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Business Ethics in the Workplace

Business Ethics in the Workplace

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

Ethics is about making choices that may not always feel good or seem like they benefit you but are the right choices to make. They are the choices that are examples of model citizens and examples of the golden rules. We’ve all heard the golden rules: Don’t hurt, don’t steal, don’t lie, or one of the most famous: Do unto others as you would have done to you. These are not just catchy phrases; these are words of wisdom that any productive member of society should strive to live by.

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Reliability Prediction using Monte Carlo Simulation

Reliability Prediction using Monte Carlo Simulation

In the last video on stress-strength interference, we have seen the analytical method. This has limitations and often cannot be used in real life problems in reliability prediction. For example, velocity of windmill may have Weibull or lognormal distribution, elevators may have particular application load cycles which can only be modelled using empirical distributions. In such situations, we need to use Monte Carlo Simulation using various other distributions. I will discuss and explain this technique in this video.

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Introduction of Machinery and its Management: 1861 Regulations 1822-1910

Introduction of Machinery and its Management: 1861 Regulations 1822-1910

1861 Queen’s Regulations

In 1861, Royal Navy regulations updated the Captain’s responsibilities. Centralized management control of the technical system continued to grow. Regulations now prevented Captains from modifying the ship. Many new standard report forms were required to be routed to superior offices in the bureaucracy.

Many rules from the 1717 and 1731 regulations were kept, for example: managing ship surveys, tracking repair costs, written communications with the dockyard about defects and their status, and periodic caulking. 

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Key Teaching Principle #3: Managing Attention

As covered in the first article in this series, Principles of Effective Teaching, reliability engineers, FMEA team leaders, and other quality and reliability professionals are often called upon to teach the principles of reliability or FMEA. Whether you are a student who wants to enhance your learning experience, an instructor who wants to improve teaching results, or an engineer who wishes to convey knowledge to another person, this series will offer practical knowledge and advice.

The Importance of Managing Attention

“Attention is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought.”  William James

Whether you are conveying knowledge to one person or teaching a class, there is no more important factor than getting and maintaining the attention of the other person. Managing attention is a skill that can be learned.

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Communicating Asset Management: Four Powerful Articles Improve Success

Communicating with FINESSE and JD Solomon Inc. are jointly focusing on asset management in early 2024. The articles include how to facilitate asset management plans, ways that asset management plans fail, how organizational context impacts implementation, and how to communicate asset management to senior management. These powerful articles will improve your asset management success!

5 Tips to Improve Facilitation of Asset Management Plans

Facilitation is a structured session(s) in which the meeting leader (the facilitator) guides the participants through a series of predefined steps to arrive at a result that is created, understood, and accepted by all participants. Not all asset managers are great facilitators.

These are my Top 5 tips for facilitating asset management plans:

5. Get the Right People Involved

4. Don’t Overthink the Gap Analysis Tool

3. Create a Charter

2. Establish Organizational Context

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MTBF free Availability

MTBF free Availability

The classic formula for availability is MTBF divided by MTBF plus MTTF. Standard. And pretty much wrong most of the time.

Recently, working for a bottling plant design team, we pursued design options to improve the availability and throughput of the new line. The equipment would remain the same: filler, capper, labeler, etc. So we decided to gather the last six months or so of operating data, which included up and down time. Furthermore, the data included time to failure and time to repair information.

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Module Level Weibulls

Module Level Weibulls

We can learn more from our failures than we can from our successes.  This isn’t just a good rule for us to live by personally but is applicable to the products that we design and manufacture.  In my experience, the all-important step that is short-changed in “learning from our failures” is “learning”—not just getting to the root cause in order to solve the problem but to understanding the gaps that exist in our current design and manufacturing requirements and practices that allowed the failure to spill into the field.   Identifying these gaps is the key to future failure prevention.  In this installment, I’m going to highlight how Weibull Analysis (a reliability tool when used in the time domain) of module field failures can be used to identify the holes in our design or manufacturing requirements or processes.

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Fooled or Just Foolish

Fooled or Just Foolish

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

Abraham Lincoln is attributed to have famously said “You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”  A more recent US President coined a more manipulative spin on Lincoln’s erudite words… “You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on.”  Preying on ignorance is a human trait which, although frowned upon, certainly thrived in history, and definitely thrives today.

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Strategic Maintenance Planning and Comprehensive Risk Abatement 

Strategic Maintenance Planning and Comprehensive Risk Abatement 

Guest post by B.D. McLaughlin, ScD, MInstrP

 Using a comprehensive and inclusive definition, risk may be defined as the cost of “failure to add value” per unit time. Such failure includes performance deficiencies for employees, equipment, material and method. It includes the types of “failure to add value” comprising traditional waste such as overproduction, wait time, transportation, processing, inventory, motion and defects. It includes the cost of injury, litigation and damage to company reputation. It encompasses the total cost of failure and not just the cost of remediation. You must minimize risk to stay competitive. Risk is consuming the hidden wealth of your enterprise. It is disguised and concealed as the “cost of doing business.”

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Reliability Prediction using Stress Strength Interference (Analytical Method)

Reliability Prediction using Stress Strength Interference (Analytical Method)

Often, products fail, and we don’t understand why! One of the reasons why such failures occur is not giving consideration for variation in load or stress levels. For example, potholes and speed breakers can create excessive stress on automobile suspensions; or larger number of clothes washed in a machine more often than the designer has considered; or a bus used in public transport would carry varying number of passengers! Designers often do not realize that the materials used in the product will also have variations! For example, wall thicknesses of castings will vary; or chemical composition of steel will vary from lot to lot! Thus, designers need to address the variations in usage patterns and variations in the materials used in the product as these can seriously affect reliability of systems! In my recently uploaded video, I have discussed how to predict reliability when load (stress) and strength of the part both vary and can be modelled using normal distribution. The video will also be very useful to those who wish to take ASQ Certified Reliability Engineer exam and all those who wish to learn the basics of reliability in design. This is the first video where the stress and strength can be modelled using normal distribution. In the next video related to this topic, I will explain reliability prediction using Monte Carlo Simulation.

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The Seven Basic Quality Tools: Getting Started with Data Visualizations

The Seven Basic Quality Tools: Getting Started with Data Visualizations

A common first step in the learning journey of a quality engineer is mastering a set of data visualization tools called the “Seven Basic Quality Tools.” Popularized by an architect of the modern quality movement, Karou Ishikawa, the seven basic quality tools allow practitioners to readily extract useful insights from raw data and build a foundation for further statistical analysis. These tools stand as pillars of systematic problem-solving, aiding in the identification, analysis, and improvement of processes.

These seven tools, in order of complexity, are: Check Sheets, Flowcharts, Cause and Effect Diagrams, Histograms, Pareto Diagrams, Scatter Plots, and Control Charts.

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10 Crucial Attributes to Optimize your CMMS set-up for Reliability Analysis

10 Crucial Attributes to Optimize your CMMS set-up for Reliability Analysis

CMMS overview

A proper CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management System) setup can make a world of difference in an organization’s asset management journey. Conversely, a substandard setup can be a living hell for Reliability Engineers like myself and other analysts. I have personally wasted hundreds of hours of my work life sifting through a poor CMMS structure trying to find records. Ever wanted to make your Reliability Analysts more productive and engaged? If yes, then this article highlights 10 highly recommended set-up requirements.

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