Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
Find all articles across all article series listed in reverse chronological order.
Instead of allocating time and resources trying to force the same maintenance method on every asset in your facility, reliability centered maintenance (RCM) offers you a more structured and proven approach where each piece of equipment is allocated a befitting maintenance strategy based on the results of a well-executed RCM analysis.
By Alan Ross
Back in August of 1987, there was a “convergence” that supposedly marked the movement from one age to a new age, the Age of Aquarius. And for those who are too young to remember, just Google the song. Oh, darn…now it’s in my head! But I digress. (Which you should get used to when reading this blog because I love digression for context.)
What does that have to do with the dawning of the age of IoT? Well, there are actually a lot of similarities. [Read more…]
New Product Development is a high impact situation. Getting to market so sales can begin is big. Yet, projects seem to constantly take longer than expected. [Read more…]
[Author note: This article is being published mid-month, and is part of the FMEA Preparation series. It was earlier written, but inadvertently omitted from publication, as part of this series.]
One of the most important steps in FMEA preparation is gathering all of the relevant documents and information. If this step is missed or done inadequately the FMEA meetings will be burdened with extra tasks related to missing information, the time of the subject-matter experts will be wasted, and the FMEA results potentially compromised.
“True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.” – Winston Churchill
There are two categories of project risk:
Known risks comprise:
Unknown risks are the uncertainties and variations that surround every project. For example, an unplanned labour strike at one of your major subcontractor’s. [Read more…]
In 2015, Jesus Sifonte invited me to be a speaker at a client and business partner congress that he was holding in San Juan, Puerto Rico. We did not know each other, nor did we even know much about each other. I was recommended to Jesus by a mutual friend, Dr. Andrew Jardine at the University of Toronto. At the San Juan congress we presented our respective topics and in the evenings we shared a few drinks while speaking about maintenance, reliability and asset management. We realized that we both had a shared passion for excellence and we learned about each-others’ experience. [Read more…]
Selecting CMMS software is a significant decision for an organization. Another equally significant milestone is rolling out multi-site CMMS software—scaling your CMMS system from one site to multiple sites. There are two distinct ways in which in this transition may occur.
The first is when a multi-site organization test pilots CMMS software at a single location initially. In this situation, the organization has satisfied all concerns with the initial implementation at the pilot site and is ready to expand the implementation to its other locations. [Read more…]
If we have even a moderately complex product, we often need to break up our design team into smaller groups. Perhaps electronic, mechanical and hydraulic teams. Perhaps teams for specific functional components. And these teams need to work at least partially independently. So what do we do if we have a system reliability goal? What goals do we pass on to our smaller teams? This is where reliability allocation comes into play. Reliability allocation is often portrayed as a very complex, very involved and extremely exhaustive process. It should never be! In fact – the more exhaustive you make, the less likely it is to work.
If you want to learn more about a straightforward approach to reliability allocation – read this!
I have a customer that has developed an impressive wrist worn biometric sensor for athletes. The system is worn on the athletes wrist, like many other personal devices. But this product is for serious athletes that aren’t just looking for non-descript data like step count and heart rate. What are you even supposed to do with that information? [Read more…]
These are uncertain times and there is a lot of stress in the world. The media is hitting us with updates on COVID cases, stock market prices and Russia/Saudi Arabia oil news constantly. For me, it’s been a barrage. Tuesday through Thursday this week, it got to me. It stressed me out. I felt the panic from the media, I felt the panic when I went to the grocery store, I felt the stress from my girlfriend, who works at a senior’s home. [Read more…]
Problem solving can often be accomplished using Seven Simple Tools. Scope, data collection and data display need to be addressed, and these tools cover the needs in a manner with limited complexity. [Read more…]
Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) is a tool that can not only help an organization in effectively & efficiently meeting its Maintenance Works Management requirements but is also a vital source of equipment Reliability & Maintenance (RM) data. [Read more…]
At the time of this writing, coronavirus is spreading in China and is appearing in other areas of the world. Seasonal flu is also spreading through much of the world. As a comparison, the below graphics provide a snapshot of the current situations. First is the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) graphic with its representative statistics. Alarming? CDC estimates 19 – 26 million flu illnesses; currently, there have been approximately 8,000 flu deaths. Alarming? [Read more…]
Being proactive with your assets is all about managing failures before they occur. You can reduce or eliminate the consequences of failure by forecasting what is likely to happen and deciding in advance about what to do about it. The advantage to doing this is that major business impact due to equipment breakdown can be avoided. High performing companies manage proactively – they foresee and avoid problems. It’s good for business! [Read more…]
I recently read the results of a AAA survey where Americans were asked to rate their own driving abilities. 73% of those surveyed considered themselves “better-than-average” drivers. Obviously only 50% of the drivers can actually be better than average. So it follows that at least 23% of those surveyed are mis-estimating their own skills.
This over-confidence in one’s abilities seems to find its way into all sorts of areas … including process capability analysis. Everyone who’s been around manufacturing for any length of time has certainly heard of Cp and Cpk. Most of them know that “higher is better” when it comes to these indices. And many will nod their heads and smile when you suggest that Cpk and Ppk account for centeredness, whereas Cp and Pp do not. But only a small percentage of manufacturing professionals can cogently answer the question, “What is Process Capability analysis?” [Read more…]
