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Focus on the Important Issues, Not the Many Issues

Focus on the Important Issues, Not the Many Issues

Utilizing the Pareto Method to Prioritize Improvement Activities

There is limited time, money or resources in every maintenance department.  Sometimes you have 2 of the 3, sometimes just 1.  So how do you prioritize the items or issues that will have the biggest impact on your facility?  There is a simple, yet vital principle that can be used in your facility to determine which issues to focus on.  This principle started in a garden in Italy while studying peas…  This principle which started with an observation of peas can have an important impact on your operation.

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Enterprise Risk Management, Millennials, and Cyber

Enterprise Risk Management, Millennials, and Cyber

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

Kevin Curry in an opinion piece for The Hill raised several issues which will ultimately impact the adoption of Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) in government. The article entitled “America’s public sector has a problem –

It’s not getting any Millennials”, makes four points.  These are; 1. the federal government is having trouble hiring Millennials, 2. the federal government has old legacy cyber systems, 3. millennials expect up to date cyber systems and 4. the lack of up to date cyber systems is one of the problems keeping Millennials away.

Since the article does not specifically deal with ERM, one might ask: What is the intersection between the four issues and the adoption of ERM in government?  This article looks at the relationship of this problem with ERM in government. [Read more…]

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RCM Training

RCM Training

RCM Training should always reinforce the importance of ensuring the inherent designed reliability of the asset or system that is being analyzed. It is primarily this function of the RCM process that people fail to fully understand. The importance of properly conveying this message is what most often differentiates successful Reliability Centered Maintenance efforts from those who dabble and fail.

Reliability Centered Maintenance Training should always include a case study that allows the participants to identify failure modes that result in the team making task decisions in each of the following Consequence Categories: Hidden Failure Consequences, Health Safety and Environmental Consequences, Operational Consequences and Non-Operational Consequences.

RCM Training should always include real-life facilitation in a team format. It’s extremely important for those learning the process to understand the detail required to properly assess failure modes, failure effects and tasks.

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How to Deliver Sustainable Gains in Maintenance Planning

How to Deliver Sustainable Gains in Maintenance Planning

Utilizing the PDCA Methodology in Work Planning

It is well known that maintenance planning & scheduling can deliver significant improvements in the efficiency and effectiveness of the maintenance department.  Maintenance planning & scheduling seems simple enough, plan the work and schedule it to be done at the most opportune time.   However, why is it that the organization seem to struggle with realizing the benefits of maintenance planning & scheduling?  In my experience, I have seen organizations that focus on the scheduling portion of work management, while not fully planning the work.   Doc Palmer (an authority on Maintenance Planning & Scheduling) has said that you cannot schedule without proper planning.  So how is it that they are scheduling work without knowing what needs to be done and what materials are required?

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Truth, Lies, and Paltering Leaders

Truth, Lies, and Paltering Leaders

Truth, Lies, and Paltering Leaders – What and Who Can Be Believed?

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

“Lies, damn lies and statistics” is an often-used phrase attributed to the 18th Century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli.  He acknowledged the persuasive power of numbers to bolster weak arguments.

In a statistical moment his contemporary, Abraham Lincoln, said; “You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time“.  Politics, persuasion and manipulation (deception) have gone hand in hand for centuries.

Many people have monopolized in the area of Churchill’s “terminological inexactitudes’ or, as it’s now being referred to Stateside of the Pond “False News“.  The term”lie” is an accusatory word and maybe impolite and vulgar and’ politically incorrect’ but do ‘lies’ really help us and why can’t we know the truth? [Read more…]

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Death of a Reliability Engineer

Death of a Reliability Engineer

(Reproduced from the article “Death of a Reliability Engineer” by Dev Raheja, Reliability Review, Vol. 30, March 2010 with permission)

When I first wrote the article in March 1990, I implied an ‘F’ grade to reliability engineers. Now almost 20 years later, I would give them a “E’. Yes, there is a little improvement but nothing you can write to your mother about.

The MTBF cancer was wide spread and is still wide spread in the DoD. The only reason I upgraded the reliability engineer from F to E is because the MTBF in some industries is no longer used such as in the automotive industry. They use the failure rates instead to hide their shame.

Failure rate is just the reciprocal of MTBF. Good job! Same old corn flakes with a new product name! [Read more…]

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Stepping Stones in the Lean Journey

Stepping Stones in the Lean Journey

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

As very young children, we had an instinctive need to be very close to our parents – feeling a great deal of anxiety, even a sense of abandonment, if they were not within our sight.  As we grew older – and whether it was geographically, intellectually, or psychologically – we would become more comfortable with greater distances from what we felt were our basic truths, but almost always as stepping stones and rarely great leaps. 

Think of early commanders of sailing ships always keeping sight of land until traveling ever greater distances was more predictable because of maps and navigation techniques and tools. [Read more…]

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Discussing the Controversial Subject of FMEA Prepopulation

Discussing the Controversial Subject of FMEA Prepopulation

To Prepopulate or not to prepopulate, that is the question

By prepopulating the highest priority functions, along with other selected information, the FMEA team can focus their efforts on the most important functions, and minimize in-meeting time. This is the last step in FMEA preparation. However, there are specific limitations to FMEA prepopulation that must be understood and adhered to.

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
Abraham Lincoln

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MSA 3 – Gage Bias

MSA 3 – Gage Bias

Introduction

In my prior article, Measurement Systems, the total variation in the measurement data was partitioned into part variation (PV), assessor variation (AV), and equipment variation (EV). GR&R is the square root of the sum of the squares of AV and EV. If the ratio of GRR/TV is less than 10%, then the measurement system variation was acceptable.

In addition to variation, data bias needs to be considered. This bias is created by systematic measurement errors.
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