Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
This true story could have been a lot worse. A NB100 (4”) flanged plug valve was removed from a 98% sulphuric acid tank nozzle and returned to the supplier. When the valve was opened for inspection at the supplier’s workshop acid was sprayed over the repairman’s legs.
If 98% sulphuric acid lands on skin it immediately boils out the moisture in the skin and burns it. A review of the incident was conducted to learn from the accident and to put corrective measures into place. [Read more…]
On occasion, we want to estimate the reliability of an item at a specific time.
Maybe we are considering extending the warranty period, for example, and want to know the probability of no failures over one year instead of over the current 3 months.
Or, let’s say you talked to a bearing vendor and have the Weibull parameters and wish to know the reliability value over 2 years.
Whatever specific situation, you have the life distributions parameters. You just need to calculate reliability at a specific time. We can do that and let’s try it with three distributions using their respective reliability functions: exponential, Weibull, and lognormal. [Read more…]
Telematics data presents the opportunity to characterize the vehicle lifetime usage. This information is used to validate development and testing targets. Because there can be bad or missing data, it needs to be reviewed prior to analysis to have confidence in the analysis. [Read more…]
I’m participating on a conference call with a number of companies who made the commitment to begin a reliability journey. Each have drafted a 3 year vision that includes quarterly goals or milestones they worked to achieve and I’m impressed that the first company to present appears to be on goal or even ahead of their target.
“We had a goal this quarter to certify 60 people across our three sites and in our first month 28 people have taken the exam and if all goes as expected we should have at least 20 of those pass the exam. Next month we have over 30 people signed up so I think we are well on our way.” [Read more…]
I was teaching a class on Reliability 101 a few years ago and it turned out to be one of those great classes where debate and discussion would just pop up all over the place. I frequently start my classes with “If I end up being the only one speaking today I am going to take that as an indication of complete failure in having engaged you in this material.” So I was loving that this group were starting to debate each other on the material we were covering. I wasn’t even in some of the conversations. This rich environment is where I just spurted out one of my more memorable reliability quotes. [Read more…]
The DC-10 case study continues by asking for causes to the door latch-pin failure. The advanced problem poses a realistic and especially challenging circumstance that FMEA teams can experience.
“Judge a man by his questions, not his answers.” Voltaire
A common complaint I hear and experience is as a maintenance professional, our inbox has exploded and grown rapidly with all the daily activities in a plant. All the emails are perceived to be important, but in reality, they are mostly urgent, or not important and not urgent.
Take a moment and think about how much time you spend reviewing and answer emails. Even those emails that do not need a response, need time to review and move or delete. I am guessing you spend at least an hour a day dealing with email. Now think about what you can do with that hour… you could move the department forward and achieve the department and business goals.
Thankfully there are 6 steps you can implement to reduce the number of emails you receive and reduce the amount of time it takes to manage the remaining email. [Read more…]
Identifying risk is an important first step. It is not sufficient though.
Taking steps to deal with risk is an essential step. Knowing about and thinking about risk is not the same as doing something about risk.
Risk will occur. Some good, some bad. Some minor, some catastrophic. Your ability to mitigate risk allows you to proactively acknowledge and accommodate risks. Let’s talk about four different strategies to mitigate risk: avoid, accept, reduce/control, or transfer. [Read more…]
This article explains the operation of peristaltic (hose) pumps and gives twelve points to be aware of when using them. [Read more…]
Guest Post by Geary Sikich (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)
The focus of this article is on the application of guidance (ISO 31000, FFIEC, etc.) often resulting in the appearance of compliance resulting from a checkbox perspective rather than actually and actively identifying and managing risk(s) by organizations.
In Risk Management: History, Definition and Critique, by Georges Dionne (March 2013 – CIRRELT-2013-17); the opening statement from the Abstract is revealing: [Read more…]
Not all of us are fortunate enough to receive great feedback. We all do receive feedback, and some receive very little actionable feedback.
If you offer proposals, give presentations, make requests, or even just ask for a favor, you will receive some form of response. It often is just an answer to the call to action, and nothing more.
At some point, you may be ‘pulled aside’ so someone can provide you feedback on your behavior, your delivery, your ability or skill. It is this type of feedback that is essential to your improvement. [Read more…]
We, as developers, create designs that we call “our own.” Rarely are the materials for our in-house manufacturing process raw steel, rubber, and glass, like Henry Ford had feed into the Ford factory in 1930. Our manufacturing process receives a mix of materials and fully functional sub assemblies from other technology companies. It’s unlikely the PCB electronic components, bearings, motors, gears, drivetrains, sensors, power supplies, harnesses are ours. Why would you design any of these with so many options available made by specialists? This results in us having little input or control in the development and demonstrated reliability of our entire product. [Read more…]
So I got to wondering today, is it just me or are there way too many pets on planes these days?
And, just so I can maybe avoid 1 or 2 hate replies I am a pet owner. I have always loved all of my pets, I have spoiled them on occasion and we treat them like family. I love coming home the unglued excitement of a wagging tail powerful enough to take anything not nailed down off the closest table but I have to wonder how much our pets really enjoy being dragged onto a flying tin can captured in close quarters for hours at a time only to have the doors opened to an environment where their owners speed walk to the nearest rest room but poor Jake still isn’t allowed to relieve himself? [Read more…]
Does a cause description need to be a design or manufacturing deficiency? Why? This is one of the more important questions to consider if you want to achieve quality FMEAs.
“The effort to get at the truth has to precede all other efforts.”
Albert Einstein
You are running from one meeting to another, to a breakdown, to the storeroom and at the end of the day you stop and think. What did I really get done today? The day was busy, but did you accomplish what you wanted to or will make a difference in the long run?
The organization needs to focus on effective maintenance, and as a maintenance professional you need to be effective with your time. Only if you are effective with your time, can you drive the organization and the maintenance program forward. Being a maintenance professional it can be difficult to discern between the urgent and important and it is easy to get caught up in the rat race.
This will be a 4-part series on how a maintenance professional can free up time in their day and be more effective in driving their goals forward. [Read more…]
