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The Rate of Occurrence of Failure (ROCOF) curve is the sum of all the individual component failure curves across the service life of an asset. As shown below, it looks like a bathtub, giving it the nickname, a bathtub curve.
Equipment reliability is malleable by choice of policy and quality of practice.
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Despite their shared emphasis on maintenance, Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) and Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) are not competing strategies.
Manufacturers can create a powerful synergy to leverage the strengths of each if they understand their respective strengths. Such a combination leads to exceptional reliability, cost-effective maintenance, and improved corporate culture – if implemented successfully. [Read more…]
The late quality guru W. Edwards Deming advised graphing the process variables and the process outputs across time on a run chart (a time-series plot) to identify uncertainty and variability. When the run charts are used together, they help to identify the times and causes of poor results.
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Every organization and organism’s performance is limited to the capability of its design. If you want better business results, then get or build a new organization with systems designed to naturally deliver the outcomes and profits you want. Nothing else you do will ever work as well!
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Preservation and repair are as old as sailing, but a written record of how this was managed has not always survived. One failure mechanism that has affected wooden vessels for centuries is shipworm – a mollusc that drills deep holes into the hull.
Shipworm was common in the Mediterranean, so there is a long record of means to combat it. A shipwreck in Kyrenia has been dated to somewhere between 384 BC – 288 BC. The hull was covered with hammered lead sheathing to protect it from shipworm. Archaeological examination concluded that over its lifetime, the ship had received four major repairs, and in-service modification. The Kyrenia ship first sailed with no sheathing, but wooden sheathing was added. Later, lead sheathing was used. (Steffy p. 95) Archeologists have also observed the use of oche on ship hulls in the Mediterranean and debate if the purpose was preservation of the hull. Several Greek and Roman ships with lead sheathing have been studied. By 1514, Spain was using lead sheathing. An Englishman who had served the Spanish crown sheathed a small English squadron with lead sheathing in 1553. (Wilkinson p. 132) In 1624, Monson wrote in Monson’s Tracts that the Spanish and Portuguese used lead sheathing, but that it was “not durable” so not in use in England.
There are only two ways to get high system reliability if you want a highly reliable system. Equipment in an operation can be configured in series or in parallel. In series, one item connects sequentially to the other. In parallel, each item is arranged as a companion, where one duplicates the other.
A series arrangement needs exceptionally reliable individual equipment to get a highly reliable system. A parallel arrangement can form a highly reliable system even if individual equipment has poor reliability.
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In 1999 I left a 19-year career at Eastman Kodak to start my own Manufacturing Reliability Consulting Company. Looking back 23 years I really had no idea what I was getting into, but I was confident that I had something to offer companies that other consultants didn’t.
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PLANT WELLNESS WAY EAM METHODOLOGY USES THE ‘IONICS’ STRATEGIC ASSET MANAGEMENT PLAN FOR BUILDING AN ASSET MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
SIMPLY FOLLOW THE INDUSTRIAL AND MANUFACTURING WELLNESS BOOK TO CREATE YOUR ORGANIZATION’S ISO 55001 SAMP
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In this episode, we talk about the more personal (or human) aspect of equipment Reliability. Who is responsible for Reliability? We know the answer is “everyone” – from top management to the experts who operate and maintain our machines. So it’s vital that we understand one another’s perspectives and responsibilities. We discuss how invisible obstacles can personally affect us – Comfort, the Prison of Perfection, Overwhelm, Our Thoughts, The Voices, and Fear. Fear can be the deadliest one of all. In this episode we discuss a simple – yet powerful technique – to manage fear. When we properly manage the obstacles, we free ourselves up to become more productive and effective equipment custodians.
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Many people believe Proactive Maintenance is the ultimate physical asset management strategy—but there is one better strategy. To get world class reliability at the least cost there must be no maintenance. Only a “wellness” paradigm can achieve that result.
[Read more…]Often used to pump slurries, helical rotor pumps (also known as progressivity cavity pump, eccentric screw pump, mono pump) use a spiral rotor to move a chamber full of product through the pump. When moving slurries it is critical that the rotor wipes the rubber or elastomer stator firmly, else fine particles get between the rotor and stator and rip material out. This article discusses a major operating problem when the wrong size rotor was used in a stator.
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In this episode, we explore what Condition Based Maintenance (CBM) is (aka On-Condition Maintenance). We’ll talk about : – What CBM is – The biggest trap you can fall into when implementing CBM – And what governs how often you do a Condition Based Maintenance task. As asset managers, we know that most Failure Modes occur randomly, and that can seem a little intimidating or maybe even a little scary, but it doesn’t have to be because that’s where Condition Based Maintenance can be very helpful. The whole point of Condition Based Maintenance is to detect a Potential Failure Condition and take action before failure occurs. That interval is called the P-F Interval and that is explained in this episode.
[Read more…]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.
[Read more…]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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