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The Royal Navy Develops a Maintenance Management System, 1624-1670

The Royal Navy Develops a Maintenance Management System, 1624-1670

1624 – Monson’s Tracts Describe Basic Asset Management 

In 1585 at the age of 16, William Monson ran away to sea as a privateer. Later, in the English Navy, he served during the defeat of the Spanish Armada. He was a ship captain, squadron commander, admiral, and eventually a member of parliament. Wikipedia quotes the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica in calling him the “first naval officer in the modern sense of the word.” Monson is most famous as an early historian of the Royal Navy. 

Monson’s Tracts are a collection of essays written between 1624 and his death in 1643. The essays were not printed until 1682 and were finally published in 1704. The Tracts contain detailed accounts of the Royal Navy’s battles, tactics, voyages, and expeditions.

Monson’s Tracts also recorded the management structure of the dockyards, duties of specific positions, and some repair management practices of the late 1620s to 1630s. Monson criticized graft, waste, and bad management that reduced the navy’s capabilities. 

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Fatigue

Fatigue

Fatigue is a common degradation and failure mechanism. It involves localized, permanent damage to metals exposed to cyclic stress. The stress can be uniaxial, bending, or torsional resulting from a variety of sources including an applied force, vibration, acceleration and deceleration, and differences in thermal expansion between mating components exposed to heating and cooling cycles. Localized means the damage is confined to a small portion of a component or joint.

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Importance of Cultural Change in Transformations

Importance of Cultural Change in Transformations

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

I am a curious about some of the new project team theories or methodologies that have arisen in the past 20-30 years that are undergoing a resurgent today primarily due to COVID -19 effect on the workforce. These theories are designed to improve performance and functioning of a project team by making people feel comfortable about speaking up and being creative without the fear of repercussion. Google and other Agile companies are in the process of implementing these methods.

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Doing Equipment Criticality is as Simple as ABC

Doing Equipment Criticality is as Simple as ABC

This activity-based costing (ABC) method calculates the actual cost of a failure incident and uses the total dollar value to the business as the means to rate equipment criticality. The criticality of an item of plant is determined by the cost consequences and losses of equipment failure across the whole company. Using this method puts a real dollar value on a production equipment loss incident. This financially robust and reliable method provides an accurate way to prioritise production equipment and to justify the necessary risk management and maintenance measures to protect against failure. It recognises that a production failure event has cost repercussions throughout an organisation affecting many people and departments, with all of them incurring costs. These costs are lost business profit that could have been earned and banked, but for the incident. The financial model reflects the actual production and maintenance practices in the operation and their cost implications to the whole organisation if they are inadequate. It delivers clear indication of the responsibility’s managers, supervisors, operators, and maintainers have of properly running, maintaining, and caring for plant and equipment to prevent production-losses to the business.

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The Window and the Mirror; A Framework for Building Credibility

The vast majority of professionals will never rise to the heights of leading a major corporation. But because of the public nature of executives and the companies they oversee, business leaders and their management methods often form effective case studies for those who manage smaller projects and organizations.

Over time, professionals who make a habit of reading trade journals and analyzing business reports can begin spotting both the useful and the futile patterns among these executives’ leadership styles. One such pattern, coined by the bestselling author of “Good to Great” Jim Collins, is called “The Window and the Mirror”.1

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Regulating Reactive Chemicals

Regulating Reactive Chemicals

Recently, members of  Congress sent a letter to OSHA chief, Jordan Barab, to expand PSM standard to address reactive chemicals.

Reactive chemicals have gained increasing attention since the Chemical Safety Board (CSB) released its report on reactive chemicals in 2002. Now I have been working in the area of reactive chemicals since 1999 and let me assure you that one cannot say let us regulate chemical A because it is a reactive chemical.

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Being Setup for Failure

Being Setup for Failure

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

Employers don’t hire people – or assign them a project or task – in the hopes they will fail.  And employees don’t take on a job, project, or task in the hopes they will fail.  On the contraire, the expectations all around are that the outcome will be successful.

Certainly, sometimes the outcomes are not successful.  But these unsuccessful outcomes are generally more tolerated – even expected – in companies that are in their early stages or have a company culture that is more entrepreneurial and not so risk adverse.  And when an unsuccessful outcome in such companies occurs, it’s usually a disappointment (and you certainly don’t want to make being unsuccessful a habit), but it’s not usually a negative mark on the employee.

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Lean Improvement Success at a Concrete Reinforcing Bar Manufacturer

Lean Improvement Success at a Concrete Reinforcing Bar Manufacturer

Reinforcing bar is forged steel used in concrete to give the otherwise weak concrete structural tension strength. Reinforcing bar manufacturing is done in a factory using computerised machines to straighten, cut and bend the steel. It is a highly automated process once the bar is loaded onto the manufacturing machinery. These machines are computer controlled and form the bar to the shape and dimensions instructed. The bar specification and dimensions are identified from the engineering drawings by the Scheduler who enters the details into a scheduling software program. The program converts the reo-bar size requirements into computer controlled manufacturing instructions for the machines and a delivery schedule for the production shop.

Our assignment was to identify opportunities to improve the business and streamline the operation from production through to delivery.

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Progress in LED Reliability Analysis?

Progress in LED Reliability Analysis?

ANSI-IES TM-21 standard method may predict negative L70 LED lives. (L70 is the age at which LED lumens output has deteriorated to less than 70% of initial lumens.) Philips-Lumileds deserves credit for publishing the data that inspired an alternative L70 reliability estimation method based on geometric Brownian motion of stock prices in the Black-Scholes-Merton options price model. This gives the inverse Gauss distribution of L70 for LEDs. 

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Introducing Industrial and Manufacturing Wellness

Introducing Industrial and Manufacturing Wellness

Plant Wellness Way EAM methodology uses systems engineering and life-cycle risk elimination to re-engineer your company and operational processes to get utmost asset reliability and maximum success and profits from your operating plant and equipment

You get optimal life-cycle asset management, production, and business processes delivering outstanding plant, equipment, and process reliability

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Best Way to Monitor Risk Mitigation Plans

Best Way to Monitor Risk Mitigation Plans

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

Based on over 30 years’ experience with project risk management, the best way I found to monitor risk mitigation plans is to incorporate them into the Integrated Master Schedule (IMS). The reason is each month (or week) when the IMS is reviewed the risk mitigation plan is also reviewed. Since the IMS is linked, a slip in a mitigation plan step can readily be seen as well as the potential impact it may have on the project.

The question is How is the risk mitigation plan integrated into the IMS? This paper will explain how it tis done. [Read more…]