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286 – Current Trends in Reliability with Fred Schenkelberg

Current Trends in Reliability with Fred Schenkelberg

It’s my pleasure to welcome back Fred Schenkel Berg to the podcast.

In this episode we covered:

I see a lot of people working remote, maybe not full-time, but part-time as reliability engineers, is this the new normal and can they effectively do their job working remote?
Is this identifying gaps in that data that we’ve overcome in other ways, or is it increasing the demand for different types of data?
How has the facilitation changed, for example, for facilitating RCA or FMEA, if you’ve seen that done remotely? Well, have you heard of it being done well?

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270 – Where to Start with DfM & DfR with Fred Schenkelberg

Welcome Fred back to the podcast. Clients are starting to realize that they have to design their systems properly while paying attention to certain tradeoffs. However, tell us where they should start; whether to design for reliability or maintainability.

Before starting, the team has to look at their business goals and decide whether the acquisition of any system or a piece of equipment assists to that end. It has to be a business decision.

Pay attention to:

The environment of usage
The cost of ownership; is it going to be profitable?
The usage rate of the tool
Type and quality of the tool

In this episode we covered:

Understanding the tradeoffs is essential while keeping the important things in mind. Where do we place time and resources? Reliability or maintainability?
Once they have chosen to rely on data and experience? Where do they start in designing for maintenance or reliability?
Create basic standards. Otherwise, the advanced things like the right model shall not matter. Basic aspects such as a complete bill of material that can be uploaded on to the CMMS, documentation should be taken into account.

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257 – Reliability Misconceptions with Fred Schenkelberg

Reliability Misconceptions with Fred Schenkelberg

Welcome Fred to today’s episode. Our topic will be the misconceptions surrounding reliability. What is reliability?

The English dictionary defines reliability as the characteristic of trustworthiness or being able to adhere to a schedule and deliver as needed.

On the other hand, reliability in engineering encompasses functionality, probability of success, duration of continued delivery of that success, and work environment.

Fred will give us insight on:

What is implementing reliability?
What is the disconnect between all these activities (tools) and decision making?
So does it require understanding the data and engaging the people?

… and so much more!

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251 – How to Make a Good Request with Fred Schenkelberg

How to Make a Good Request with Fred Schenkelberg

We’re glad to have Fred Schenkelberg back to help us understand how to make a complete request. A lot of times, emails circulate through the organization requesting tasks to get completed. However, they don’t define the:

Who
When
How

Fred will give us insight on:

Elements of a Complete Request
Do the five elements help ensure a significant change in making requests

… and so much more!

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244 – RAM Modeling with Fred Schenkelberg

RAM Modeling with Fred Schenkelberg

We’re pleased to have Fred Schenkelberg back with us. He’s a reliability engineering and management consultant with a background in product development. He’s also been a manufacturing engineer and shift supervisor working in a factory and helped found AccendoReliabilty.com. Fred will give us more insight into RAM Modeling.

Fred will give us insight on:

What is RAM Modeling?
Which stage of the life cycle does RAM modeling apply?
Where to learn more about RAM modeling

… and so much more!

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206-Reliability Basics and AI with Fred Schenkelberg

Reliability Basics and AI with Fred Schenkelberg

Artificial Intelligence has become a hot topic today with organisations attempting to find ways of applying it. The fact is, however, that a good number haven’t found a compelling case for the adaption. Fred of Accendo Reliability joins us on this episode to break down what AI means for the reliability industry.

Key highlights from this interaction are:

How reliability is influenced by AI
Why people are jumping on the ‘trend’ without looking at the relevance
Considerations to make before adopting AI for reliability

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196-Reliability Trends with Fred Schenkelberg

Reliability Trends with Fred Schenkelberg

“We’re not invited on Oprah to talk about Maintenance Management … Podcasts allow us to get insights from our peers.”

In this episode, James once again interviews Fred Schenkelberg. Fred is the reliability expert at FMS Reliability, reliability engineering and management consulting firm he founded in 2004. Fred talks with us today about digital content and its role in the Reliability community.

We start by discussing the traffic levels on various topic posts and how the basics are still what attracts the most views and searches. Articles like Four Effective Risk Mitigation Strategies are getting roughly 4,500 views a month.

Something ruminated on is the idea that these basics articles are still so popular. That higher-education is not preparing people for their fields -and while math and science are necessary to get the job done correctly, many of the relevant day-to-day skill sets and knowledge used in these industries are learned in practice and on the job.

