Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
A listing in reverse chronological order of articles by:
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!
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?
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.
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.
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.
The foundations of systems thinking and facilitation apply to capital programs because the analysis requires a group to establish the nature of separate and inter-related components (the projects). This article discusses five ways to effectively facilitate capital programs prioritization by conducting pre-session exchanges, asking powerful questions, using exercises that engage, anticipating disruption, and controlling the tempo. [Read more…]
This article discusses five ways to effectively facilitate block diagrams by conducting pre-session exchanges, asking powerful questions, using exercises that engage, anticipating disruption, and controlling the tempo. The foundations of systems thinking and facilitation apply to block diagrams because the analysis requires a group to establish the nature of separate and inter-related components.
When we look at the widely used and misunderstood tool of Root Cause Analysis (RCA), we should reflect its interpretation in our own environments. Think about it: when is RCA typically requested and applied in our environment? Based on my experience, it is typically requested and applied when:
RCA and How to Understand the Basics of Component Failure
When performing a PROACT® Root Cause Analysis (RCA) there is a data collection step called ‘Preserve’ (or the PR in the PROACT acronym) which requires the team to collect failed parts, conduct interviews, obtain paper data and positional information after an undesirable event occurs.
This article discusses five ways to effectively facilitate tree diagrams by conducting pre-session exchanges, asking powerful questions, using exercises that engage, anticipating disruption, and controlling the tempo. The foundations of systems thinking and facilitation apply to tree diagrams 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.” As provided in the definition, the fundamentals of good facilitation are always essential, including having a structure for developing tree diagrams that include predefined steps and a process for arriving at results that are created, understood, and accepted by all participants.
A tree diagram is a management tool that depicts the hierarchy of tasks and subtasks needed to complete an objective. The finished diagram bears a resemblance to a tree. (American Society for Quality, 2019).
So what does it mean to be ‘safe’? Is a company ‘safe’ because they have not had an OSHA recordable injury in say over a one year period? Does that mean they will continue to be ‘safe’ in the next year? Does it mean they are at a higher risk of an incident in the near term, because they weren’t safe…but lucky? These are the debates I read about online and as an outsider, I can see both sides. But there has to be a practical middle ground as Safety and Reliability depend on each other for their individual successes, they are interdependent.
This article discusses five ways to facilitate failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) more effectively by conducting pre-session exchanges, asking powerful questions, using exercises that engage, anticipating disruption, and controlling the tempo. The foundations of systems thinking and facilitation apply to failure modes and effects analysis 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.” As provided in the definition, the fundamentals of good facilitation are always essential, including having a structure for an FMEA that includes predefined steps and a process for arriving at results that are created, understood, and accepted by all participants.
