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Is This The Same As That?

Is This The Same As That?

A common tool for comparing if two populations are the same is the “student t-test.”  This is often used in reliability, and science, if we want to investigate if a factor has caused a change in a respnse.

A population was assembled in location “A”.  Another population was assembled in location “B”.  Population “A” has an average defect rate of 4%.  Population “B” has an average defect rate of 5.5%. Does the location of assembly affect defect rate?  That’s just a big argument unless we can project the statistical likelihood that what we have measured is not just an overlap of noise. [Read more…]

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Understanding FMEA Controls – Part 1

Understanding FMEA Controls – Part 1

Leveraging the Value of Today

A common error in FMEA procedure is to make entries in the Controls column that the FMEA team believes need to be done, but are not currently planned or in place. Why is this error so prevalent? Maybe the question should be why do we limit entries into the prevention or detection control column to actions or methods that are currently planned or in place?

“Never mind your mistakes. One day they will become your most prized possessions.”
Abhijit Naskar

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Driving Performance Outcomes Through Effective Meetings

Understand How Effective Meetings Can Enable Improved Plant Performance

400StockMarketChartsNothing is worse than being in a meeting that completely wastes your time.  Hopefully those meetings have been eliminated as part of the steps to making you, the maintenance professional, more effective.  For the meetings that you could not eliminate, the meetings need to be effective, reducing wasted time and delivering benefits to the business.

To make meetings effective, the meetings should follow the 3 phases of effective meetings.  The 3 phases ensure that meetings are effective, efficient and everyone knows what they are there to do.  Lastly, it ensures that the any actions coming out of the meeting are addressed. [Read more…]

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Baldrige Adds Enterprise Risk Management

Baldrige Adds Enterprise Risk Management

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

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) just issued the 2017-2018 Baldrige Excellence Frame Work.  There were modifications to a number of categories such as Category 1 Leadership, Category 2, Strategy and Category 6 Operations.  Included in the modifications were substantive additions for Cyber Attacks and Enterprise Risk Management (ERM).

In the discussion of the changes from the 2015- 2016 framework it is noted: “The future competitive advantage that will flow from good ERM is based on the holistic addressing of risk and the actions taken – including the pursuit of intelligent risks – as part of an overall strategic approach to managing organization performance.” (Baldrige.2017.45)

This statement makes two things clear.  First, ERM is seen as contributing to the competitive advantage for any organization.  Second, ERM is a holistic approach.  The inclusion of ERM in the Baldrige Excellence Frame Work does two other things.  It reinforces the momentum created by the inclusion of Risk Based Thinking in ISO 9001:2015 and the issuance by OMB of Circular A-123.   Both actions expanded the reach and ultimately the interest in ERM.  In addition, it signals that ERM is considered part of best practice. This means its use increasingly will become a standard by which all organizations can be evaluated by regulators and stakeholders. [Read more…]

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Reliability Engineering and Leadership

Reliability Engineering and Leadership

Leadership is a difficult term to clearly define. A team leader may have poor or wonderful leadership skills. A product may lead in a market with a broad feature offering, yet not hold a recognized leadership position.

As a reliability engineer, you will find many opportunities to lead. Your ability to provide vision, direction, guidance, and support for a team enables you to affect change and accomplish goals. [Read more…]

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The Top 5 Things I Hate About Social Media

The Top 5 Things I Hate About Social Media

First things first, let’s get something straight, I am not an internet marketing genius.  I do however talk with dozens of folks like myself who have active websites, write regular blog posts and enjoy interacting with family, friends and even customers via social media.

As a result like everyone else I have my list of pet peeves, the things that on their own may not send me over the top but put a few of them together and you will find me talking to the computer screen or my cell phone in a language not intended for young audiences. [Read more…]

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The Bane Of Our Existence

The Bane Of Our Existence

The bane of our existence is one thing, generating enough data to demonstrate statistical confidence.  Every reliability engineer, every project manager, every Director and VP all have the same moment of panic in a new product development program.  In synchronicity they put their head in their hand.  It’s when the required number of test units and calendar time to demonstrate a required confidence in the reliability goal is calculated.  It’s usually about ten times more units than can be acquired and about two times longer than the entire product development program timeline.

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Making the most of FMEA

Making the most of FMEA

I have been working with clients recently who are keen users of FMEA. Getting engineers to contribute potential failures and their causes is not a problem with these clients, but ensuring that actions are correctly identified and followed up is not so easy. So, what goes wrong?  What differentiates a good FMEA from a great FMEA? [Read more…]

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3 Steps to Reduce the Meetings of a Maintenance Professional

How to Reduce Meeting and Spend More Time on Driving Plant Performance

MeetingAnother great method of becoming overwhelmed with work as a Maintenance Professional is to fill our day full of meetings.  Worse, those meetings usually do not provide any value to you, nor do you have any inputs into the meeting.

We all know the meetings we dread going to, not because they are long, or the people in them, but because we know that it is a complete waste of time and is preventing you from accomplishing important maintenance & reliability tasks.

Next to emails, meetings are one of the most common complaints as a time waster that prevents the department and business from moving forward.   Some meetings are required, and some need you the Maintenance Professional, but not all.

Throughout the rest of the article, we will cover how the Maintenance Professional can identify, evaluate and end those ineffective meetings. [Read more…]

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Cascading Effects Ripple Through Organizations Ill Prepared to Deal with Them

Cascading Effects Ripple Through Organizations Ill Prepared to Deal with Them

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

We live in a world of consequences.  Everything that we experience is a consequence of some action, decision, reaction and/or choice.  For organizations, the consequences of a choice, action, decision and/or reaction can cascade throughout the organization and extend to its “Value Chain” rippling through all the known touchpoints and the as yet, unidentified touchpoints.

Organizations need to understand their strategic, operational and tactical capabilities and capacity to recognize, mitigate and/or capitalize on cascade effects.  As a result of the diverse nature of global business operations, geopolitical circumstances, culture, etc., there currently is a standardization gap with regard to how organizations should react to cascade effects.  This is partly due to opacity, nonlinearity and insufficient competitive/business intelligence that organizations can draw from.  This is not to say that the information does not exist.  Rather that it does not exist in a form that is readily recognizable to organizations in most cases. [Read more…]

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Have good valve decontamination practices

Have good valve decontamination practices

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…]

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How to Calculate Reliability Given 3 Different Distributions

How to Calculate Reliability Given 3 Different Distributions

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…]