James Kovacevic — Thought Leader

Author of Maintenance and Reliability articles, ebooks, and host of Rooted in Reliability, co-host on Speaking of Reliability.

This author's archive lists contributions of articles and episodes.

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5 Reasons Why You Need to Be Using Procedure Based Maintenance

Using Procedure Based Maintenance to Improve the Performance of Your Operation

Imagine an operation in which there are no lost time accidents, OEE is increasing and there is a plan to address the skills shortage. These sites do exist and chances are they using procedure based maintenance. Procedure Based Maintenance is simply having all maintenance activities documented in a procedure. These procedures are then followed step by step when conducting breakdown, corrective and preventative maintenance. [Read more…]

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59 – What is a Failure Mechanism with Fred Schenkelberg

What is a Failure Mechanism with Fred Schenkelberg

This episode is centered upon the failure mechanism that reliability engineers have to deal with in everyday work. Before we understand what a failure mechanism is, it is very important to know what is called a failure. A failure is a technically relative term that is used when the results are below the expectations. Now different people have different definitions of failure based on their own performance scales. The failure depends on the criteria of performance that you have set for a particular machine and when the machine falls short of generating that specific output, you call it a failure.
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Fast Track RCM: Improving Plant Performance & Profitability

A Proven Framework to Improve Performance and Build Ownership of the Equipment

Understanding the how equipment failures along with utilizing a proven and effective approach to developing an equipment strategy is a winning combination for manufacturers everywhere. When combing the knowledge and the system, manufacturers can yield significant improvements in their operation, such as a reduction in PM workload of 22% with gain 4% in line efficiencies. Or how about a reduction of 42% of PMs, without a single loss in equipment availability. It is possible and required for manufacturers to become and remain profitable. [Read more…]

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58 – Understanding Thermal Growth with John Lambert

Understanding Thermal Growth with John Lambert

In this episode, the thermal growth and the understanding of the phenomenon—how it occurs and how to prevent and calculate it—is being discussed by John Lambert. So, first of all, we have to know what actually the thermal growth is. The answer is simple. This phenomenon occurs when the rotating machines get hot due to the difference in temperature and they start to expand in every direction. As these machines are mostly metal so their thermal growth is explained by the coefficient of linear thermal expansion that is already known for many different materials.
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SOR 221 Reliability Program Assessment in a Factory Setting

Reliability Program Assessment in a Factory Setting

Abstract

James and Fred discussing getting an assessment of a factories maintenance reliability program.
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How Equipment Fails, Understanding the 6 Failure Patterns

Knowing How Equipment Fails Allows Effective Plans to Be Put In Place and Improve Equipment Reliability

Identifying How Equipment Fails

In the 1960s the failure rate of jet aircraft was high even with the extensive maintenance programs that were put in place to prevent the failures. The programs required overhauls, rebuilds and detailed inspections which required the various components to be disassembled. All of these activities were based on an estimated save life of the equipment. [Read more…]

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57 – Change Management and Your Maintenance Program with Shon Isenhour

Change Management and Your Maintenance Program with Shon Isenhour

This episode focuses on the change management and the impact that it can have on your maintenance program. So, what is change management? It occurs at different levels in the organizations but the most basic level—the people level—that makes the organizational culture needs to be tended first. It happens a lot that after the successful planning and scheduling, work execution seems to be fine in the short term but fails horribly in the long term because the change process was not addressed and handled properly at all the critical levels in the organizational framework. So, what things need to be addressed first?
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3 Ways to Improve Profitability with a Criticality Analysis

Making the criticality analysis work for you and drive improvements in the maintenance strategy

Most manufacturers do not have an up to date criticality analysis and those that do have one, do not use it to drive decisions. Having a criticality analysis facilitates improved decision making and prioritization within the site and business.

