for less critical assets; the Failure Mode Effect Criticality Analysis is vital reliability tool. However, a large percentage of organizations do not take advantage of the tool during the design phase of the asset, or to develop the maintenance strategy once the asset is installed.
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Many maintenance organizations invest in a CMMS/EAM in hopes that it will solve their maintenance management problems, only to discover that the software fails to deliver the desired results. Faulty software might be to blame for some CMMS implementation failures, but more often than not, the problems begin well before the software is even implemented. Here are 7 tips for avoiding CMMS failure:
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Entropy and maintenance are more related than you might think. What happens in maintenance and many operations can be explained with this simple thermodynamic concept. Entropy is a concept that represents chaos and degradation. It occurs naturally in any physical system and will naturally grow (i.e.: the system will become more chaotic) if we don’t do something to arrest its growth. Doing something requires the expenditure of energy, so energy is what counters entropy. Entropy and maintenance are seldom discussed together, we don’t speak of these thermodynamic terms and concepts in everyday language and conversation, but they are at work behind the scenes. For practical purposes, if we want something to remain orderly we need to put some form of energy (effort) into keeping it that way. If we don’t, then nature will steadily and relentlessly increase the state of chaos in which we exist. In maintenance that means moving from proactive (which requires energy) to reactive (which drains it away).
In our last series highlighting the 4 primary Failure Modes (FM) of component failures (erosion, corrosion, fatigue and overload), we discussed how to read fractured surfaces. In this follow up series, we will take a look at tips on how to collect, preserve and examine such failed components.
Determining which parts of stock can be a very overwhelming process. As such, many choose to blindly accept the OEM or Manufacturer’s recommendations. And why shouldn’t they? The OEM has many years of experience in building these types of assets and supplying spares, right?
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Business processes are often talked about, yet not well understood. The big problem with them is that too few people know what the whole process actually should be. Whenever you are following a set of steps to achieve some goal you are following a process. Sometimes various people follow different steps to achieve the same goal. You rely on processes in order to deliver results. If they are ill-conceived or inefficient, then things move slowly and results are more expensive to obtain than they need to be. Well designed, efficient, and consistent processes that integrate with other related business processes keep things running smoothly, costs down, and help to keep people motivated.
