Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
A listing in reverse chronological order of articles by:
Instead of allocating time and resources trying to force the same maintenance method on every asset in your facility, reliability centered maintenance (RCM) offers you a more structured and proven approach where each piece of equipment is allocated a befitting maintenance strategy based on the results of a well-executed RCM analysis.
By Alan Ross
Back in August of 1987, there was a “convergence” that supposedly marked the movement from one age to a new age, the Age of Aquarius. And for those who are too young to remember, just Google the song. Oh, darn…now it’s in my head! But I digress. (Which you should get used to when reading this blog because I love digression for context.)
What does that have to do with the dawning of the age of IoT? Well, there are actually a lot of similarities. [Read more…]
In 2015, Jesus Sifonte invited me to be a speaker at a client and business partner congress that he was holding in San Juan, Puerto Rico. We did not know each other, nor did we even know much about each other. I was recommended to Jesus by a mutual friend, Dr. Andrew Jardine at the University of Toronto. At the San Juan congress we presented our respective topics and in the evenings we shared a few drinks while speaking about maintenance, reliability and asset management. We realized that we both had a shared passion for excellence and we learned about each-others’ experience. [Read more…]
Selecting CMMS software is a significant decision for an organization. Another equally significant milestone is rolling out multi-site CMMS software—scaling your CMMS system from one site to multiple sites. There are two distinct ways in which in this transition may occur.
The first is when a multi-site organization test pilots CMMS software at a single location initially. In this situation, the organization has satisfied all concerns with the initial implementation at the pilot site and is ready to expand the implementation to its other locations. [Read more…]
These are uncertain times and there is a lot of stress in the world. The media is hitting us with updates on COVID cases, stock market prices and Russia/Saudi Arabia oil news constantly. For me, it’s been a barrage. Tuesday through Thursday this week, it got to me. It stressed me out. I felt the panic from the media, I felt the panic when I went to the grocery store, I felt the stress from my girlfriend, who works at a senior’s home. [Read more…]
Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) is a tool that can not only help an organization in effectively & efficiently meeting its Maintenance Works Management requirements but is also a vital source of equipment Reliability & Maintenance (RM) data. [Read more…]
Being proactive with your assets is all about managing failures before they occur. You can reduce or eliminate the consequences of failure by forecasting what is likely to happen and deciding in advance about what to do about it. The advantage to doing this is that major business impact due to equipment breakdown can be avoided. High performing companies manage proactively – they foresee and avoid problems. It’s good for business! [Read more…]
There is a lot of fear & hysteria going around the world right now with some of the recent events with Coronavirus, the Russia/Saudi Arabia oil war and the stock market plunge (among other things).
Should you be afraid?
I’m not saying you shouldn’t take reasonable precautions like hand-washing, not traveling to certain areas, however, panicking about the uncontrollable will take you away from things you can control (or at least, influence). [Read more…]
The awareness gap results from management having limited or no knowledge of the maintenance function and its ability to contribute to the manufacturing process; and maintenance personnel, managers included, having a limited understanding of the business side of manufacturing. The result is that management and maintenance are often unsure about how they together contribute to the company’s success. [Read more…]
By Guest Blogger Wesley Suplit, product manager, SDMyers
After my first year in college, I discovered my favorite curriculum – economics. This surprises my friends and family because that discipline is known for its dry content and difficult math concepts. However, I had a completely different and inspiring experience. The course, and, really, my professor, opened my eyes to the beauty of observing how people make decisions.
What rocked my world was how simple economics could be. Conclusions could be inferred simply by observing phenomena and then performing thought experiments related to the observations. The goal of a thought experiment is to explore the potential consequences of the principle in question. Surprisingly, no mathematical formulas or complex equations were needed. [Read more…]
According to the Institute of Asset Management, an asset management strategy is a “long-term optimized approach to management of the assets, derived from, and consistent with, the organizational strategic plan and the asset management policy.” Stated differently, an asset management strategy is a high-level but very important document that guides asset management activities within an organization.
Reliability Centered Maintenance methods compliant with the SAE standard JA-1011 (“Evaluation Criteria for RCM Processes”) all have common features – they must, or they won’t comply with the standard. Those requirements are “minimum” requirements, as they are with any standard. RCM-R complies. But what makes it different and why?
The RCM standard and most, if not all, of the established RCM methods are firmly rooted in the past as it was defined by those few individuals who wrote the SAE standard. The standard and those methods have stood the test of time because they work, but we asked, “Can they work better?” Answer – yes. [Read more…]
In December, I was doing cardio at the gym and watching the sports highlights. One of the highlights was Derrick Rose hitting a game winning shot. In the post-game interview, the reporter asked him about the shot. Derrick Rose’s response gave me chills.
“Excuse my English, but I’m born to do this sh**” [Read more…]
The limits of my language means the limits of my world. Ludwig Wittgenstein (Austrian-British Philosopher)
As an Engineer & a Reliability Professional I believe the biggest hurdle to success of my fraternity’s ideas, initiatives, programs, suggestions; is our collective inability to properly communicate their benefits to our different audiences. Instead of pointing any blame to the other side, we need to do a little self-assessment of ourselves to see what may be our own failings. [Read more…]
RCM-R® goes beyond what RCM alone can do. The basic successful method as defined in SAE JA-1011 remains intact. RCM-R® enhances that method, linking it to international standards for risk management and adding a degree of technical rigor rarely seen outside of the military, nuclear and aircraft industries. It adds a great deal of emphasis on what it takes to implement the method successfully – not only as a project (as has so often been done with other RCM methods), but as a sustainable program, and on leveraging the analysis results to maximize value generation and align closely with the intentions and precepts of the new international standard for Asset Management, ISO 55001. [Read more…]