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Finding A Life In The Skilled Trades – My Start

Finding A Life In The Skilled Trades – My Start

I’ve always considered myself to be somewhat lucky in life. I survived being hit head on by a car when I was five years old. I grew up in a small town in Upstate NY that had little to do in the form of entertainment but a lot to offer those in search of a sound middle class life. While I still live in that same town it has transformed from a farming community to a suburb of Rochester. I have raised my children in this same town my parents and grandparents called home and my grandchildren are being raised here as well. While life is good in our Village whose slogan is “Someplace Special” the opportunities available to my generation aren’t what they used to be. Today, it’s tough to be lucky.

When I look back, I don’t have to think too hard to know why life turned out so good. I learned a trade. [Read more…]

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Minimizing Waste In Task Management

Minimizing Waste In Task Management

Our previous article identified several forms of waste, specific to completing tasks, as detailed by the following table:

Keep in mind, by focusing on tasks, this table assumes several things:

  • a project selection process that ensures the project is valuable
  • robust project requirements & planning
  • project sponsorship and resources (team members) are made available

[Read more…]

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Risk Based Problem Solving and Decision Making

Risk Based Problem Solving and Decision Making

All organizations regardless if they are public or private, for profit or not for profit, large or small face uncertainty.  Uncertainty results in risks.  More organizations will face uncertainty in the design, implementation, and assurance of their Quality Management System (QMS), Environmental Management System (EMS), Information Security Management System (ISMS), and most ISO management systems.  The critical organizational challenge over the next decade is how organizations will address and treat the risks that result from the uncertainty.  ISO 31000:2018 was developed to address this growing uncertainty. [Read more…]

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I Guess I’m a Bit of a Running Shoe Designer

I Guess I’m a Bit of a Running Shoe Designer

Anyone who knows me knows I love modifying things.  I always feel there is a better design.  This is the goal of a reliability engineer at heart.  I enjoy sports and I enjoy running.  I do believe that we were born to run.  If you look at the human body that is clearly what it was built for.  Our big toe faces forward, which makes them no longer good for gripping things like branches.  But it does make them great for landing a foot in forward motion.  We have extremely long legs in proportion to our bodies compared to all other primates.  We are slender which provide a great ratio of surface area to mass for cooling. The ability to sweat without hair is a great temperature control method as well.  We are also the only mammal that can uncouple our breathing to our running pace because we are bipeds.  This let’s us optimize our breathing for long distance.

[Read more…]

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Achieving Lean by Identifying Forms of Waste

Achieving Lean by Identifying Forms of Waste

Our previous article compared agile/scrum with lean/kaizen and revealed several similar fundamentals that helped make each methodology easier to understand.

Since the objective of lean and agile is waste reduction, we also want to identify and eliminate various forms of waste.

In order to do this, first let’s consider our objective to manufacture hardware product, develop a hardware or digital product and/or execute a project:

[Read more…]

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The 5 Rights and Wrongs of OEE

The 5 Rights and Wrongs of OEE

When I started to develop the RCM Blitz™ methodology over twenty years ago, the one thing I knew that would help to ensure successful Reliability-Centered Maintenance analysis was to develop a way that would guarantee every implemented analysis would provide a return on investment. The answer to this was simple enough, if you’re looking to improve safety and reduce health, safety and environmental incidents we should focus on critical assets that are struggling to maintain their inherent designed reliability. The best way to identify the best candidates is by measuring the OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) of your top critical assets. [Read more…]

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Review: What is the Reliability of the Reliability Function

Review: What is the Reliability of the Reliability Function

Jezdimir Knezevic of the MIRCE Akademy published a paper with the title above and I have a few comments.

In the article, Jezdimir suggests that the statistical approach to describing the world about us is fundamental flaws and not inherently useful for our use. He compares a mathematical/statistical approach to a scientific approach and finds the stats wanting.

Let’s take a critical look at the topic of this paper and conclusions. [Read more…]

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Budgets — What to Do and How to Use Them

Budgets — What to Do and How to Use Them

Budgets represent plans or expectations for the future! They are a means to plan, forecast, coordinate and control the activities needed to achieve the business’ objectives. The budget document contains the amount of money that has been allocated to achieve those goals and the timing of its spending. Budgets cover the planned use of men, materials, external resources and management effort that is expected to be sufficient to hit the targets. Once the budget is finalised it becomes a tool to feedback how the actual progress is going compared to what was expected. [Read more…]

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Risk Management: Delusion, Illusion, and Reality

Risk Management: Delusion, Illusion, and Reality

Guest Post by Malcolm Peart (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

Can we really manage risk, or do we delude ourselves by going through the prescribed activities of ‘risk management’ giving the illusion that it’s happening?  Is risk management merely a hypocritical ritual and applying some science to fate through statistical mumbo-jumbo, decision trees, and quantitative analyses? [Read more…]

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Basics of Brainstorming

Basics of Brainstorming

Did you know that best idea to solve a problem is often not the first one?

We all have plenty of bad ideas, hunches, guesses, and flawed ideas. That is ok. We also have great ideas and elegant solutions, too. The trick is exploring all those ideas to find the best ones.

One technique to draw out and capture many ideas is called brainstorming. You most likely have heard of and used this tool already. Let’s review a few key elements that make for excellent brainstorming results. [Read more…]