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Find all articles across all article series listed in reverse chronological order.
A few weeks ago, I got a question about the best place to take an oil sample for oil analysis. Instead of generic answers like, “after the pump before the filter” or “never on the drain”, I like to take a more practical approach. [Read more…]
In a previous article, we compared and contrasted the definition of a requirement, with a ‘story’, which is used in agile/scrum. In that article, we stated: “requirements and stories establish a clear understanding of customer needs in the context of desired functionality”.
What if we want to establish a clear understanding of a customer’s needs in the context of desired business functionality? The customer can be an internal or external customer, business functionality can be a business process (IT-enabled or otherwise).
Sometimes we just need a simple plot of a few data points. When there is scant data a histogram or box plot just is not informative. This is a great use for a one dimensional scatter plot, dot plot, or a what is called a strip chart in R.
The basic idea is to see where the data lines along a line. For example, let say we have 20 times to first failure. A table of numbers is not all that helpful. We could explore using a cumulative distribution plot (Weibull analysis), yet it would be difficult to fit a distribution with so little data.
Let’s turn to a strip chart to get a look at the data. [Read more…]
We discuss calibrated instruments, calibrations, and test standards. For more information on calibration management visit our friends at http://calopex.com [Read more…]
As Responsible Custodians, we’re not in the business of predicting or preventing all Failure Modes. Watch as I explain how RCM helps with our first responsibility – Managing the Consequences of Failure. [Read more…]
New Product Development is constantly under pressure to get projects done faster – to shorten the development schedule. Making the analogy from basketball to engineering projects, if you want to play fast – you are going to have to live with turn overs. Similarly with engineering, you are going to experience some bumps in the road when trying to create a speed record. [Read more…]
ISO 31000:2018 is the world’s foremost risk management standard. The Standard provides guidelines, principles, framework, and a process for managing risk.
The standard explicitly states that it should NOT be used for certification or registration. But, it is.
So, what’s going on? We can only speculate. But, here goes:
We now live and work in VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity) time. More companies want to be RISK audited and certified by an independent Certification Body (CB).
And, more CB’s are working to use ISO 31000:2018 as a standard for certification. [Read more…]
Let’s take a look at how to understand the PM compliance metric. [Read more…]
Who knew that the cooking lessons my Sicilian mother gave me would teach me something about managing physical assets. Join me in Lambertville, New Jersey as I talk about how to properly care for our physical assets. [Read more…]
Six Sigma has been a business improvement idea for several years now. Debate has existed for some time if the concepts apply to Research and Development. This video breaks down the debate into simple terms. The answer – yes, but not always. Find out why! [Read more…]
A complex production process requires a mixture of leadership, governance and management. In this article, we’ll discuss a tiered meetings structure that can effectively enable this. Empowerment, escalation paths, accountability and responsibility are included as some key ingredients. We’ll start with the following diagram:
For the last few months, I’ve been giving talks on the trade war between US and China. A few of these talks have been in the US. Others were skyped to China.
The bottom line is that trade between the US and China has been weaponized.
The Wall Street Journal on December 13, 2018 distilled the challenge:
“… it is questionable whether fragile globalized supply chains can thrive at all in an environment where the world’s two largest economies are disinclines to play by the rules, even their own.”
Our response is that risk (threats and opportunities) is the new lens by which end product manufacturers (brand owners) will have to view China off shoring, on shoring, and sourcing in general. [Read more…]
Part 2 of our discussion with Sunil Kamerkar from AssetAnalytix. In this segment we discuss the culture of excellence needed to apply analytics and IIoT. [Read more…]
FMEAs take time and cost money. They should be done when a certain level of risk can be effectively addressed by the FMEA procedure. Preliminary Risk Assessment is a procedure that uses company-determined criteria to select which FMEAs to do.
“The key is to schedule your priorities.” ― Steven Covey
Guest Post by Geary Sikich (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)
We hear so much about global warming, climate change and disruptive weather these days. It is often difficult to understand what is fact, truth and valid from hype, hysteria, and hyperbole. Should we all be driving electric cars, not eating as much meat, using wind and solar; redefining our lives? Or, should we forget about it and continue doing what we have been doing since the early days of the industrial revolution? [Read more…]
