Hi everyone, I’m Nancy Regan, coming to you from beautiful Key Largo, Florida! ☀️ In today’s video, I’m discussing who’s responsible for reliability in an organization. Just like the intricate root systems of mangroves, every part of your organization plays a role in creating a strong and effective Reliability Culture.

From operators and maintainers to engineers and management, everyone must be involved to achieve the reliability you need from your equipment. Watch the full video to learn why building an effective Reliability Culture is essential and learn how to do it!

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by Mike Sondalini Leave a Comment

Plot Distributions of Plant Performance to Discover New Successes

Figures 1 and 2 are examples of getting stuck trying to fix your current business when instead you ought to throw your troubles away and build a better business system.

This business is a renowned company in its home country. It is well respected and profitable enough. But it could easily be much wealthier. There are vast new fortunes sitting in the business, but they will never be seen by its owners and managers. They are totally focused each day on trying to make the existing business processes and system work properly. In reality, their operational processes need to be redesigned to remove the problems stopping them from delivering the organization’s purpose. [Read more…]

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Failure Modes: The Key to Reliability Centered Maintenance

In this short video, I explain the key concept of Failure Modes—the specific causes of Functional Failures—and why they are the foundation of Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM).

Just like not all dollar bills are created equal, Failure Modes vary in severity, and some can have a much greater impact on your equipment’s Reliability.

Learn why proactively identifying Failure Modes is critical to managing your assets effectively and how RCM can help you achieve the Reliability you need—without overpaying for it.

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by James Reyes-Picknell Leave a Comment

Is your Maintenance Planning Delivering Results?

The reality: Savings in work execution can easily be 30 to 60% of what you are spending today! That’s less labor, less overtime, less contracting, less consumption of parts and materials, less spend on delivery logistics, and less procurement activity. If your maintenance costs are in the range of 10 to 30% of your operating spend, you can save 3 to 18% of your operating labor costs by focusing on maintenance planning, scheduling and improving your proactive maintenance program.

The myth: many believe that planning and scheduling will solve their maintenance productivity problems, so they focus efforts to improve them. But despite their efforts, results don’t change. Time and again, we see reports showing relatively high levels of planned work but low schedule compliance, and production outputs don’t change. What’s going on?

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by Mike Sondalini Leave a Comment

Component Health Monitoring for Huge Equipment Reliability Improvement

Change to Component Health Monitoring for Massive Equipment Reliability Improvement. Many condition monitoring (CM) techniques require that your machines and equipment reach a near failed state before they detect the symptoms of failure. This guarantees that you will have many machines in your operation always near-to-failure. Outstanding reliability instead requires you to create the conditions of long-lasting machinery health and to ensure those conditions are always present. As a consequence of having a machine health improvement focus you proactively cause equipment wellness in your operation and thereby create huge reliability growth.

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Learning to See 3 Tips for Taking Control of a Reactive Situation

In this session, we will delve into essential strategies for gaining clarity in the midst of reactive maintenance challenges.

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How to Avoid RCM Failure

Key Lesson for Success in Reliability Centered Maintenance

Why Do Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) Analyses Fail?

Hi everyone, I’m Nancy Regan, and in today’s video, I’m coming to you from the ancient ruins of Chichen Itza in Mexico! Standing in front of the “ball game” court, I’m reminded of one of the biggest reasons why Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) analyses often fail.

Just like trying to learn everything about this historic site in a few minutes, many organizations attempt to implement RCM after reading a book or taking a quick course, without truly understanding the process. In this video, I explain why having a deep understanding of RCM is crucial to carrying out a successful analysis—and how going into too little or too much detail can cause problems.

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by André-Michel Ferrari Leave a Comment

Linking Reliability Concepts and Safety Performance

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 time variable is crucial in calculating the reliability of a system. Reliability is the Probability of Success. And 1 minus the Probability of Failure.

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

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by Mike Sondalini Leave a Comment

Big Difference in Consequence Reduction Strategy and Chance Reduction Strategy

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…]

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How Defining Functions Shapes Your Reliability Strategy

Understanding RCM

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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by Mike Sondalini Leave a Comment

Fundamentals of Vibration Measurement and Analysis Explained

Thanks to Peter Brown for this article.

1. Introduction:

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.

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Will you Accept a “No Brainer” Opportunity?

The “no brainer” opportunity

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.

The cost savings potential is $97 million.
Improvement to nameplate levels adds upwards of $768 million in revenues.
The spend to achieve that over 3 to 5 years was only $30 million.

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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by Joe Anderson Leave a Comment

The Importance of Proper Job Plans in CMMS and EAM Systems

By Paul Crocker CMRP CAMA, VIB1

In today’s industrial environment, the efficiency and reliability of maintenance operations are crucial. This is where Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS) and Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) systems come into play. These systems are designed to manage the maintenance function by tracking maintenance work, parts used, failure codes, and more.

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Condition Based Maintenance vs. Preventive Maintenance Tasks

Finding the Best with RCM

Hi everyone, I’m Nancy Regan, coming to you from the Watermelon Festival in Russellville, Alabama! In today’s video, I talk about how Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) can help you find the “sweet spot” when choosing proactive maintenance tasks for your equipment.

Just like every watermelon has a sweet spot, RCM helps you pinpoint the best maintenance task for each Failure Mode. Using a simple example like “oil degrades due to normal use,” I explain how RCM guides you to decide between different options, such as Scheduled Replacements or Condition Based Maintenance. By answering the RCM questions, you can figure out which task is the most cost-effective or reduces the risk of failure to an acceptable level.

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by André-Michel Ferrari Leave a Comment

5 Decisions Reliability Analysis Can Help With

Introduction to Reliability or Life Analysis

Reliability Analysis or Life Analysis is a process where asset records are used to build a statistical model for the asset. The model will in turn provide information of its future performance. It becomes an indispensable tool for asset managers in terms of making life cycle decisions with regards to the asset preservation and eventually replacement. Let alone the safety of employees. Typically, though not necessarily always, those records are obtained from the Computer Maintenance Management System (CMMS).

The basis of the model is a statistical distribution. An example of the process is illustrated in Diagram 1 where a number of “n” centrifugal pumps are run on a test bench until they fail. Each time interval to failure is recorded and once all the failure records are collected, a normalized frequency graph can be constructed. This frequency graph helps define the statistical distribution that best represents the life cycle of a typical component in the population. Using specific mathematical transformations applied to the distribution, the probability of failure after a defined mission time can be derived. And much more information as we will discover in this article.

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