We discuss justifying the maintenance planner position by demonstrating the expected efficiency gain of the maintenance staff through proper planning and scheduling.
Planner Justification
Articles
Find all articles across all article series listed in reverse chronological order.
Dealing with Conflict in NPD and Teams
Conflict is a normal part of living. Do you consider it a positive or a negative? Communication helps, but so does the perspective that you take. This video discusses it from a New Product Development and from a sports point of view. [Read more…]
RCM Training
RCM Training should always reinforce the importance of ensuring the inherent designed reliability of the asset or system that is being analyzed. It is primarily this function of the RCM process that people fail to fully understand. The importance of properly conveying this message is what most often differentiates successful Reliability Centered Maintenance efforts from those who dabble and fail.
Reliability Centered Maintenance Training should always include a case study that allows the participants to identify failure modes that result in the team making task decisions in each of the following Consequence Categories: Hidden Failure Consequences, Health Safety and Environmental Consequences, Operational Consequences and Non-Operational Consequences.
RCM Training should always include real-life facilitation in a team format. It’s extremely important for those learning the process to understand the detail required to properly assess failure modes, failure effects and tasks.
How to Deliver Sustainable Gains in Maintenance Planning
Utilizing the PDCA Methodology in Work Planning
It is well known that maintenance planning & scheduling can deliver significant improvements in the efficiency and effectiveness of the maintenance department. Maintenance planning & scheduling seems simple enough, plan the work and schedule it to be done at the most opportune time. However, why is it that the organization seem to struggle with realizing the benefits of maintenance planning & scheduling? In my experience, I have seen organizations that focus on the scheduling portion of work management, while not fully planning the work. Doc Palmer (an authority on Maintenance Planning & Scheduling) has said that you cannot schedule without proper planning. So how is it that they are scheduling work without knowing what needs to be done and what materials are required?
Truth, Lies, and Paltering Leaders
Truth, Lies, and Paltering Leaders – What and Who Can Be Believed?
Guest Post by Malcolm Peart (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)
“Lies, damn lies and statistics” is an often-used phrase attributed to the 18th Century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. He acknowledged the persuasive power of numbers to bolster weak arguments.
In a statistical moment his contemporary, Abraham Lincoln, said; “You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time“. Politics, persuasion and manipulation (deception) have gone hand in hand for centuries.
Many people have monopolized in the area of Churchill’s “terminological inexactitudes’ or, as it’s now being referred to Stateside of the Pond “False News“. The term”lie” is an accusatory word and maybe impolite and vulgar and’ politically incorrect’ but do ‘lies’ really help us and why can’t we know the truth? [Read more…]
Planning and Scheduling Goal
Lets look at the goal of planning and the two major areas of focus to increase efficiency of the maintenance staff. [Read more…]
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.
