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Spot Component Issues Using Thermal Imaging

Spot Component Issues Using Thermal Imaging

Spot component failures before they happen using thermal imaging. Every component failure has a classic signature, a fingerprint. Observing this fingerprint overtime displays the type of impending failure and what actions to take now to prevent expensive unplanned downtime.

Have you ever seen a component look fine only to have it fail without warning?

Chances are that the heat told the story first. Thermal imaging is one of the most powerful tools in the Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) toolkit. It turns invisible heat patterns into actionable insight and when used right, thermal imaging can detect component problems before they lead to catastrophic failure days or even weeks before they happen.

In this article, we will address the following:

  • What thermal imaging reveals about motors, gears, bearings, and pumps
  • Why migrating hotspots are a red flag you can’t ignore
  • How to turn thermal profiles into predictive action
[Read more…]

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The Invisible Value of Maintenance: Bridging the Divide Between Production and the People Who Keep Things Running

The Invisible Value of Maintenance: Bridging the Divide Between Production and the People Who Keep Things Running

My father is an industrial engineer/ manager (retired). He spent his career in maintenance and operations management, and growing up, I absorbed a principle so fundamental that it shaped how I see the world: if you want something to last, you have to look after it.

It wasn’t complicated philosophy. It was watching him maintain the family car religiously—not because it was broken, but because he understood what neglect would cost later. It was seeing him make sure the wooden fence always had a healthy coating of Carbolineum and the gutters were cleared before the rainy season arrived. The lesson was simple: care for things before they demand it, and they’ll serve you well. Ignore them, and they’ll fail you at the worst possible moment.

This principle is obvious to anyone who’s grown up around machinery. Yet somehow, in the complexity of industrial operations, it gets lost. Maintenance teams fight for resources, justify their existence, and struggle to communicate their value to organisations that measure success in tonnes and throughput. Production teams, under relentless pressure to hit targets, see maintenance as a necessary interruption at best—and an obstacle at worst.

The root of this disconnect isn’t ignorance or bad intention. It’s something more fundamental: the success of maintenance is invisible. [Read more…]

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Simplicity Improves System Reliability. Why?

Simplicity Improves System Reliability. Why?

Reliability Engineering has a bias that is both practical and measurable: simpler systems tend to be more reliable. This is not a philosophical preference for elegance; it is an outcome rooted in how failures occur, how they propagate through architectures, and how uncertainty accumulates when complexity grows. When we say “simple,” we do not mean “unsophisticated.” We mean fewer parts, fewer interfaces, fewer operating modes, fewer dependencies, and fewer opportunities for human and environmental variability to turn into functional failures.

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Solution Implementation

Solution Implementation

When faced with recurring equipment failures, identifying the root cause is only half the battle. The real challenge lies in implementing an effective solution that addresses the issue while considering various stakeholder perspectives. In this article, we’ll explore a comprehensive approach to optimizing decision-making for equipment failure solutions, involving key teams across the organization.

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Environmental Stress Screening

Environmental Stress Screening

Finding Weaknesses Before the Customer Does

Co-authored with Mike Vella

One of the most effective analytical tools in reliability and quality engineering is Environmental Stress Screening (ESS).

ESS is a process designed to force latent defects to reveal themselves. It does this by applying controlled environmental stresses to hardware, accelerating the transition from hidden weakness to detectable failure.

The goal is not to test whether a product meets specifications. The goal is to flush out defects that already exist but have not yet developed into failures under normal conditions.

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Program Communication Management: Really?

Program Communication Management: Really?

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

Communication…dictionarily is the imparting or exchanging of information by speaking, writing, or using some other medium.  It’s essential to humankind and allows us to live, work, trade and co-exist.  It’s the basis of society, culture and civilizations and through communication there’s understanding and establishment of common beliefs.

