Blog - Accendo Reliability

Quantify Your Improvements with Maintenance Planning & Scheduling

Being able to communicate the improvements with Maintenance Planning & Scheduling with finance and senior leaders can be difficult. The maintenance team sees a high PM Compliance, or more work being complete, but what does that mean for the business in tangible benefits? This is where the communication between maintenance and finance breakdown. By being able to identify and link the maintenance improvements to financial returns, maintenance will be able to generate support for current and future projects. [Read more…]

by Mike Sondalini 3 Comments

Experiences with Magnetic Drive Pumps

Experiences with magnetic (magdrive) pumps. Magnetic drive pumps come in three varieties – canned motor pumps, all metal pumps and plastic lined metal pumps. They are sealless and cannot leak into the environment. Long, repair- free service life depends on recognising the limitations of these pumps. This article covers issues with using direct mounted, lined magdrive pumps experienced ‘in the field’.

Keyword: separation liners, chemical compatibility, sediment, particulate. [Read more…]

by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

Risk Decisions and Human Nature

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

One area that does not receive much emphasis in risk management is the human factor. In risk assessments, risk events, likelihoods and consequences, vulnerabilities are the usual focus. People are viewed as ‘weak links’ in risk prevention, but what about risk mitigation? Your risk planning depends on people to respond when an event occurs. How good is their risk decision-making under stress? There is the weak link.

In 1996, IEEE published a book on “Probabilistic Risk Assessment and Management for Engineers and Scientists” by Kumamoto and Henley[1]. This book is about using probability to assess reliability and safety risks in an industrial environment. The book introduces some interesting concepts, such as risk perception and ‘Human Reliability’. [Read more…]

by Adam Bahret 7 Comments

Weibull explained (a bit)

Many of our customers (internal/external) trust us when we say that a Weibull analysis is the best approach to understanding what the data set is telling us. We then take their data set, do something mysterious where no one can see us, and then present these accurate predictions as to what is going to happen with a given population of the product at some future date. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

You Are a Reliability Leader, Now Make a Difference

Your Reliability Engineering Leadership Role

Leadership is not a position or title within an organization. It is an attitude.

You’ve seen the internet meme’s about the difference between leadership and management. There is a difference and while not everyone is going to be in top management, everyone can (and should) be a leader.

As a reliability professional, you are conveniently looked to for leadership. You are expected to use your knowledge and skill to solve problems. To help teams solve problems. To improve the reliability performance of your system and across your industry. [Read more…]

by Kevin Stewart 1 Comment

The Bridge to Self Improvement

Have you ever felt overwhelmed with too much to do? I imagine most of us have struggled with time management at one time or another. There are just too many things on our plate, and they never go away.

Some may attribute this burden to their life, or perhaps they are inefficient time managers, or something else. Regardless, I doubt many enjoy the feeling or the situation.

If only we could walk across the bridge to self improvement and be enlightened.

[Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg Leave a Comment

The Perfect Strength and Stress Concepts

Recently Peter Stuttard asked if I knew of a reference for the perfect strength and perfect stress concepts. I didn’t and asked for a bit of explanation of the phrases.

Here is his reply (via Linkedin, btw a great tool to get and stay in touch) posted with permission with minor formatting edits.

To learn more about Peter check out his Linkedin profile.

Fred

Thanks for responding so quickly, the concepts of Perfect Strength and Perfect Stress are related to your discussion re Parts Count and Parts Stress predictions and reading this on your web site prompted me to ask you about them. [Read more…]

by James Kovacevic Leave a Comment

The Top 5 Tips to Implementing a Successful Maintenance Planning & Scheduling Process

Implementing a Maintenance Planning & Scheduling process can be trying, difficult and downright frustrating. How would you like to dramatically reduce the stress involved and see results quicker? By utilizing these 5 tips, you will be able to build a robust, highly efficient and effective process with reduced effort. [Read more…]

by Mike Sondalini Leave a Comment

Shaft Coupling Selection Issues

What readers will learn in this article.

The purpose of shaft couplings and how they work.
What to consider when selecting shaft couplings.
Maintenance issues with using couplings.

[Read more…]

by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

How Not to Make Bad Risk Decisions

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

Why are there “bad” decisions? No one starts out to deliberately make a bad decision. If you look into available thought papers and reports, you can find some evidence that can provide some understanding of how bad decisions are made.

COSO in 2012, commissioned a report on “Enhancing Board Oversight”[1] focusing on challenges and biases in making professional judgments.

More recently, several HBS faculty authored a study an “attribution error”[2], where decisions are biased by unjustified attributions of goodness to applicants based on “luck” rather than ability. [Read more…]

by Adam Bahret Leave a Comment

Managing Up – Beyond the Analysis Numbers

Often when we request an analysis from an engineer we run with the results and don’t ask a lot of questions about the analysis itself. Having done a lot of analysis I am familiar with all the assumptions and estimations that go into making a calculation work. But that means that the results of the analysis are only relevant to those assumptions and estimations. The analyst may have to make the following “calls” without additional input or only a small fact-finding mission. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg 3 Comments

Introduction to the Quality Triangle

Priorities and Balance

Have you ever worked on a project with no deadlines, unlimited resources, and boundless scope? Probably not.

Quality Triangle-1 — The Quality Triangle

You may have worked under the guidelines of a quality triangle, also known as a project management triangle, iron triangle, or project triangle.

Why is that? Why the limits to our ability to create a product or improve a system?

First, the world we work and live within has limits. We have only so much time for work, only the available resources, and limited knowledge. We do our best with what we have to work with at the time.

Second, as I once was told while working on an accelerated test design, ‘if there isn’t a deadline, you’ll happily tinker with the plan and get the testing done.’ My boss was right of course.

The set of constraints shape our projects and products. By understanding the set of constraints, specifically how they frame decisions, then we can complete complex projects. [Read more…]

by Les Warrington 2 Comments

Making Your Reliability Data Analysis Count

Ensuring Reliability Data Analysis Leads to Positive Action

Convince, don’t confuse! Justify, don’t exaggerate!

Project managers want to deliver their product on time and on schedule. Design engineers want to believe that they have got it right. But your analysis, test results and field data suggest that there might be a problem. What do you do?

The key words here are “suggest” and “might be”. How should you present your evidence and analysis such that it doesn’t exaggerate with certainty, or confuse with statistics? How should you ensure that your conclusions lead to positive action? [Read more…]

by Dennis Craggs 5 Comments

Telematics Data Analytics Overview

Product design, development, and reliability engineers need to verify that their product meets specifications, which include dimensional requirements, functional definitions, and life testing. How are the requirements validated?

Telematics data is collected to show how a vehicle has been operated. Fleets and retail data are stored on servers for engineering analysis. This data can be used to set new requirements or validate older requirements.

[Read more…]

by Kevin Stewart Leave a Comment

RCA Templates Again

RCA Templates Can Be Used

In my last article, RCA Templates Use or not?, I discussed templates and suggested that while beneficial for many things, they may not provide as much value for those doing RCA’s. This is because for any specific effect, the variability in the cause tree is significant and difficult to predict. This doesn’t mean that there are no options to utilize templates to help speed up the process, but perhaps not in the way that people might be used to. [Read more…]