Articles

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

by Robert (Bob) J. Latino Leave a Comment

Can you be Proactive in a Reactive Environment?

Guest post by Ken Latino

If you are like most people who work in a manufacturing or process plant, you have a plan for your day when you arrive in the morning. As soon as you walk through the gate, you are hit with the equipment failures from the night before. You immediately spring into action to help find parts, drawings, millwrights, fitters and anything else needed to get the equipment repaired as quickly as possible. Once that is underway you are told to compile that urgent report for corporate that is needed immediately. And who can forget the countless meetings that must have your attendance. The next thing you know, it is 7:00 PM and you have done nothing from the plan you had for your day. Sound familiar?

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by James Reyes-Picknell Leave a Comment

One Place for all of your Data!

Here’s a video of a discussion event that was organized by UpKeep. Asset Operations Management (AOM) unites maintenance, operations, and reliability data to help teams make important business decisions, with full visibility across the entire life cycle of maintenance, asset management, and operations.

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by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

What is a Risk Manager?

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

Googling ‘what is a risk manager?’ will get you variations on ‘it’s the person who manages that organization’s risks,’ which is a pretty weak answer. It’s certainly not enough to help anyone who’s just starting in the role to understand what they’re supposed to do. Similarly, if someone’s thinking about this as a career, we need a bit more.

So here’s a more detailed answer.

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by Mike Sondalini Leave a Comment

Workplace Safety Culture Changes when You Embed ACE 3T OHS Standards in Your Work Procedures

Design your safety system with the workplace safety culture and safety practices you want

Use the ACE 3T culture change technique to design, teach and adopt the best safety culture into your organization

Here’s a workplace safety culture change fact we’ve known about for a long time. This quote from G. J. Hofstede in his book, Cultures and Organisations, explains a lot about how you create the right workplace safety culture.

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by Sanjeev Saraf Leave a Comment

Top Five Challenges For Process Safety

Process Safety has evolved significantly since the introduction of PSM in 1992. Here are top five challenges facing the process safety community today.

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by Karl Burnett Leave a Comment

1702 Corrosion and Wear in Mine Water Pumps

Thomas Savery patented a steam-powered pump in 1698. This was an important but imperfect step in the early development of steam engines. Savery’s pump was intended for dewatering mines, but it was more practical for other applications. Savery demonstrated the pump to the Royal Society of London in 1699. YouTube hosts several 3D animations and working scale models that are very interesting.

Residual Stresses in Metals

When designing components consider fatigue or stress corrosion cracking. It’s important to be cognizant of the residual stresses in the component. Understanding residual pressure and its sources is important when making decisions about a component’s shape, features, alloy, and fabrication process.

Fatigue and stress corrosion cracking require the presence of tensile stresses on a component. When residual presures are tensile they add to the applied tensile pressure, reducing the life of a component. In fact, components sometimes fail due to stress corrosion cracking when residual stress is the only source of tensile stress.

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by John Kreucher Leave a Comment

Expect to Pass Validation using Accelerated Tests

Product Validation Testing is a critical and expensive endeavor. The part build process must align with the latest prototype process (for Design Validation (DV)) or production process (for Product Validation (PV)) and be fully documented for posterity. Depending on the product and application, the validation test plan consists of a battery of tests, some of which are lengthy – often six months or more. Because of this, DV and PV test plans are invariably on the critical path for a customer program. Test failures that require fixing the design and repeating DV or PV jeopardize project timing and company profits. Further, they jeopardize the customer program along with your company’s reputation.

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by Greg Hutchins 3 Comments

Nomad at Last

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

It’s January 2020. I have just made a pitch to the corporate big-wigs for a way to reduce their real-estate costs (premises including rent and utilities), their corporate travel costs, even their carbon footprint using the latest telephony and collaborative applications. I postulate that they will even see an increase in productivity while improving their employee’s work-life balance; no more one-hour commutes each way.

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by Mike Sondalini Leave a Comment

How Mother Nature and Father Time Creates Reliability and Availability in the Universe

Mother Nature And Father Time have together built well. What they have left behind lasts a long time without failure. Humans can run for 100 years with very little maintenance. Trees can run for thousands of years without maintenance. There are lessons for us to take and apply. The life on our world shows us how to achieve truly outstanding reliability and availability. Do you want a thing to last 20 years trouble-free all its life, maybe 50 years without a problem? By looking at what the Mother Nature And Father Time left behind you will find the answers.

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by Nancy Regan 1 Comment

Essence of Reliability Centered Maintenance, and Risk Assessment

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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by Larry George 1 Comment

Markov Approximation to Standby-System Reliability

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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by Sanjeev Saraf Leave a Comment

Reactive Chemicals

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.

by Michael Pfeifer, Ph.D., P.E. Leave a Comment

Steel Hydrogen Embrittlement

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.

Does Improved Reliability Translate to a Safer Plant?

Guest post by Ken Latino.

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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