Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
Find all articles across all article series listed in reverse chronological order.
Online training is actually a pretty good way to go! For me, that’s a revelation. The isolation and distancing measures being imposed due to the Corona Virus pandemic have been a game-changer in our business and personally. In the process of shifting training content to online formats, I’ve learned a lot.
My conclusion is that online training isn’t just an alternative to the “real thing”, it can actually be a better experience.
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In order to maximize profitability while complying with government regulations regarding net package contents, food manufacturers and packagers must achieve an optimal balance. Consistent overfilling to minimize risk is inefficient and sacrifices profitability, while aggressive filling practices result in significant risks of non-compliance with net contents regulations leading to potential penalties, loss of reputation, and impaired customer relations. Statistical process control and process capability methods may be utilized to determine optimal targets for product fill weights or volumes for a given process. Subsequent focused efforts to minimize variation will allow the target to be further optimized, resulting in less waste without compromising risk. [Read more…]
Keynote address given for the 2021 UpKeep “The Maintenance Community” career development
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In past articles, we have explored the basics of Erosion, Corrosion, Fatigue and Overload. Our emphasis has been on creating an awareness and appreciation for the value of failed components, to any investigation.
In this article we are going to delve into Fatigue a little bit more (because it is the most common fracture pattern) and see how we can use an evidence-based, deductive logic process to determine what elements of Fatigue may have been at play. We are trying to create an intellectual curiosity within the front lines about ‘making the call’…is it Fatigue, or some other fracture pattern?
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The 15 things your new “Smart Machine” won’t tell you.
1. It won’t tell you that someone failed to lubricate it
2. It won’t tell you that they put the wrong type in
3. It won’t tell you if they under filled it or overfilled it
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Why is it that some individuals perform a PM Routine and always find something and others don’t? And why is that when some individuals perform a rebuild or overhaul, the equipment struggles to start and return to steady state? The answer comes down to how detailed the individuals are during the maintenance activity. But how can this be overcome with such a wide range of individuals in the maintenance team? The answer is precision maintenance [Read more…]
The “new normal” can be much better if we choose. Why go back to the same-old, same-old?
As we emerge from the 2020 pandemic and all the measures to contain it, your workforce will be returning to a “new normal”. What’s that? None of us really knows the details, but aside from being a cool phrase, it means being smarter and doing things differently with a great deal of awareness about disease transmission. Keeping our distance, wearing masks when ill, avoiding crowded venues, and patiently waiting for vaccines, will be a part of it, but what else will characterize the “new normal”?
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FMEA facilitators can generate deep discussion and stimulate creative ideas by asking probing questions.
“A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the hope of greening the landscape of idea.” – John Ciardi
The Oxford English dictionary defines “probe” as “seek to uncover information about something.” [Read more…]
The purpose of control charting is to regularly monitor a process so that significant process changes may be detected. These process changes may be a shift in the process average (Xbar) or a change in the amount of variation in the process. The variation observed when the process is operating normally is called common cause variation. When a process change occurs, then special cause variation occurs. [Read more…]
I recently received an interesting LI inquiry that I felt others could learn from the answers that I was able to get. This is not my expertise so I sought out answers from some colleagues who were more familiar with fasteners.
Here is the original inquiry (translated from Portuguese so I hope Google Translator did a good job):
“I would like to know if you can help me clarify my doubts about:
In failure analysis, the collection of information is a tedious but necessary step that determines success in the root cause analysis (RCA), simulation, and mitigation phases. In Article 2, the SME identified five areas of possible root causes for the SP failure, further explained in Table 1.
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Imagine being able to look back and see what settings the equipment was last ran at for a particular SKU. Or being able to look back at the last three alignment inspections and see that slowly the alignment is drifting. What could you do with this type of information? You could perform Root Cause Analysis to see why the alignment is drifting, or trend the drifting to know when it will be out of acceptable tolerances.
Having the right information is critical to making informed decisions and driving systematic improvements in the performance of the equipment. This information is typically captured in a report or work order and should be linked to the asset and easily searchable. However, most organizations that I have worked with do not record the right information, which would allow them to make informed decisions. This documentation is a critical piece in precision maintenance, so what is required for documentation? [Read more…]
Studies show most projects fail due to poor management of known risks. The known risks on a project are:
How to minimize the schedule risk on a project is addressed in this paper. The approach to do this is based on my 30 years of project and project risk management experience and knowledge.
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In part 1 of this 2 part series, “Maintenance and Reliability Maturity”, I point out that achieving the maximum value from your physical assets will require excellence in 2 main dimensions, efficiency, and effectiveness. Those are described more fully in our recent book, “Paying Your Way“. I also promised a Maintenance and Reliability Maturity Assessment tool. That tool is now available to you, our readers.
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