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

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Conditional Reliability and Boardroom Conversations

Conditional Reliability and Boardroom Conversations

Definition of Reliability

Reliability, in its academic root, is defined as the probability that a system will perform its intended function in a specified mission time and within specific process conditions. Reliability (R) is related to the Probability of Success as opposed to the Probability of Failure (F), and the relation between R and F is:

$$ \displaystyle \large R = 1 – F (t) \ \:\:\:\: \:\:\:\: (for \:mission\: time\: t) $$

In the above context, a reliability example would be: What is the probability that a centrifugal pump in a sheltered enclosure will push 3,000m3/day of sweet crude oil without unplanned failures for a period of 8,760 running hours?

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Common FMEA Confusion

Common FMEA Confusion

[Last month I mentioned that the next article would be on the subject of the application of models in the FMEA process. I am postponing that important topic, in order to do more research. Stay tuned . . .]

This month, I want to discuss one of the most common problems that FMEA teams face: getting confused about the difference between failure modes, effects and causes.

“Things are not always as they seem; the first appearance deceives many.” Phaedrus

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How to Implement a Risk Management Framework

How to Implement a Risk Management Framework

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

This article is the fifth of fourteen parts to our risk management series. The series will be taking a look at the risk management guidelines under the ISO 31000 Standard to help you better understand them and how they relate to your own risk management activities. In doing so, we’ll be walking through the core aspects of the Standard and giving you practical guidance on how to implement it.

In previous articles (1st, 2nd, 3rd, & 4th) we’ve looked at the core elements of the risk management framework generally, as well as the role of leadership and commitment, integration and design more specifically. In this article, we’ll be looking at how to effectively implement the risk management framework into your organisation.

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Maintenance Planner and Scheduler Competencies and Skills

Maintenance Planner and Scheduler Competencies and Skills

To be a great Maintenance Planner and Scheduler you need to know a lot about your equipment’s’ engineering, how to manage complicated projects well, use world class maintenance processes for creating equipment reliability, and a whole lot more.

Recently I was asked what skills and competencies a Maintenance Planner and Scheduler needs to master to do world class maintenance planning and scheduling.

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Cost of Quality Measurement and Reporting

Cost of Quality Measurement and Reporting

In 1956, Harvard Business Review published a landmark article by economist and business leader Armand Feigenbaum titled “Total Quality Control” that summarized the quality control system he developed during his long tenure at General Electric and gave prominence to many concepts still used in quality management today. One of those concepts was cost of quality measurement.

The goal of a cost of quality measurement system is to provide manufacturing leaders with a tool that can help drive process improvements. By understanding the magnitude and sources of their quality costs, manufacturing executives, managers, engineers, and technicians can more effectively direct their efforts, improvement strategies, and capital budgets toward reducing them.

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Life Models for Repairable Versus Non-repairable Assets

Life Models for Repairable Versus Non-repairable Assets

Definition of repairable versus non-repairable assets

A common error when performing a life analysis for an asset is to confuse repairable and non-repairable assets. The mathematical determination of the life characteristics for each model is different, so throwing a simple “Weibull analysis” at them might lead to the wrong results but also the loss of valuable information.

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How AI complements Reliability Engineers

How AI complements Reliability Engineers

The tasks of a Reliability Engineer are long & diverse. While heavily dependent on the industry one is working in, it generally involves all aspects of the Equipment – from Design to Manufacturing to Operation to Maintenance. Even though the responsibility is wide, the resources available for a Reliability Engineer within an organization are limited. Often, there are only a few Reliability Engineers managing hundreds of Equipment. Given this current situation, the arrival of AI seems like a perfect resource to complement the work.

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How to Manage Known Project Risks

How to Manage Known Project Risks

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

A risk is an event or activity that can go wrong and cause an impact to the project. Risks can have a negative or positive impact to the project. Risks that have a positive impact are called opportunities. If they have a negative impact, they are called risks. A goal on a project is to try and balance risks and opportunities to mitigate the chance of cost or schedule growth.

There are two basic categories of project risk. They are the known and unknown. The known risks are the four project constraints (scope, cost, schedule, quality). Poor execution of these constraints is a major reason why projects fail. This paper addresses how to manage known risks.

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How to Get Optimal Enterprise Physical Assert Utilization and Asset Performance

How to Get Optimal Enterprise Physical Assert Utilization and Asset Performance

Getting excellent enterprise physical asset utilization and maximum asset performance needs business-wide and life-cycle-long coordination and cooperation.

By coordinating and merging business-wide data and asset historical performance records into useful asset information, you can make timely and informed decisions that safely and profitably maximize the performance and value contribution of your enterprise physical assets

To go down the path of getting operating asset optimization it is necessary that you first identify what measures will be used to determine the “optimal asset utilization” state.

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Systems Thinking: CATER Provides Five Ways to Improve Team Facilitation

Systems Thinking: CATER Provides Five Ways to Improve Team Facilitation

The mental model CATER will help you recall the five ways to improve any form of team facilitation. CATER does two big things necessary for all great facilitated sessions. The mental model creates comparable knowledge among participants and opens feedback channels for successful collaboration. Apply systems thinking and improve team performance by CATERing to your participants. [Read more…]

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Using Monte Carlo Simulations in Excel to Assess Uncertainty in Asset Replacement Decisions

Using Monte Carlo Simulations in Excel to Assess Uncertainty in Asset Replacement Decisions

Industrial operations that have operating horizons exceeding the lifespan of their assets face a crucial decision as they approach this timeline’s end (but not enough to operate the equipment until its full economically optimal life).

Specifically, they must decide whether to overhaul the asset, replace it with a new one, or rent the equipment until operations conclude. Given the numerous variables with inherent uncertainties in the financial models, how can they be confident in their decision?

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