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Articles
Find all articles across all article series listed in reverse chronological order.
Emerging Trends In Maintenance Space And Their Relevance For Reliability Professionals
As we enter 2020, it’s evident that many of the changes that are sweeping through maintenance management will continue. The major push behind these changes includes the need for improved resource allocation, optimization of capacity, and increased safety performance/compliance.
With that in mind, this is an ideal time to review some of the biggest topics and trends in maintenance that are shaping maintenance practices and consider their relevance for reliability professionals.
Maintenance Assessments. Do you Need Them?
Conventional consulting approaches begin with assessments to determine your current state of affairs, judge what’s good and bad about it, give it a score, provide a long list of recommendations and then build an improvement strategy based on the outcome.
Strategy development is normally carried out by a select leadership team and then the change is rolled out to lower levels in the organization. This approach has served well for a long time and it is at the outset of almost any major consulting engagement. It is useful when comparing sites among each other, but is there some sort of award for being best? Usually not. [Read more…]
There Might be 50 Reasons to Use a Histogram (or Bar Chart)
When confronted with a stack of data, do you think about creating a histogram, too? Just tallied the 50th measurement of a new process – just means it’s time to craft a histogram, right?
There isn’t another data analysis tool as versatile. A histogram (bar chart) can deal with count, categorical, and continuous data (technically, the first two graphs would be bar charts). It like a lot of data yet reveals secretes of even smaller sets. A histogram should be on your shortlist of most often graphing tools. [Read more…]
Managing Risk is Critical to Project Success
Guest Post by John Ayers (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)
A project with a poor risk management foundation is like a house with a fragile foundation. Eventually it will fail.
Why Should It Matter to You?
Knowledge and skills with the four cornerstones of risk management, dramatically increase the probability of you realizing project manager success. Conversely, a lack of knowledge will likely lead to poor project manager performance. [Read more…]
3 Considerations on Data
Last week’s podcast on CMMS integration and this week’s podcast about Haul Truck Fuel Monitoring (will be released on Jan. 20), really bring home a few points on the interaction between reliability professionals and data.
False Hustle
A coaching friend talked to me once about “False Hustle” – things that players do to look like they are working hard. In fact, it is a lazy habit and avoidable by doing things right. The same things happens in corporate situations with product development. This video gives examples for each environment. [Read more…]
Building on a Good Reliability Goal
If we set a product reliability goal of 99% reliable over two years in the requirements document, what are we supposed to do tomorrow? On the other hand, if our goal is to write 1,000 pages for the next great novel by the end of the year and we have no pages written so far, well, we should write a page or two tomorrow.
A good goal provides a vision, a measurable milestone, a target. What it lacks is what we do from now till achieving that goal. If the goal is 1,000 pages in 365 days, we may want to set up a process to write at least 3 pages per day.
So, given a reliability goal, what do we do tomorrow, next week, and each week between now and when the goal is due?
A Good Reliability Goal
In previous work, I’ve written about setting reliability goals, connecting the goal to customer expectations, technical capability, and business needs. Plus, have written about the four (five) parts of a complete goal, including Function(s), Environment, Duration, and Probability (and all four continue to get more difficult as customers expect more).
A well-stated reliability goal provides direction and a measurable target for the entire team. It provides a basis to compare progress and to help frame “is the design reliable enough yet” discussions.
This is all well and good, yet is it enough? [Read more…]
Asset Management in Public and Private Sectors
Most of my firm’s clients are in the private sector but occasionally we do some public sector work. We usually notice a number of distinct differences in practices and in what motivates those practices. It would be nice to say that one can learn a lot from the other, but in truth, both can learn a lot from each other.
I thought it might be useful to compare and contrast the two sectors (based on personal observations) and then propose an idea for learning from each other. [Read more…]
Rushing to Wait – Failing to Plan
Guest Post by Malcolm Peart (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)
Just Do It!; “He who hesitates is lost”; and “Strike while the iron is hot” are all expressions used with impunity when a project is about to start as we are encouraged to ‘get on with it’ as nothing can go wrong, go wrong?, wrong!
After all, ‘a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step‘ and projects have to start sooner or later. But what happens when project planning is incomplete and project participants are caught up in that unfortunate project dilemma of ‘wild enthusiasm’ as they carry on with a sense of urgency while conveniently disregarding risk. [Read more…]
How to Tackle Maintenance Budgeting
A computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) is an application that allows for effective management of all types of maintenance activities. This includes maintenance budgeting for expenses such as labor, parts and miscellaneous costs for completion of work orders, replacement of equipment at the end of its useful life, as well as tracking of special projects and purchasing.
Budget Forecasting
Operating a maintenance department cost efficiently without having a plan that outlines the working budget is difficult. Often decisions are based on guesswork or emergencies with no real data to show when, where or how maintenance was performed in the past and what is needed in the future.
What Are You Focused on in 2020?
As we’re kicking off 2020, I’m looking forward so I can deliver great content to you. I have been sharing a lot of personal content lately about my journey and I hope that it’s fueled something inside you to change your life for the better.
I’ll keep it brief this week but I would appreciate it if you filled out the survey here. It’s 5 easy questions about what you desire from me in 2020 and should take you less than 5 minutes. Thank you in advance for answering and for following my content!
Reliability Never Sleeps,
Rob
Designing for Safety: Human Errors
Human Errors may be Unpreventable but, Preventing Harm is an Option
“You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water” – said Rabindranath Tagore, Nobel Prize recipient for literature. Not preventing harm is an example of this quote.
The quotation is an inspirational reminder that people achieve nothing unless they take purposeful action that has measurable results. Taking action on potential human errors, so that harm to system users is totally prevented, is a very productive goal because its impact is highly significant.
This article mostly discusses safety in hospitals because everyone is familiar with safety issues in healthcare. The principles equally apply to any process such as design, manufacturing, construction, and aerospace (Boeing 737 Max is an example). [Read more…]
Variance Transmission
The concept of Variance Transmission is important for interpretation of DOE analysis results. This video talks about the concept to help you improve your decision making. [Read more…]
No Surprises – Asset Management Made Easy
Good physical asset management is about making sure our physical assets do what we want them to do at optimum operating cost and tolerable levels of risk to safety, our environment and to your business.
Managing physical assets to achieve that in an industrial setting involves much more than simply buying and running a piece of equipment. [Read more…]