How many times are there debates regarding which work needs to be done, which PMs will be dropped from the schedule because the planned downtime was reduced? These debates occur regularly, but to not have to occur. A criticality analysis drives improvements in the business by: [Read more…]

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56 – Are you a Victim of Reliability Drive By with Scott Kelley

Are you a Victim of Reliability Drive By with Scott Kelley

This episode of the weekly podcast is about reliability drive by that is very common in the organizations that have multiple sites. So how often does this happen and why? What exactly is a reliability drive by? Those organizations that have multiple sites with assets or plants there with teams working there often send their reliability engineers to check the site get any information that they can get in a specified—usually very short time—and then move on to the next sites for doing the same things they did on the previous sites. This is called reliability drive by.
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What is Criticality Analysis? How Does it Work?

Understanding the risks allow effective mitigation plans to be put in place

Where is your biggest risk to the site? If you can’t answer that, than your maintenance program is most likely not adequate. As previously discussed, an effective maintenance program must align with business and its needs. A criticality analysis allows the site to understand where there are risks that must be managed. [Read more…]

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55 – Reliability from a CMMS Perspective with John Reeve

Reliability from a CMMS Perspective with John Reeve

This episode is about the book, Reliability from a CMMS Perspective by John Reeve that will be coming out this fall. Often times, companies just implement a CMMS into their reliability programs and the software doesn’t live up their expectations. So, what exactly goes wrong with such kind of projects? How do they get it right? The simple answer may be is that they expect too much and too fast. The results from any SAAS oriented system take time and they require patience. Then there needs to be some sort of consultation between the reliability engineers and the management of the company if they are ever going to implement a CMMS correctly.
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Is Your Maintenance Program Aligned With The Business?

Providing the right level of service to production will ensure the profitability of the business.

Using a Business Needs Analysis will ensure that your maintenance program is on the same page as the goals of the business. Often times the two are not aligned, which leads to excess costs for the business, reducing the ability to be profitable. For example, does your operation require 99.9% reliability? It would be nice but that level of reliability is extremely difficult & costly to achieve. Think of the various industries that require that level of performance. NASA, the Armed Forces, Nuclear Power, etc. require 99.9% reliability and to achieve so, the effort in design and in operation is extremely intensive. [Read more…]

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54 – What Makes a Good Consultant with Fred Schenkelberg

What Makes a Good Consultant with Fred Schenkelberg

In this episode, the guest Fred Schenkelberg explains what is a good consultant? Whenever comes the question of performance in an organization—performance of assets—there is always a consultant involved who is helping you make your organization better at what you do. So what is a consultant? The consultants are mainly categorized into three major types. There are contractors who help you set things in motion or strategists who make strategic decisions for you. Then there are facilitators or internal ones who you hire for specific projects so that they can assist you just like an extra set of hands. The last ones are trusted advisors who help you every step of the way and if they are truly capable—which they usually are—with experience and expertise, they can really make a difference with the knowledge and insights that they have.
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A Smarter Way of Preventative Maintenance

4 Simple Steps to Improving Profitability through Smart PMs

How did the PM routines come to be in your business? PM routines are often the result of a failure and the maintenance department being told to implement a PM to prevent it from happening again. The PM is hastily put in place without much detail or thought. Fast forward a little ways in time and soon you have a monster of PM program, in which you struggle to execute on time. Overtime increases to complete all of the PMs, yet the performance of the operation does not improve. [Read more…]

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53 – The Importance of Leadership in Maintenance with Richard Rierson

The Importance of Leadership in Maintenance with Richard Rierson

This episode is about the leadership that is the very backbone of the successful organizations that perform exceptionally every year and get better and better with time under the experience of the leadership they have. But was it the same from the beginning? No, it wasn’t. Not every leadership is perfect right from the start. There are a lot of phases through which they get and they fail sometimes too but what they don’t do is look weak in front of the people whose entire lives depend on them. The successful leaders get wiser by the time by learning from their mistakes. But is there some sort of special criteria for being a leader? Technically yes but in general terms, every other person can be a leader if he believes so. He just needs to understand what the true meaning of leadership is.
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