Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
Leaders often initiate change. They are expected to develop a vision for their organization (what we want to become) and create a mission (how we are going to get there). This implies that leaders are dissatisfied with the current state and are motivated to work towards a better future.
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How heavy should you be? Perhaps this is a sensitive question. The average weight of a human is about 65.2 kg or 143.7 lbs. So if your weight is above this figure, are you ‘too heavy’? Conversely, if you are below this figure, are you ‘too light’? Being over and underweight can bring a whole raft of health consequences.
Hopefully you would agree with me in saying that the ‘average’ human weight is not a good benchmark to use if you want to get healthier. Or at least it is not the only benchmark you should think about.
But unfortunately … many manufacturers use approaches that are embarrassingly close to this ridiculous approach to continual improvement.
Failure Modes and Effect Analysis (FMEA) is an excellent foundation for Reliability Programs. It is also a stepping stone to build Reliability, Availability, and Maintainability (RAM) models. Here lies the “beauty” of doing Reliability and Maintenance analysis. Whereby information from one analysis can help enhance another analysis.
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The 8D (Eight Disciplines) method is a problem-solving methodology designed to find the root cause of a problem, devise a short-term fix, and implement a long-term solution to prevent recurring problems. It was first introduced in Ford’s 1987 Team-Oriented Problem Solving manual and has since become a widely used problem-solving method, also known as Global 8D. The 8D process consists of eight disciplines, each focusing on specific aspects of problem-solving
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Recently received a request for my opinion concerning the calculation of system availability using the classic formula
$$ \displaystyle \large A=\frac{MTBF}{MTBF+MTTR}$$
The work is to create a set of goals for various suppliers and contractors to achieve. The calculation values derive from vendor data sheets and available information concerning MTBF and MTTR. The project is in the design phase; thus, they do not have working systems available to measure actual availability.
How would you go about improving on this approach? [Read more…]
Plant and equipment failures are business process failures. Plant stoppages and breakdowns result from failure-causing practices built into business processes and from leaving the right reliability practices out of them. Processes may superficially look okay because they have documentation, charts and records, but if you suffer a steady stream of failures, problems, and rework, then your processes contain unforeseen ‘traps’ into which your people and equipment regularly fall. Failure was not intended when your processes were chosen and designed, but failure is what happens when they are used.
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In the previous articles in this series, we discussed the role that agile digital delivery capabilities plays in your company’s competitiveness and why rapid delivery is so important. In this article, we will look at the many reasons that Agile adoptions frequently fail to deliver what companies expect and suggest some things that you should do to address them.
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In this video, Hemant Urdhwareshe explains how to estimate tolerance interval at given confidence level and specified percentage of distribution. The purpose of tolerance intervals is to assure that the tolerance limits specified during design are achievable during production! Often, the designers specify tolerance limits that are not demonstrated and create lot of rework and/or rejection during production phase. This can increase cost of poor quality (COPQ) and result in redesign of the product and/or revising specifications after the product is released for production. Changes made after product launch can be expensive
I am adding a small correction: at 7:01 minute, please read the tolerance interval as 152 to 308, (and not 358 as shown in the footer).
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Air, sea, space, land, or underground? Commercial, government, or military? Reliability Centered Maintenance has something for everyone!
Absolutely. In fact, in Stanley Nowlan and Howard Heap’s book on RCM, they state:
The content of scheduled-maintenance programs developed by experienced practitioners of MSG-2 techniques may be quite similar to the programs resulting from RCM analysis, but the RCM approach is more rigorous, and there should be much more confidence in its outcome. The RCM technique can also be learned more quickly and is more readily applicable to complex equipment other than transport aircraft.
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In most industries we ideally want the lowest-cost maintenance strategy, one that balances risk of unplanned vs planned maintenance costs to a lifetime minimum.
This is what we’ve calculated in a previous article HERE, and this article/exercise is a follow-on from this.
The downside of using this method is that it may select a maintenance interval where the inherent reliability of the component at changeout time is less than is required for operational reasons, or that we’re not getting the best “increase in reliability vs marginal cost” value. [Read more…]
A little bit of nostalgia over a long weekend. Ken Latino reminisces a bit about the start of PROACT software. Learn a little about how it all started and how far reliability software has come over the past 30 years.
[Read more…]I am constantly confronted by students, reliability engineers and other people banging fists on tables and saying …
… 89 percent of failures are random …
Firstly, 100 percent of failures are random. It’s just that there are lots of textbooks and experts telling us that a ‘random’ failure is one that happens irrespective of age. That is, a failure with a constant ‘failure rate’ where the item in question doesn’t appear to age or wear out.
The N in the FINESSE fishbone diagram stands for Noise reduction. Cause-and-effect relationships and systems thinking are essential aspects of any communication system. We normally think of noise in four forms – the way people mentally process information, the types of forums where we present, visual and auditory effects, and communication channels. These three tips and a video clip provide focused examples.
Few technical professionals fully leverage the editing tools or consistently apply the techniques to Google, Adobe, Microsoft, or social media applications. From word count to spoken words to readability, this article touches on key approaches to making your reports and presentations more concise.
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Statistical distribution – it has important role in general life and of course in engineering specifically. So, what is all about?
During morning commute either by bus or vehicle, you take some budget of time. From your daily routine experience, you with very high probability, can predict arrival time. You also know how much time it will take, in less ordinary cases, like slippery roads, or cars accident along you route.
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First master the fundamentals
Basketball Olympic Gold Medallist Larry Bird
The industrial world today is abuzz with a lot of terminologies and jargons mainly stemming from today’s technological advances in the areas of sensors, data, communication and electronics. Each day brings in something new for the Asset Owners from the service providers who claim that their technology, product or service is ‘unique’ and has been ‘never seen before’. While a lot of these offerings are innovative in many aspects, the real question lies in how do they fit within the ‘fundamentals of the Asset Management’? [Read more…]
