on Maintenance Reliability

I’ve been told that humor, especially New York sarcasm doesn’t go over too well on LinkedIn.  That as a regular contributor of articles, blog postings and hopefully useful updates one should try avoid attempting to use humor as a teaching tool.

Well those who know me well know I also don’t always follow the advice of those who somehow believe we all learn the same way, think the same way and therefore do things the same way.  I’m a guy who believes that while common sense might not be that common, when you explain why something makes sense most of the audience will get it.  For the others who still don’t understand I of course bring data.

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Yet another example of why it’s important to understand the failure modes that make your system vulnerable to complete shutdown. Delta Airlines is learning this lesson the hard way today after having to inform customers around the world that all of its flights would be on hold or even canceled due to a “system wide outage”.

Delta listed the cause for the outage as a power failure near its world-wide office location in Atlanta, Georgia while those at Georgia Power believe it was the failure of Delta’s equipment that caused the power outage.

While each company points the finger at the other, the reality is Delta’s customers around the world are sitting at airports or at home wondering when the problems will be resolved and when Delta will be able to accommodate their travel needs.

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A few months back, I wrote a blog resulting from a conversation I had with a group of Maintenance Technicians who were attending the International Maintenance Conference (IMC) in 2011. While the group was enjoying the conference and learning some new things, the general consensus was that they felt they would not be able to apply the tools and techniques they were learning because “management will say they support reliability, but when it comes right down to it, talk is cheap.”

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One of our customers who is thinking about setting up a RCM Blitz™ Facilitator training class recently asked me if I had a list of traits that all good RCM facilitators seem to have?  He also wanted to know the background experience a good facilitator would have and what are some the qualities we should look for in selecting these people?

As I was about to tell him I could e-mail a document I had created on how to select a good RCM Facilitator, an interesting thought came to mind.

Are you really looking for someone to become a good facilitator or would you really like them a great facilitator? [Read more…]

20 years ago, I began my first assignment as a Reliability Engineer at Eastman Kodak’s Photo Chemical facility in Rochester, New York. Now, I understand that I just lost several people who began reading this article by using the words “photo” and “chemical” in the same sentence, but 20 years ago, most photography was still a chemical process. [Read more…]

One of the most common mistakes I see at plants and manufacturing facilities around the world is centered on the lack of a good lubrication program. For whatever reason, the task of lubricating equipment in most companies has been traditionally viewed as menial but necessary and delegated to low skill level employees with little or no training in lubrication best practices. It is this type of thinking that results in the unexpected failure of rotating equipment, including, pumps, motors, gearboxes, and bearings. Worse yet are the companies that have no lubrication program at all and somehow believe that someone in the plant will lubricate the equipment when it needs it. Just leave a few grease guns and some oil drums around the site and people will know when to add some. [Read more…]

As companies around the globe look to improve equipment reliability, I can’t help but think of the Technicians and Craftspeople I meet after conference presentations. As they step up to introduce themselves to comment on the presentation, these attendees will often say, “I really liked your presentation, but I don’t think our management would ever support a program like this. What you are doing makes a lot of sense, but we just don’t have the people and our Operations Managers don’t understand maintenance and reliability.” [Read more…]