A RELIABILITY IMPROVEMENT POLICY IS A DOCUMENT CONTAINING A SET OF PRINCIPLES TO GUIDE DECISION MAKING AND ACTIONS. IT TELLS HOW RELIABILITY WILL BE ACHIEVED IN AN OPERATION. IT COVERS THE WHOLE ASSET LIFE CYCLE AND SAYS WHAT WILL BE DONE AT EACH PHASE TO DELIVER RELIABILITY.

Unfortunately, we have been operating in a crisis manner without a reliability improvement policy. Have you samples of a Reliability Improvement Policy that I can use as a basis of crafting one for my organization — do you have anything to share?
As I have stated in the past, the materials you post have been a big blessing to my work. You have definitely empowered me with great information that I see changing the way people work.
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by Nancy Regan Leave a Comment

Do We Analyze Every Failure Mode?

Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) Myths

True or False? Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) seeks to analyze every Failure Mode.

False! In this short video, I clarify that RCM provides specific criteria for selecting which Failure Modes to include in the analysis. Discover the four criteria that guide this selection process. They include those that:

Have happened before
Have not happened, but are a real possibility.
Have not happened, are unlikely to occur, but have severe consequences.
Are currently managed via proactive maintenance.

Join me, Nancy Regan, as we break down these criteria and enhance your understanding of RCM!

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by Mike Sondalini Leave a Comment

What is Equipment Reliability and How Do You Get It?

High equipment reliability is a choice and not an accident of fortune. To a great extent you can choose how long you want between equipment failures. You can deliver high equipment reliability by ensuring the chance of incidents that cause failures of equipment parts are low. The secret to remarkably long and trouble-free equipment lives is to keep parts and components at low stress, within good local environmental conditions, so there is little risk they are unable to handle their design duty. If there is nothing to cause a failure, the failure will not happen and your equipment continues in service at full capacity and full availability.

For maintenance practitioners, it is the use of precision maintenance backed-up with condition monitoring applied as a tool to prove maintenance work is done precisely, that provides the foundation for exceptional equipment reliability.

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by James Reyes-Picknell Leave a Comment

Rapid Reliability Assessment

The need

Our Rapid Reliability Assessment is designed for small or budget constrained operations. Consulting engagements with the big firms are expensive and out of the question. This is for smaller operations that need something that is not overly intrusive, not expensive, and gives them big bang for their buck.

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by Nancy Regan Leave a Comment

Understanding the Importance of Operating Context in RCM

In this video, we dive into the significance of operating context when identifying proactive maintenance tasks for your equipment. Have you ever considered how the operating environment impacts maintenance strategies? Using the example of our metal building, we explore how factors like temperature and operational conditions can drastically affect maintenance tasks and intervals. 🔍 Discover how we determine the operating environment in Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) analysis, including:

Equipment location and usage frequency
Operational demands and circumstances
The role of redundancy

We also discuss how operating context influences not only maintenance strategies but also other important failure management strategies, such as emergency procedures and equipment redesigns.

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by George Williams Leave a Comment

Team Building: Creating Cohesive and Effective Teams

Building a strong, unified team takes more than just hiring the right people; it takes leadership, accountability, and a shared vision.

In this video, George Williams, Founder & CEO of Reliability X, breaks down what it takes to bring a team together and keep them moving toward the same goals. From setting the example as a leader to coaching team members toward success, these insights will help you create a workplace where people collaborate, support one another, and grow together.

You’ll learn:

How leadership shapes team dynamics
Why coaching and influence matter in building a strong team
The role of accountability in teamwork • Practical ways to get everyone engaged and involved

If you’re ready to build a team that truly works together, watch now and start making tomorrow better than today.

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by Mike Sondalini Leave a Comment

Reliability Growth Cause Analysis Tutorial

Improved reliability has a cause. Just like a failure has a cause, so too is there a cause for improved reliability. You can wait for a failure to happen and then learn from the experience and change your processes to prevent it. That is root cause failure analysis. But it is not proactive behaviour. Such an approach quickly buries you in firefighting. It helps you fix a few terrible failures, but not the tens of thousands of defects that are waiting to create the next lot of disasters. Permanent reliability growth requires proactive methodologies that identify all potential problems and stops them from starting. This is what is done in high reliability operations – they never allow defects to begin.

The process maps of your business processes, the workflow diagrams of your operating procedures and the bills of materials for your equipment are the foundation documents for improving equipment reliability. They are used respectively to control the business processes, to control human error and to address limitations in materials of construction and parts’ health practices.

