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A listing in reverse chronological order of articles by:
In recent years, “Defect Elimination” has become a hot topic in the reliability world. But what exactly does defect elimination mean? How does it differ from other maintenance practices? Is it more than just a new way to describe planned and predictive maintenance? This article will seek to answer these questions in a very practical manner.
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From a holistic RCA perspective…
“What are the top 5 keys to focus on when trying to change a Root Cause Analysis (RCA) culture from one of a reaction to proaction?”
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“So, what did you think about the most recent five-year management assessment?” asked the Agency Director.
I knew it was a loaded question. If the executive team had agreed with the assessment, the chief operating officer would not have asked me to review it before the report was presented to the Board of Directors.
“I had some issues with the report,” I responded. “Out of the gate, they lost me and will probably lose your Board with that multi-colored, busy graph.”
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“I have a question,” stated the Chief Financial Officer. “The second data point from the right end of the line the drastically different than the others. How do you know that the line should be straight? Should not the cost line be curved between the last two data points?”
“Well, when we look at the correlation of the best-fit line with and without the point you reference, we obtain a nearly ideal fit when we treat the second point from the end as an anomaly,” stated the highly educated, high-brow consultant was discussing the agenda item before mine. His second sentence was equally long as he started launching into details about correlation and how the computer program cyphered through all of the data.
An undesirable event occurs (fancy term for unexpected failure) a Root Cause Analysis (RCA) is triggered. This usually means what occurred is a severe event as triggers are often set pretty high (i.e. – reportable injury/fatality, equipment damage in excess of x-thousands of dollars, production losses in excess of x-thousands of dollars, regulatory violation, etc.). Since there is urgency and visibility, how do I decide who will lead the investigation/RCA? Our natural tendency is to identify the technical ‘expert’ in the nature of whatever the undesirable event was. But does that typically produce the most effective outcome for the organization and its employees? This article will focus on which skills are needed most, under such conditions, and why
I used to be on Facebook many years ago in an effort to keep up with old friends. However, I began to realize the forum was often used to create an illusion that someone wanted their community to have about them. I knew many of these people creating such illusions, that is how I know they were ‘illusions’. Their ‘Facebook Family’ simply was not their reality.
This is not a paper about the pro’s and con’s of social media forums such as Facebook, but more about our propensity to create illusions, or prisms in which we want others to view our work initiatives. While I could apply this concept to many personal and business situations, I’m going to limit it to our general views of Reliability, Maintenance and to a degree Safety (as a by-product of effective Maintenance and Reliability).
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“I just got through with a telephone call,” stated a concerned voice on the other end of the line. “We addressed the wrong issue. I am not saying you. It was collectively all of us. They wanted to sell all parts of the business unit and completely get out of that aspect. We addressed them retaining ownership but having someone else operate it.”
“That is not right,” I replied. “We solved the problem they wanted us to solve, and they bought off on it. “We can develop some solutions for the other problem, but that will take some time and effort.”
“How do you know we solved the right problem?” my client asked. “They have gone over everyone’s head and say we didn’t.”
Every written or verbal communication needs a structure. The three-act structure stands the test of time because it is a straightforward, efficient structure that works effectively with our human thinking processes. An example of the three-act structure is the series “Communicating with FINESSE” on Accendo Reliability.
There is still time to jump into the second act if you have not followed from the beginning.
WE LOVE OUR POST-ITS!
When I’m asked who our primary competitors are, I quickly and simply reply ‘Post-Its’ (full-disclosure, ‘Post-Its’ are a registered trademark of the 3M corporation)!
It’s hard to imagine anyone who hasn’t been in a conference room at some point in their career, utilizing colorful, adhesive post-its to help express some form of a logical thought process. Whether it be for brainstorming, process mapping, Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) or some form of Root Cause Analysis (RCA), we have become avid fans of post-its to help us produce graphical expressions of our thoughts…WE LOVE POST-ITS!
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Most of us have all worked at places with some degree of an ‘RCA’ effort. They likely all defined and practiced ‘RCA’ differently, but nonetheless they had something called RCA.
What made one facility better at it than another? Why was one facility’s RCA more effective than another?
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Reliability assessments require all of the previous six facilitation good practices in the “Five Ways to More Effectively Facilitate…” series. This article discusses five ways to effectively facilitate reliability assessments by conducting pre-session exchanges, asking powerful questions, using exercises that engage, anticipating disruption, and controlling the tempo.
The foundations of systems thinking apply to facilitating reliability assessments because the analysis requires a group to establish the nature of separate and inter-related components. Facilitation is defined as a structured session(s) in which the meeting leader (the facilitator) guides the participants through a series of predefined steps to arrive at a result that is created, understood, and accepted by all participants.” For reliability assessments, predefined steps, definitions, and prioritization of implementation actions are three key aspects.
A reliability assessment is a decision-making tool that assists in making trade-off decisions related to system performance and financial investments. The major benefit is a comprehensive understanding of the interrelated physical parts, human aspects, and interfaces. In the least case, reliability assessments will indicate a system’s single points of failure and generate mitigation actions that make success more probable. In the greatest case, a reliability assessment will quantify the probabilities of success and failure.
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If managers knew what the overall power of a well supported Root Cause Analysis (RCA) effort meant for their bottom-line, they would be breaking down doors to implement the process.
Unfortunately, this is often not the case, so this paper is an attempt to educate such individuals about the characteristics of an effective RCA methodology. The paper focuses on the three aspects of RCA we believe leadership teams need to understand the most. [Read more…]
The foundations of systems thinking and facilitation apply to business cases because the analysis requires a group to establish the nature of separate and inter-related components. This article discusses five ways to effectively facilitate business cases by conducting pre-session exchanges, asking powerful questions, using exercises that engage, anticipating disruption, and controlling the tempo.
![Is There Really a Direct Correlation Between Reliability & Safety?[Updated]](https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/accendo-media/wp-media-folder-accendo-reliability/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Clocher.Saint_.Menoux.3300x300T-150x150.png)
Safety is often directly correlated with system or component reliability. Is that really the case?
Find out what the experts and their data really says.
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During a recent webinar I presented with SMRP, entitled “Root Cause Analysis: It’s a Money Maker, Not a Money Taker”, I was fortunate to have many deep thinkers in my virtual audience.
They floated some questions related to conducting ‘RCA’s on non-mechanical situations. To my fellow veterans in this RCA space, this is a relatively easy question to properly address, but it did get me to thinking. I think those of us who do this for a living, take for granted that we know a properly facilitated RCA, can apply to any undesirable outcome, no matter the industry or the bad outcome.
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