In this episode we covered:

The Web Content Side of Reliability
The Benefits of Podcasts to Niche industries
Accendo and the creation of content ‘Toolboxes’

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165-Reliability Catch Up with Fred

Reliability Catch Up with Fred

Reliability and Maintenance industry changes very fast. The organization always enlist the help of consultants when their assets are failing. The reason why it doesn’t work sometimes is because the companies don’t know what they are looking for. Before you go about hiring some consulting firm, you need to have some certain information for them to begin with. Once you know what the problem is and what is it that you are trying to accomplish, it becomes easier for consultants to help you with overcoming failures and stopping them in the first place. You have to understand where you are at? What kind of problems are you facing?

In this episode, we covered:

Reliability and Maintenance industry
How do you select the right tools?
Do you need a consultant?
And much more!

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121 – Starting with Mathematical Foundations with Fred Schenkelberg

Starting with Mathematical Foundations with Fred Schenkelberg

Every system in the world, no matter how complex, is designed on an algorithm. All the systems use the same basic principles of mathematics. When there is a failure in a system, there’s a logical explanation for its occurrence. Every engineering principles that vendors follow to build the machines and every calculative functionality they add to it so that it will work the way it is is based on mathematics. That’s why it is very important to have strong mathematical foundation in a reliability-oriented organization.
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120 – What is the Difference between RGA and Weibull with Fred Schenkelberg

What is the Difference between RGA and Weibull with Fred Schenkelberg

Predictive maintenance is the backbone of reliability and maintenance industry. This is why every organization tends to use tools that can help them foresee the possible failures ahead of time and take preemptive measures. No matter how much you spend on building a sustainable program, there are always deficiencies left somewhere. You have to know at every stage what these deficiencies are to successfully get where you want to go exactly. This is where Reliability Growth Analysis (RGA) (or Crow-AMSAA, as oftentimes referred to) helps you with its wide applications. When you have a specific problem, focusing on a single failure mode, and have all the data related to it, it is good to use Weibull Analysis.
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106 – How to Learn from Failures with Fred Schenkelberg

How to Learn from Failures with Fred Schenkelberg

No matter how good you are at your job, there are always failures in the systems because of some reason. You can’t stop all of them but you can learn from them. There is always something to learn when a failure occurs. Whether it is finding the root cause or devising a solution to prevent it in the future. What happens in the industry that we forget what failures occurred in the last few years?—over the time. This is something that is alarming. It is your job to remember or communicate with those who might. That is how you can better assess the nature and root cause of the failure.
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105 – The Importance of a Reliability Engineer with Fred Schenkelberg

The Importance of a Reliability Engineer with Fred Schenkelberg

The main goal of every organization is to get the quality product in the market. That’s why they spend millions of dollars to stay on the plan they had in place. They can’t do that if their equipment keeps failing. The only way to make it sure is to maintain it properly. And that is a job for reliability engineers. They are the ones who maintain the assets of the company. They find the cause of the failures and stop it by making the system design better. They play a role similar to the process engineer but their job has a wider scope.
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104 – What’s a Process Engineer with Fred Schenkelberg

What’s a Process Engineer with Fred Schenkelberg

The organizations that are more innovative and have a mark in the industry tend to do things that others don’t. So, what are those things and how do they do that? This is an area where process engineers play their role to increase the production and solve problems that come along the way. Sometimes they have to experiment using different chemicals, use the calculations, and use the recorded data to come up with processes that can increase the yield of a product without compromising the quality. Their job is to come up with the best ways to quantify product.
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87 – Accounting for External Influences in Improvement Programs with Fred Schenkelberg

Accounting for External Influences in Improvement Programs with Fred Schenkelberg

Do you plan for every factor that can influence the performance of your systems? Are the environmental conditions too much of a problem for you? There are several external factors that influence a reliability improvement program. You can never get the desired output if you don’t try different inputs and see the varied results for yourself and then test and analyze each favorable result until you are satisfied with them. But there is not always enough budget lying around for you to do experimentation just like that. Some companies have a limited budget and tight deadlines and you have to plan for those external factors according to the environmental conditions that your equipment has to face.
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86 – Life Cycle Costing with Fred Schenkelberg

Life Cycle Costing with Fred Schenkelberg

There are a lot of organizations who buy systems that cost less initially because of limited budget or due to a number of other reasons. They never even bother to bring in the financial or operations experts to get more information from the suppliers about the equipment they are going to purchase. Does it perform all the functions we need? Does it have that built-in reliability mechanism? Will it serve the purpose even? They don’t ask these questions because the initial buying cost is less or fits in with the budget. This is a mistake that leads to expensive maintenance later on.
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