Blog - Accendo Reliability

Measure twice, cut once

Measure twice, cut once. This is what the sign read in our Apprentice Training shop at Eastman Kodak. Anyone who has worked for a living in the trades understands the true meaning behind this phrase. The intent is to help your company save time and money by doing things right the first time.

The sign really could be posted on the wall of every shop, every office and every conference room in every manufacturing plant around the world. It applies to more than the skilled trades. The sign in fact applies to every person and every job.

Do it right the first time! [Read more…]

by James Kovacevic Leave a Comment

Getting the Right People on the Bus and In the Right Seats

A guide to ensuring your department will support your reliability culture

People are the heart of any maintenance reliability program and they have the ability to make the program succeed or fail. This is why managing the change to reliability culture is critical. We covered a few of the key pieces to change management in the previous post. But sometimes, not matter what change management technique(s) you use, the change may not be successful. [Read more…]

by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

The Great Wreckoning

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

Time matters most when decisions are irreversible

Transparent vulnerabilities are so obvious that they are easily overlooked; they are the ones we:

see when they are pointed out;
recognize when we are made aware of them;
fail to acknowledge, leading to potentially significant consequences when the vulnerability is realized.

Risk and time are opposite sides of the same coin; for if there were no tomorrow, there would be no risk. Growing government intervention in the private sector therefore becomes a transparent vulnerability that we have not accounted for in our identification of vulnerabilities. Time transforms risk. The nature of risk is shaped by our time horizon. In order to achieve corporate goals and objectives time horizons are established few take into account government actions. [Read more…]

by Mike Sondalini Leave a Comment

Spread Forces Throughout Equipment and Reduce Breakdowns

What you will learn from this article.

How forces are distributed through an object.
Force diagrams are used to represent forces on an object.
Position and direction of a force determines the type of stress.
How to redistribute force in a structure.

Why don’t you fall to the ground when you sit in a chair? Why doesn’t the roof fall in on top of you? We don’t expect these sorts of things to happen. But at times chairs fail and people fall to the ground and at times roofs fall on people. When structures are put under sufficient stress they will fail. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg 1 Comment

Continuous Improvement of the Risk Management Framework

Systems and processes exist in our dynamic world. Each organization and situation is different. Just as there is not one risk management process that works for any organization, there also is the need for continuous improvement of an existing system.

When first designing a risk management process for your organization, you consider your objectives and adjust a framework to fit your needs. Over time your objectives and the surrounding environment changes, thus requiring a critical look at your process. [Read more…]

by Ash Norton Leave a Comment

What does it mean to Engineer with Impact?

If you’ve hung around this site, subscribed to the email list, or followed me on social media, you know that I am obsessed with engineering impact. It is how I close every email and is the focus of nearly every article and post. Heck, my tagline is Engineer with Impact. But what does that really mean? And how do we know if we are doing it?

As engineers, we pride ourselves on the ability to problem-solve. And rightfully so. We are dang good at it! We’ve spent years, if not decades of our lives, honing the craft of working through problem after problem, getting a precise solution. But sometimes we get so focused on solving the problem in front of us that we don’t stop to think if the problem is really…well…the problem. And when we fail to solve the right problems, we fail to Engineer with Impact. [Read more…]

by Adam Bahret Leave a Comment

Pushing Too Hard

It’s early in the boating season. It’s a beautiful Saturday and wee’re wakeboarding, My wife is driving. I am getting ready to line up to jump the wake and all of a sudden she cuts the throttle and then guns it again. I just let go of the rope and wait for her to come around so I can find out if it was the dirty dishes left on the couch or beard shavings carelessly sprinkled on her face soap. She said the boat just stuttered without her touching the throttle. Hmmm really? As we are talking the boat just stalls. Ughh!, and we are not close to the house.

[Read more…]

by Doug Plucknette 1 Comment

Quality, Reliability & Useful Life

The Impact of Precision Installation & Maintenance

Over the last several years I have been working on and off with customers to among other things build a maintenance strategy for their equipment that will insure the designed reliability of their assets.

A while back I was asked by one of these customers to come in perform several RCM (Reliability Centered Maintenance) analyses on some new equipment that was struggling to deliver the expected/promised production rates. As the team worked its way through the process of identifying failure modes I continued to ask the following questions: [Read more…]

by James Kovacevic Leave a Comment

Building a Reliability Culture

Laying The Groundwork for a Successful Change.

It turns out that you have been deploying the right reliability tools and maintenance practices, but the organization’s culture was preventing or hampering the results. This is a common scene played out in many organizations, but there is hope. The culture change will be a long road, as cultures are not changed overnight. [Read more…]

by Mike Sondalini Leave a Comment

Electric Motor Current Protection Saves Your Plant.

What you will learn from this article.

Electric motor power current draw reflects the motor’s working load.
The electric current through a power cable can be measured using the strength of the magnetic field created around the cable.
Under-current detection protects against loss of load situations.
Over-current detection protects against over-load situations.

[Read more…]

by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

Enterprise Risk management is Not a Standalone

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

Enterprise Risk management is Not a Standalone

When Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) is advocated, it often seems like it is the end all and be all. However, this is not true. It is a methodology which assists management in identifying the risk that can prevent an organization from accomplishing it desired goals. As such, it should be viewed as another management tool in a range of tools. Perhaps the best presentation of this idea, for local government, is from the city of Oshawa Canada. This piece discusses how it has integrated ERM into it continuous improvement process. [Read more…]

by Robert Allen Leave a Comment

The Definition of Done

In my previous article, we reviewed the project approval committee, and emphasized approval to start projects and/or approve projects in-process.

With any type of project oversight, presentations or project schedules are often reviewed.

For a more lean project management approach it would help to consider reviewing the actual deliverables, including a mutual understanding of the “definition of done”.

“Definition of done” is the agreed-upon evidence of completion of a process, activity or milestone and usually includes a project deliverable. Some examples of deliverables might include the project plan, project schedule, documents (requirements document, plans, and reports), analysis, and designs (drawings). Other considerations can be built-into “definition of done” including compliance, acceptance/sign-off, exceptions and best practices.

[Read more…]

by Dennis Craggs Leave a Comment

Sample Sizes – Surveys

Introduction

How many responses are needed for a survey? This question requires specifying the desired confidence and the accuracy of the survey results.

The Bernoulli Trial

A Bernoulli trial is an event that has two possible outcomes. Consider the case where the only possible outcomes are success or failure. Let the probability of a success is p and the probability of failure equals q. The probabilities of all possible events must equal 1, so q = 1-p. These relationships are expressed mathematically as

[Read more…]

by Adam Bahret 2 Comments

Strategy

Some leaders mistake “customer focus” to mean they have to serve all of the customers needs or respond to every request from the field. There are multiple needs I have for a vehicle. Because of this I have more than one vehicle. Many manufacturers have tried to make a car or truck that does everything. It often just ends up being a vehicle that is great at nothing. (See Pontiac Aztek)

Know your target. Make goals, make compromises. Don’t commit to high reliability without making sacrifices. Something has to move either it be schedule or new technology development. There are no worse words than a leader saying “…and it must be highly reliable” without discussing the cost of pursuing that reliability goal. Know up front if you are willing to trade reliability for growth of technology or time to market.

[Read more…]

by James Kovacevic Leave a Comment

Red Alert: Your Culture Is Hurting Your Reliability Efforts

The Warning Signs That You Need a Culture Change

Imagine working within (or maybe you don’t need to imagine it) an organization in which everything is completely reactive. You arrive early to try and organize the work for the day, yet only to find out someone else is there doing it. [Read more…]