Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
A listing in reverse chronological order of articles by:
Watch as I describe how maintenance can help us to achieve our equipment’s inherent reliability, but it can’t make a machine something that it isn’t. If we’re doing the right maintenance, and we still don’t have the reliability we want, we have two choices… [Read more…]
Part 1 of our interview with Sunil Kamerkar of AssetAnalytix. In this session, we discuss what analytics is and challenges faced when looking to utilize data. [Read more…]
When it comes to managing risk, there are three elements to consider and RCM can help you define all three. Watch as I manage risk and change consequences all at once! [Read more…]
Every Thursday a mechanic grabs the grease gun and proceeds perform a lube route. Throughout the route, the mechanic pushes the grease gun onto the zerk and pumps grease into the bearing housing. Below the housing, there is a trail of grease leading to a small pile of old grease. The mechanic proceeds to the next machine and attempts to lubricate a bearing. However, no matter how hard he tries to pump the grease gun, the bearing will not take any grease. After a while, he moves on to the next bearing. This last bearing accepts the grease, but the machine has not run in the past 3 months. Does this lube route sound familiar?
Whenever I’m at an airport, I always get nostalgic because RCM principles were first conceived in the commercial airline industry. It’s an exciting story. Join me as I recount the details! [Read more…]
Interview of Paul Crocker from 04 May 2019. We discuss Paul’s involvement with KC SMRP chapter, his work in reliability, his journey, and his continued improvement in public speaking. [Read more…]
In many manufacturing plants, managing equipment breakdowns and can seem like an overwhelming task. Machine failures occur without warning, production lines go down, managers and supervisors point fingers, and maintenance personnel continually chase parts and problems.
It’s often the case that these plants do not use a CMMS to gather data, plan preventative maintenance, or schedule repairs. This lack of planning contributes to a reactive maintenance environment where personnel is constantly trying to ‘keep up’ with production line problems.
When a maintenance person hears the word ultrasound, they immediately think of air leaks. While ultrasound is good at finding leaks involving compressed gases (air, steam, nitrogen, CO2, etc.), it can do much more. If you look at a typical P-F curve, you will that ultrasound enables organizations to find defects further up the curve, even more so than vibration analysis. How many maintenance staff knows that? Combine the ease of use, cost effective and the early detection ability of ultrasound and any organization has a winning combination to improve their uptime.
To reap the full benefits of using ultrasound in condition monitoring, it is important to understand all of the potential applications for it. [Read more…]
How to calculate crew weeks of backlog to aid in determining if you have adequate staffing of maintenance technicians. [Read more…]
Join me and my seat-mates, Kyle and Wesley, on Southwest Airlines as we explore one of the most important tools that Reliability Centered Maintenance has to offer! [Read more…]
Imagine being able to listen to assets. I don’t mean the old trick of holding a screwdriver to a bearing housing, but actually being able to hear the rolling elements of a bearing. What about being able to record the audio sample, analyze and trend the information? All of this is now possible with the Ultrasound technology currently available.
Most of us have heard of using Ultrasound to find compressed air leaks, but Ultrasound condition monitoring has so much more to offer and has the ability to detect issues before Vibration Analysis and Thermal Imaging. But before we dive into the various applications of ultrasound, it is important to understand what ultrasound is and how it works.
[Read more…]
In this video we touch on all 7 steps of the RCM process as we introduce one of the most important aspects of the application of RCM…asking the people who really know! [Read more…]
A fun discussion on root cause analysis and associated tools. Join us in our discussion. If you like the video, please hit the like button, subscribe and hit the notification bell. [Read more…]
In the previous post, the basics of a Reliability Block Diagram were covered using simple Series or Parallel paths. In real life, most systems or processes are not that simple and require a different level or type of models, often used in combination with other types.
So in our continued exploration of RBDs, let’s explore a few different models that may be used. [Read more…]
