Lets look at the goal of planning and the two major areas of focus to increase efficiency of the maintenance staff. [Read more…]
Planning and Scheduling Goal
Articles
Find all articles across all article series listed in reverse chronological order.
Is Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) used to reduce Scheduled Maintenance? The answer is…
I often hear people say that RCM is used to reduce Proactive Maintenance. I say, “it depends!” Watch as I explain… [Read more…]
Death of a Reliability Engineer
(Reproduced from the article “Death of a Reliability Engineer” by Dev Raheja, Reliability Review, Vol. 30, March 2010 with permission)
When I first wrote the article in March 1990, I implied an ‘F’ grade to reliability engineers. Now almost 20 years later, I would give them a “E’. Yes, there is a little improvement but nothing you can write to your mother about.
The MTBF cancer was wide spread and is still wide spread in the DoD. The only reason I upgraded the reliability engineer from F to E is because the MTBF in some industries is no longer used such as in the automotive industry. They use the failure rates instead to hide their shame.
Failure rate is just the reciprocal of MTBF. Good job! Same old corn flakes with a new product name! [Read more…]
People Process and Tools Approach
When doing training, some will focus only on the tools. However, in our approach we focus on 3 things. It is the people, process and tools. In that order. If you would like to improve your systems and tool usage, we can create a plan to execute with you. And we can make it a reality. [Read more…]
Stepping Stones in the Lean Journey
Guest Post by Joseph Paris (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)
As very young children, we had an instinctive need to be very close to our parents – feeling a great deal of anxiety, even a sense of abandonment, if they were not within our sight. As we grew older – and whether it was geographically, intellectually, or psychologically – we would become more comfortable with greater distances from what we felt were our basic truths, but almost always as stepping stones and rarely great leaps.
Think of early commanders of sailing ships always keeping sight of land until traveling ever greater distances was more predictable because of maps and navigation techniques and tools. [Read more…]
Discussing the Controversial Subject of FMEA Prepopulation
To Prepopulate or not to prepopulate, that is the question
By prepopulating the highest priority functions, along with other selected information, the FMEA team can focus their efforts on the most important functions, and minimize in-meeting time. This is the last step in FMEA preparation. However, there are specific limitations to FMEA prepopulation that must be understood and adhered to.
“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
Abraham Lincoln
MSA 3 – Gage Bias
Introduction
In my prior article, Measurement Systems, the total variation in the measurement data was partitioned into part variation (PV), assessor variation (AV), and equipment variation (EV). GR&R is the square root of the sum of the squares of AV and EV. If the ratio of GRR/TV is less than 10%, then the measurement system variation was acceptable.
In addition to variation, data bias needs to be considered. This bias is created by systematic measurement errors.
[Read more…]
Ok…I’m going to “level” with you…
This is one of the biggest reasons for one of the biggest misconceptions of the RCM process. If you’ve done RCM and it took you way too long, this may be the reason… [Read more…]
PdM, Condition Monitoring, and Condition Based Maintenance: What’s the Difference? – Part 1
Predictive Maintenance, Condition Monitoring, and Condition Based Maintenance have not been clearly defined and we are looking to begin a dialogue to create a standard definition for these terms. Join us as we begin our discussion. [Read more…]
Doing Nothing is Stressful
I was recently giving a presentation for IEEE at MIT Lincoln Labs here in the Boston area. The topic was one of my favorites, my new playground, Use Case 7 ! The crowd loved the idea of expanding how we access use cases and came up with great examples. and experiences, of their own. They found many areas in their work where the Use Case 7 exercise may yield some interesting insight.
QFD
The QFD concept is widely known, yet appears to be used infrequently. Too time consuming for the value, but it is a “good idea.” There are several schools of thought, and certainly practical approaches for implementation that can provide needed business solutions. This video introduces the topic. If you want help with implementation, or with training – contact us to obtain the break throughs available. [Read more…]
Resilience & Enterprise Risk Management
Guest Post by James Kline (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)
The term resilience is used in reports and studies by numerous government agencies and international institutions. For instance, in 20014 the Organization forEconomic Cooperation and Development issued a report entitled “OECD Reviews ofRisk Management Policies: Boosting Resilience Through Innovative Risk Governance”. [Read more…]
Building a Frequency Table
In a meeting the other day, the presenter was talking about a range of different failures for the product in question. She talked about each issue, a bit about the failure analysis, yet didn’t reveal which failures occurred more or less often.
She did provide a handout with a listing of the problems in order of the product field age and listing of the failure name (component or system involved). So, I grabbed a piece of paper to create a frequency table so I could quickly determine which problems occurred more often than others. [Read more…]
Insights into Preventive Maintenance Made Simple with Doug Stangier
I recently had the pleasure to interview Doug Stangier, co-author of Preventive Maintenance Made Simple. This is another excellent book in the Made Simple series, published by ReliabilityWeb. During the interview, Doug not only provides insights into his book but also into what world class Preventive Maintenance looks like. Anyone new to maintenance and reliability, or seasoned experts can benefit from this great book. Without further delay, here is the interview with Doug.
Calculating Network Reliability
I have worked in the field of reliability for a good many years. I have presented both beginner and advanced reliability engineering courses. I have even read several books. 🙂 But, across all this, component redundancy has never been explained beyond simple serial and parallel configurations.
So, it was a shock to my system to be presented with a scenario that couldn’t be solved using a simple parallel system.
My previous work had challenged me only as far as:
- Serial
- Active parallel
- Stand-by parallel
- M-out-of-n parallel
- Keystone-component parallel
But now I was being challenged by a network that was none of these.
