Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
Find all articles across all article series listed in reverse chronological order.
My not-so-dirty-little-secret, the Essence of Reliability Centered Maintenance, and Risk Assessment all at once…
I’m going to tell you a not-so-dirty-little secret about myself. I love No-Limit Texas Hold-‘Em poker.
I’m a tournament poker player – not cash. Every year at Thanksgiving, my husband and I journey to Las Vegas to indulge in my favorite hobby.
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Age-specific reliability of a standby system depends on components’ failure rates. Reliability computation is interesting when part failure rates depend on age, which is what motivates having a standby system. A Markov chain, approximates the age-specific reliability and availability, which are complicated to compute exactly, unless you assume constant failure rates. Why not use age-specific (actuarial) rates? They are Markov chain transition rates.
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Reactive chemicals refer to chemicals that can react with self or with other chemicals or contaminants leading to extremely high reaction rates. The high reaction rates in turn can lead to overpressure within the vessel and possible explosion. As a graduate student, I looked at behavior of reactive chemical hydroxylamine which was involved in an explosion at Concept Sciences facility in Allentown, PA.
Take a look at the following video on how hydroxylamine reacts upon addition of metal solution.
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One failure mechanism that I’m frequently asked about is hydrogen embrittlement of carbon and low-alloy steel. So, in this article I’ll discuss that topic.
Hydrogen embrittlement is the result of the absorption of hydrogen by susceptible metals resulting in the loss of ductility and reduction of load bearing capability. Sustained stress on an embrittled material can result in cracking and fracture at stresses less than the metal’s yield strength.
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I am often asked if there is a relationship between improved reliability and safety? There is certainly anecdotal evidence that suggests that there is a link. I’m sure anyone reading this can attest to similar beliefs from their work environment. But I was particularly interested to see if there was more definitive research that can back up these beliefs with hard data. I was able to find numerous articles that provided additional support data. However, I saw one from Ron Moore that really stood out to me. Ron has been a respected Reliability practitioner and consultant for many years. This article, which is posted all over the internet, shows more than just anecdotal conclusions on this relationship. Ron presents are a clear mathematical relationship that shows us that being more proactive and reliable also makes us safer.
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Ryan Chan of UpKeep authored a new book in which he presents some very smart concepts around information management. Here’s a video of a group discussion of those concepts and the launch. Participants include Ryan Chan (author of “Asset Operations”), Sanya Mathura, Ramesh Gulati, Vinny Cavello, and our own, James Reyes-Picknell.
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“Man measures time by happiness or sorrow, tranquility or torture. The one is past and gone so quickly that is seldom seized and savored while the other turns the hours into days and the weeks into years”. This was written by Major Pat Reid in “The Colditz Story” and, while it comes from a time of internment at a dark time in history the same is true today.
[Read more…]Reliability is something that can be created. It is the result of the standards, processes, and practices that are used. By removing causes of failures and controlling the factors that allow their creation, you proactively eliminate failure events. By eliminating failures, you deliberately create reliability. The reliability creating processes in the Plant Wellness Way EAM methodology let any operation or site reach the heights of world class operating asset reliability.
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Mediocrity can talk, but it is for genius to observe. – Benjamin Disraeli
The Inside FMEA series has completed the primary facilitation skills. The next few articles will cover special facilitation topics.
This article talks about the pros and cons of using a “scribe” to help with facilitation. [Read more…]
Many valuable lessons can be learned from the failures of risk governance in Australian banks.
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) and Westpac Banking Corporation (Westpac), two of the largest banks in Australia had to provide Court Enforceable Undertakings in May 2018 and December 2021 respectively to the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA).
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Below is an email discussion about when Crow-AMSAA modelling can provide believable forecasts.
Suppose installed base or cohorts in successive periods have different reliabilities due to nonstationarity? What does that do to forecasts, estimates, reliability predictions, diagnostics, spares stock levels, maintenance plans, etc.? Assuming stationarity is equivalent to assuming all installed base, cohorts, or ships have the same reliability functions. At what cost? Assuming a constant failure rate is equivalent to assuming everything has exponentially distributed time to failure or constant failure rate. At what cost?
The manufacturing sector has seen a rise in competitiveness because of the introduction of Industry 4.0 technologies over the last decade. It has become important for manufacturers to stand out in the industry by optimizing their systems to be as perfect as possible. One of the factors that make a factory competitive is its reliability, and a smart factory has great opportunities to improve it using the failure data from its assets.
The smart factories created using these technologies have greater efficiency and provide valuable data about the assets which can be used to further improve plant performance. The asset failure data gathered from different assets can provide insights into the reliability of assets and how to improve it. [Read more…]
Hurricanes pose serious risks to physical assets in chemical plants and refineries. During hurricanes, plant equipment can be damaged by high winds and/or flood waters. I’m hoping your refinery has adequate protection against flooding…so let us see what risks are posed by high winds.
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