Maybe. Great care must be taken if any kind of template of failure mode library is used to complete an RCM analysis.
[Read more…]Should RCM Templates be used
Pipeline Incident Data
Below is summary (annualized average) of 20-year pipeline incident data from 1990-2009. [Source: Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration,PHMSA]
[Read more…]How Does a Readability Formula Help My Business Writing?
How much should you pay attention to readability scores generated from tools like the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Formula? As a technical professional, you probably should pay careful attention. But remember, while improving the Flesch-Kincaid score is important for accessibility and readability, balancing this with accurately conveying the technical information is essential.
What’s readability?
Readability is a quality of your business writing. People will be able to understand your sentences easily if your text’s readability is high. If the readability is low, people still might understand what you’re saying, but reading your text is likely a draining experience, but people may still understand it.
Big words and complex sentences aren’t bad. Using too many of them demands much more concentration from your reader. Big words and complex sentences are also harder if someone’s first language is not yours or the reader has some form of visual or hearing impairment.
[Read more…]Introduction to Barringer Process Reliability
Barringer Process Reliability – Your factory performance on a single page!
Barringer Process Reliability (BPR) was developed by Paul H. Barringer, a fellow reliability engineer “extraordinaire” and an outstanding mentor for myself and countless others in this field of practice. BPR highlights operational issues. Not addressed and mitigated, those could have significant revenue impacts. A BPR analysis uses the Weibull probability plot which happens to be a very well-known tool in the field of Reliability Engineering. On one side of a sheet of paper only, the BPR plot can tell the true “story” on the operation.
[Read more…]Failing Project: Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen
Guest Post by Malcolm Peart (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)
“Too many cooks spoil the broth” goes the Elizabethan poet George Gascoigne’s proverb. Although only written down in circa 1575 it had probably been around for many years beforehand. It is still used today and, far from being archaic, it’s become more and more relevant despite mankind’s predilection towards efficiency and effectiveness. But why?
[Read more…]RCM – 10 Myths Debunked
Article first posted at Conscious Reliability by James Reyes-Picknell, Jesus Sifonte, and team.
What do you know about Reliability Centered Maintenance?
James Reyes-Picknell
Despite its well-documented successes, Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) has always drawn a lot of discussion and controversy. Much of it is because of a lack of understanding and “myths” generated to discredit RCM as a viable business solution. Here we attempt to fill in some of those gaps in understanding and debunk some of the myths.
[Read more…]Tips on Maintenance Job Priority Rating
To help select which work orders to do first in situations of resource shortage many CMMS provide calculations for maintenance work order priority. Deciding maintenance work priority is a risk decision. The presence of risk totally changes the way to allocate maintenance job priority if you want to compare situations equally1. When you work with risk you cannot use a linear priority scale. Using linear priority ranking gives the wrong order of importance for doing maintenance work.
[Read more…]Boiler NESHAP Rules Postponed Until January 2011
EPA announced that the promulgation of National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) for industrial, commercial, and institutional boilers and process heaters is postponed to January 16, 2011. The regulation, commonly referred to as Boiler MACT, will affect approx. 13,500 boilers at various facilities deemed to be major sources of hazardous air pollutants (HAPs).
[Read more…]How to calculate optimal maintenance intervals
In a previous article we covered how to perform a detailed Weibull Analysis in Excel. The outputs from a Weibull analysis are important because we can use them for a variety of Reliability calculations such as when to most economically maintain assets.
A common mistake we see made is Reliability Engineers determining the optimal maintenance interval as the MTBF. This is incorrect as it assumes that you will have failed approximately 50-60% of the components before you have maintenance performed on them. (Sounds ridiculous when you say it that way right!?)
[Read more…]Future of Quality
Guest Post by Dianna Deeney (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)
The current state of the quality profession is affected by shifting business infrastructures and changing definitions of brand quality.
Businesses need to react and change against external pressures like increased frequency of consumer communications, the availability of big data, expanding regulations and standards, and the expectations to innovate quickly. The quality profession is at risk of losing its effectiveness in the overall business operations if it does not proactively change with the business.
[Read more…]Physics of Failure Analysis for Roller Bearing Failures
A tutorial explaining the Physics of Failure method applied to regularly failing roller bearings in a dewatering press. After three years of exhaustive efforts to solve the cause of the bearing failures it was decided to test Physics of Failure Analysis with the aim of finding a lasting answer.
Exemplary Maintenance Leadership
The Backbone of High-Quality Operations
In the world of industrial and manufacturing enterprises, where precision and reliability are paramount, maintenance leadership stands as the unsung hero. Behind the scenes, these individuals and teams are the custodians of high-quality operations, ensuring that machinery hums with efficiency, downtime is minimized, and standards are not just met but exceeded. Let’s take a closer look at the essence of exemplary maintenance leadership and why it’s the cornerstone of a well-oiled operation.
[Read more…]Should RCM be Applied to all Assets?
Really? I don’t know any organization that has the time, money, and other resources to do so.
[Read more…]Kaplan-Meier Estimator for Renewal Processes?
The New-Products manager asked me, “Your actuarial failure rate estimates (from vehicle registrations, bills-of-materials, and automotive aftermarket store sales) are for dead-forever parts with at most one failure. What if auto parts could be renewed or replaced more than once?” Chagrined, I wrote a spreadsheet program to estimate actuarial rates for renewal processes, without life data. But what is the corresponding estimator from grouped, cohort renewal counts like the Kaplan-Meier estimator for grouped, cohort failure counts?
[Read more…]API 752, 3rd Edition: Changes In Facility Siting Standard
The third edition of API 752, “Management of Hazards Associated with Permanent Buidlings” came out in late 2009 and there are a few major revisions to consider.
[Read more…]