Communication allows us to impart information, clarify such information and rectify misunderstandings.  Of course, if miscommunication occurs and is acted upon then mistakes may well happen, and these mistakes can then cause problems.  In Project Management such mistakes often result in delays, cost overruns, quality shortfalls, disputes and, possibly, project failure.

[Read more…]

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 Building Ultra-High Reliability Work Processes 

 Building Ultra-High Reliability Work Processes 

A Systems Reliability Model 

 Nuclear power stations, nuclear warships and air traffic control centers are renowned amongst industry world-wide for their high-reliability performance. Here is a reliability-based model of how they do it. Your organisation can too.

Keywords: control of human error, failure prevention, defect elimination, accuracy-controlled enterprise, error-proofing 

My brother-in-law, who worked for Japan Airlines (JAL) at the time, tells a story of watching Japanese aircraft maintenance technicians overhaul a JAL airplane jet engine. He tells this story because it is so unusual. During his visit to the maintenance hanger he was enthralled by the extraordinary maintenance procedure that the JAL technicians followed.

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Hardware Product Realization in the Age of AI

Hardware Product Realization in the Age of AI

Chapter 4: Difference between Agile Hardware and Agile Software

In the previous chapter, how markets and global needs can impact your product was discussed.

In this chapter the differences between agile Hardware and Agile Software are explored to allow you understand how to apply agile techniques to a hardware development workflow.

The desire to gain a competitive advantage by releasing products faster has driven the widespread adoption of agile software methodologies. More recently, a push to apply agile techniques into the hardware development process has yielded mixed results, This is because electronic hardware products cannot be tested until complete subassemblies are built, and so important modifications to the product realization process are necessary.

[Read more…]

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Time-based VS Meter-based PMs

Time-based VS Meter-based PMs

Time-based PM variation.




  • PM1 and PM2 are for identical assets




  • When FMEA was completed on these assets, it was determined that an inspection PM must be done every 30 days or 30,000 cycles.




  • The decision was made to go with time-based PM’s. You let your technicians schedule their own work. They are assigned the PM at the beginning of the month and have till the end of the month to complete.




  • You may be PM compliant, but not FMEA compliant.




[Read more…]

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My First Maintenance Lesson Exposed a Major Reliability Pitfall

My First Maintenance Lesson Exposed a Major Reliability Pitfall

The First Maintenance Lesson I Ever Learned—and How It Applies to Reliability Today

In today’s storytime, I’m sharing the first maintenance lesson I ever learned, back when I was eleven years old and eager to change the oil in my father’s car. As you’ll see, this experience taught me a valuable lesson about quality assurance and accountability—and it reveals one of the biggest mistakes many Reliability Teams make today.

[Read more…]

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Integrating Human Factors with Traditional Reliability Techniques

Integrating Human Factors with Traditional Reliability Techniques

In Part 1 of Beyond the Numbers, I reflected on why Human Factors matter in reliability engineering and how the human element of the system can be overlooked by traditional hardware-focussed approaches.
This article explores how Human Factors principles can be integrated into traditional reliability analyses such as Reliability Block Diagrams (RBDs), Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) and Failure Mode, Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) and without reinventing the wheel or introducing additional complexity.

The short answer is that we are already doing much of this implicitly. Applying Human Factors principles makes those assumptions explicit and therefore visible, challengeable and open to improvement. [Read more…]

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Top Reliability Engineers Make Risk Management Simple for Every Frontline Worker

Top Reliability Engineers Make Risk Management Simple for Every Frontline Worker

Think about the greatest risk you have encountered in the past five years. Maybe it was related to physical injury or serious sickness. It could be related to the mental health of a family member. Natural disasters or career changes are obvious ones. In fact, you can probably think of more than one great risk you have recently experienced.

Now, what is the definition of risk? In technical sessions and my workshops, well-educated business professionals struggle with the terminology. It usually takes two to three minutes for someone to arrive at their definition. The sad news is that there are about as many definitions as there are well-educated people in the room.

[Read more…]