Accendo Reliability

Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site

Home » Articles » Page 209

Articles

Find all articles across all article series listed in reverse chronological order.

by Leave a Comment

Predictive Maintenance — What is it?

Predictive Maintenance — What is it?

The practice of maintenance has been developing for the past 300 years. Since the start of the Industrial Revolution machinery and their control systems have played a critical part in our ability to produce consumer and industrial goods. Over that time different maintenance philosophies have developed in response to changing technology and increasing costs.

The progression in philosophies started with breakdown maintenance (BM), then to time-based maintenance such as preventative maintenance (PM) and shutdown maintenance. More recently condition-based maintenance (CM) has become significant. The next step is predictive maintenance. [Read more…]

by Leave a Comment

Risk Exposure Reduction and Mitigation

Risk Exposure Reduction and Mitigation

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

Exposure to threats, hazards and risks leads to vulnerabilities that an organization must deal with.  Commonly these are addressed via a mitigation process.  Once mitigation is accomplished, often times the organization feels that the risk, threat, hazard does not need to be revisited.  However, as a result of the mitigation efforts on the part of the organization, the risks, threats, hazards reconfigure and re-emerge in a different form. 

In order for mitigation to be successful it has to be a constant and ongoing process that produces a resilience to the negative effects of risks, threats and hazards that are realized. [Read more…]

by Leave a Comment

Advanced Engineering Culture Introduction Post

Advanced Engineering Culture Introduction Post

Good day, friends and colleagues. I am excited to join Accendo Reliability to bring you a weekly column titled, “Advanced Engineering Culture.” The goal of this column is to bring awareness and solutions to common challenges technical people face in the workplace. New articles will post every Monday.

My name is Katie Switzer, and I am a Senior Reliability Engineer at a chemical manufacturing plant in West Virginia. I hold a Bachelor’s of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Clarkson University, and I have been an ISO Category III Vibration Analyst since 2009. Industries I have experience in include aerospace, nuclear power, corn milling and chemical manufacturing. [Read more…]

by Leave a Comment

How to Find Your Purpose as an Engineer

How to Find Your Purpose as an Engineer

Engineers, You’re Doing It Wrong!

When you woke up this morning, how did you feel?  Was it giddy excitement for what the day ahead holds?  If not, then you are likely not living your purpose.  Not pursuing your life’s work.

For me, the idea of pursuing my life’s work became exponentially more important in 2013.   Over the past 3 years, I had gotten married (yay!), became a mother to my husband’s 5 year old son (double yay!), had a daughter (triple yay!), lost my mother to 5 year battle with lung cancer (tears! lots and lots of tears!), and become pregnant with a baby boy (due January 2017!). [Read more…]

by Leave a Comment

Influencing the Organization

Influencing the Organization

It can be hard as a reliability engineer to influence the greater organization.  Reliability engineers have that awkward dynamic of not just executing the tools they are expert in but directing others to incorporate them into their own process.  If the perception is that reliability engineers only instruct others what to do, like a coach, then the perception may be that “they don’t have skin in the game”. If they take complete ownership of reliability activities the effectiveness of any tools influence on the product greatly diminishes. “DfR principle #1, You can’t “Design for Reliability” if the design team isn’t using reliability tools in the design process.

[Read more…]

by Leave a Comment

FMEA Q and A – Auditing FMEAs

FMEA Q and A – Auditing FMEAs

FMEA Q and A

One of the more important topics in the FMEA body of knowledge is how to audit the effectiveness of FMEAs. Performing FMEAs properly and to a high quality standard is essential to obtaining the best possible results. This FMEA Q and A goes to the heart of FMEA effectiveness audits.

“Without a good question, a good answer has no place to go.”
Clayton Christensen

[Read more…]

by Leave a Comment

Using a Design FMEA

How Building Reliability Into The Equipment Design Will Dramatically Improve Your Profitability

14302508349_bc9deda8dc_zProducts and equipment start with a design. The functions and performance occur or do not occur according to the capabilities designed into the system.

I learned early in my career, as a manufacturing engineer, that some products were much easier to manufacture (less yield loss) ten others, and it was often the design of the product that made the difference.

I also learned that once we purchased and installed factory equipment it was very difficult to improve the reliability performance. [Read more…]

by Leave a Comment

Baldrige Criteria Poses Challenges to the Quality Profession

Baldrige Criteria Poses Challenges to the Quality Profession

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

The title may sound strange given the Baldrige’s origin as the U.S. National Quality Award.   Yet, its migration to a Performance Excellence Criteria and the addition of Cyber Security, Innovation, and Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) does pose challenges to the quality profession.  This is particularly true since the many of the Baldrige examiners are quality professionals. [Read more…]

by Leave a Comment

The Importance of Laughter in the Workplace!

The Importance of Laughter in the Workplace!

I’m laughing at work! At the same time, I’m shaking my head and smiling because I’m sitting alone at my computer working on developing some maintenance plans for one of our customers. Strange as it might seem the laughter was brought on by a social media notification that today is the birthday of an old friend. Someone I used to work with, and thinking about this person I remembered all the laughs our group shared at work. [Read more…]

by Leave a Comment

The forever outfit, and a car for “right now”

The forever outfit, and a car for “right now”

I didn’t create this image but I thought it was an interesting idea. A consumer has captured  a niche group of manufactures that are basing their brand on “service for life.”  The forever outfit.

I saw this the same day that Tesla came out with their semi truck announcement.  A few things that caught my attention from that announcement was how they emphasized reliability and low maintenance in their product profile.  “The brake pads will last forever” and “The drivetrain has a 1 million mile warranty.”

[Read more…]

by Leave a Comment

Understanding FMEA Controls – Part 2

Understanding FMEA Controls – Part 2

Problems and Solutions

In this article, we use problems and solutions to learn about FMEA controls. In the intermediate problem, we continue examining the door latch-pin failure of the DC-10 cargo door, as an example to identify FMEA controls. In the advanced problem, we analyze a fictitious FMEA relating to potential safety of someone trying to unjam a snowblower.

[Read more…]

by Leave a Comment

Incorporating Reliability into Your Future

How Building Reliability Into The Equipment Design Will Dramatically Improve Your Profitability

6191850831_876eee6baf_zOften time’s equipment is procured, setup and put into operation with a single focus on reducing the initial capital expenditure.  This can be a fatal mistake as the reliability of the equipment is built into the design of the equipment.  This called the inherent reliability.  Once the equipment is designed and installed, there is little the maintenance department can do to improve the inherent reliability. [Read more…]