Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
“Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.” Niels Bohr
In an FMEA, is it possible to think of everything that might happen in the future? What strategies can be used by FMEA teams to maximize the opportunity to anticipate what can go wrong, so risk can be reduced to an acceptable level?
One of the most common issues observed in the field of Reliability encountered by numerous practitioners is how to convince people around them commit to and support their initiatives. This barrier is not only a hindrance to seek the executive support within their organizations but also at other levels across the hierarchy. Similarly, many consultants and service providers also fail to essentially convey their message in a persuasive and effective manner. [Read more…]
The four knowledge cornerstones of project risk management are:
Why are these called the four cornerstones? Each cornerstone addresses a primary risk source as shown in Table 1. This article address risk management. The remaining cornerstones will be addressed in separate articles. [Read more…]
When we were younger most of our parents probably told us that we needed to have a good education to get ahead and do well in life. After all, it is the key that unlocks career paths, it opens doors and closes them if it is missing. Even prisoners on long sentences get an education so they can get a better start on life after their incarceration. [Read more…]
In last week’s newsletter, I discussed some of the steps I’m taking to reduce the stress caused by the media & others on myself. It helped a bit but this week it all came to a head. I wasn’t sleeping, I was anxious/stressed the entire time, my thoughts were racing and I had extreme thoughts of dropping everything and hurting myself. When I spoke to my coach, she asked me why I hadn’t considered taking time off work, pushing back the things I do for you and limiting the requests I help out with.
I didn’t think it was an option. [Read more…]
6 Principles for Continuous Improvement
Today, I believe that we seem to overcomplicate certain elements of growth and improvement. Continuous improvement is one of those things. We repackage and rebrand things to create the perception that without us, it can’t be done. This is the consulting world in general. Is this really the case? I believe with these few principles and actual execution, your organization can see improvement. Below are a few of those principles: [Read more…]
Several years ago, I was trying to fill a quality engineer’s position within my department. One person’s resume caught my attention. Under a section titled “Areas of Expertise”, it read “Quality Engineering Statistics”. “My gosh”, I thought, “We’ve got to call this guy for an interview. [Read more…]
Instead of allocating time and resources trying to force the same maintenance method on every asset in your facility, reliability centered maintenance (RCM) offers you a more structured and proven approach where each piece of equipment is allocated a befitting maintenance strategy based on the results of a well-executed RCM analysis.
By Alan Ross
Back in August of 1987, there was a “convergence” that supposedly marked the movement from one age to a new age, the Age of Aquarius. And for those who are too young to remember, just Google the song. Oh, darn…now it’s in my head! But I digress. (Which you should get used to when reading this blog because I love digression for context.)
What does that have to do with the dawning of the age of IoT? Well, there are actually a lot of similarities. [Read more…]
New Product Development is a high impact situation. Getting to market so sales can begin is big. Yet, projects seem to constantly take longer than expected. [Read more…]
[Author note: This article is being published mid-month, and is part of the FMEA Preparation series. It was earlier written, but inadvertently omitted from publication, as part of this series.]
One of the most important steps in FMEA preparation is gathering all of the relevant documents and information. If this step is missed or done inadequately the FMEA meetings will be burdened with extra tasks related to missing information, the time of the subject-matter experts will be wasted, and the FMEA results potentially compromised.
“True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.” – Winston Churchill
There are two categories of project risk:
Known risks comprise:
Unknown risks are the uncertainties and variations that surround every project. For example, an unplanned labour strike at one of your major subcontractor’s. [Read more…]
In 2015, Jesus Sifonte invited me to be a speaker at a client and business partner congress that he was holding in San Juan, Puerto Rico. We did not know each other, nor did we even know much about each other. I was recommended to Jesus by a mutual friend, Dr. Andrew Jardine at the University of Toronto. At the San Juan congress we presented our respective topics and in the evenings we shared a few drinks while speaking about maintenance, reliability and asset management. We realized that we both had a shared passion for excellence and we learned about each-others’ experience. [Read more…]
Selecting CMMS software is a significant decision for an organization. Another equally significant milestone is rolling out multi-site CMMS software—scaling your CMMS system from one site to multiple sites. There are two distinct ways in which in this transition may occur.
The first is when a multi-site organization test pilots CMMS software at a single location initially. In this situation, the organization has satisfied all concerns with the initial implementation at the pilot site and is ready to expand the implementation to its other locations. [Read more…]
If we have even a moderately complex product, we often need to break up our design team into smaller groups. Perhaps electronic, mechanical and hydraulic teams. Perhaps teams for specific functional components. And these teams need to work at least partially independently. So what do we do if we have a system reliability goal? What goals do we pass on to our smaller teams? This is where reliability allocation comes into play. Reliability allocation is often portrayed as a very complex, very involved and extremely exhaustive process. It should never be! In fact – the more exhaustive you make, the less likely it is to work.
If you want to learn more about a straightforward approach to reliability allocation – read this!