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by Nancy Regan Leave a Comment

What You Don’t Know About RCM May Change Everything

True or False? Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) produces more than just a Proactive Maintenance Plan. In this short video, we explore the broader benefits of RCM! Discover how a Facilitated Working Group approach empowers equipment experts to identify vulnerabilities, known as Failure Modes, and develop effective solutions that go beyond traditional maintenance strategies. From new operating procedures to equipment redesigns, RCM can drive meaningful improvements across your organization.

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by Mike Sondalini Leave a Comment

Show Me the Money in Maintenance!

Find the fortune maintenance can make for your business. Unfortunately, maintenance people get praise when they repair breakdowns. This embeds and promotes a culture of equipment failure acceptance in a business. Maintenance must be used to prevent equipment failures, not fix them. If you want to start a culture of failure elimination in your business you have to start putting a money value on the breakdowns prevented by Maintenance. You have to start praising and recognising them for the breakdowns they didn’t let happen. Maintenance needs to be praised and glorified for the money it makes a company, not singled out for the money it spends.

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by James Reyes-Picknell Leave a Comment

Today’s Gremlin – Assumptions

Today’s Gremlin – “Assumptions” can get a planner or a supervisor into a lot of trouble. You might be very knowledgeable and have great faith in your trades-persons, but assuming they know what you know, can be dangerous. There’s always discussion about “how much detail” to put in a maintenance job plan. It should be safe to assume your trades know how to perform those basic skills that earned them their trade. But it is not safe to assume they are familiar enough with your equipment and operation to use those skills correctly.

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by Nancy Regan Leave a Comment

Is RCM Necessary for All Assets?

True or False? Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) must be applied to all assets.

False!

In this video, we explore the flexibility of Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) and how it can be tailored to your specific needs. RCM doesn’t have to be applied to every asset; instead, your analysis scope should be driven by your goals. Whether you focus on a single piece of equipment, a specific component, or a select group of machines, the approach can vary. Join me as we debunk the myth that RCM must be applied to everything.

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by George Williams Leave a Comment

Values: The Heartbeat of Your Culture

What drives your organization’s decisions, behaviors, and success? It’s your values. In this video, George Williams, Founder and CEO of Reliability X, dives into the importance of values as a building block within the Culture domain of Ramesh Gulati’s Maintenance and Reliability Best Practices (MRBP) Framework. Values are the core principles that guide behaviors, shape culture, and ensure alignment with your mission and vision. From integrity to customer focus, learn how defining and living your values can transform your organization’s culture and drive long-term success. Do you have questions about values, culture, or the MRBP Framework? Reach out to us at ask@reliabilityx.com or visit www.reliabilityx.com for more resources. Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and hit the notification bell to stay updated on our latest videos!

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by Mike Sondalini Leave a Comment

Moving from Quality to Accuracy in Production and Maintenance

The Accuracy Controlled Enterprise: Using Accuracy-Controlled 3T SOPs for Production and Maintenance Quality Assurance

Reliable equipment is necessary to reduce production costs and maximise production throughput. High reliability from operating equipment requires high quality reassembly, coupled with the correct operating practices. You can guarantee correct maintenance and proper plant operation by specifying a target and tolerance in maintenance and operating procedures.

Having a target and tolerance sets the recognised acceptance criterion. A simple proof-test will confirm if it has been met. Specifying a mark and tolerance range changes the focus from one of simply doing the job; to now doing the job accurately. This results in high quality trades’ workmanship and sound equipment operator practices that deliver reliable equipment performance. Those organisations that use ‘target, tolerance, proof-test’ methodology in their procedural tasks move from being a quality-conscious operation to being an Accuracy-Controlled Enterprise (ACE).

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by Nancy Regan Leave a Comment

The Truth About RCM’s Weakness in Industrial Settings

True or False? Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) has serious weaknesses in an industrial environment. False!

Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) has been successfully applied across nearly every industry—from manufacturing, to oil and gas, to the military, to power generation, and beyond. The original authors of RCM, Stanley Nowlan and Howard Heap, aimed to make RCM principles applicable to all complex equipment, not just airplanes. In this video, we dive into why RCM continues to thrive in diverse environments.

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by James Reyes-Picknell Leave a Comment

Today’s Gremlin – Perfectionist

Today’s Gremlin – “Perfectionist”, is often a planner or an engineer. This Gremlin holds himself or herself to extremely high, pretty much unattainable, standards. They cannot be found to be wrong by anyone. Perfectionists go to great lengths to get everything they do, 100% right, 100% of the time.

We all know that getting part way complete, even a large part of the way complete, is quick and easy. Although whatever we are doing may not be perfect, it is close and for most purposes, it may be good enough.

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