Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
Short articles on maintenance and reliability engineering subjects.
James Kovacevic is the primary author writing articles for the series.
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Imagine being able to easily share information across sites or even organizations. Or how about utilizing a risk management framework that is recognized and agreed upon by all in the organization. Benchmarking made easy? Standards enable this. [Read more…]
Imagine if every day you had to relearn a process or use a different CMMS. Chances are you would get virtually nothing accomplished, leaving your plant operating poorly. Now we all know that we having to relearn a process every day or using a new CMMS is not practical nor is it rooted in reality (not to be confused with the Rooted in Reliability podcast). But this type of thing happens more often than you may think. [Read more…]
I recently had a very interesting discussion with a craftsman at a large automotive manufacturer. During this discussion, he outlined a few of the issues he saw in his plant, and why they weren’t able to overcome them.
The craftsman indicated that he had been reading my previous posts and that it all made sense. In fact, he stated, ” it is common sense, but we don’t have that here”.
NOTE: This post will be a little different from my normal posts. Instead of discussing a specific topic, I will be covering my journey in understanding Asset Management and some key takeaways from the journey. [Read more…]
Often times organizations want to determine where they in their journey of asset management. This usually takes place in the form of benchmarking or assessing their asset management system against the standard. Before progressing any further, it is important to understand the difference between an assessment and an audit; [Read more…]
The Global Forum on Maintenance and Asset Management (GFMAM) has worked with the major bodies (SMRP, PEMAC, IAM, etc.) to achieve a consensus on the major subjects within asset management.
These subjects are intended to describe the complete scope of topics within asset management. You can download the GFMAM guide for free here. It is important that anyone who wishes to understand asset management has an understanding of each of these topics, and hopefully some experience in each. [Read more…]
When looking through the ISO 55001 standard, one may quickly become overwhelmed with the requirements.
The ISO 55001 standard was written in a way that groups the requirements, making it easier to understand & implement the standard.
This is different that subjects found in asset management (which we will discuss next week). These are the requirements that must be met if one to certify themselves against the ISO 55001 standard. [Read more…]
Aligning an organization is a critical step to implementing and ensuring the success of an asset management system. Various change management techniques will be used to bring about the change, but how do you ensure the message, direction, and principles of the asset management program are communicated consistently and clearly? [Read more…]
In order to implement an asset management system, it is vital to understand what is involved in an asset management system. The aspects involved have been tested over time through many different industries. These industries have proven to be what it takes to be successful.
So let’s see what it takes to be successful in asset management. [Read more…]
Have you tried to upgrade / replace a piece of equipment due to the high cost of maintenance? What about having the process stopped by procurement because they are not aligned with the high upfront cost?
While there is a generally a common goal of ensuring the long-term success of an organization, the approach is not always cohesive. An asset management program is there to ensure an integrated and cohesive approach is in place. This cohesive approach ensures the organization is working towards a common goal. [Read more…]
All stakeholders have different perspectives, and as a result, place value on different aspects of an asset. Trying to balance all the requirements is not an easy task. Whether the requirements are performance, cost, or the level of risk. Keep in mind, that performance can not only be uptime or OEE, but the beauty of a park, or the condition of a road. This is where asset management comes in. [Read more…]
Ask almost any maintenance professional in your operation what they think about ethics. Chances are the answers will not have anything to do with their job and their role in maintaining equipment.
Ethics play an important role in many professions, such as doctors, engineers, lawyers, etc. Ethics are not typically thought of in maintenance, but in reality, ethics does have a place in maintenance.
To understand where ethics fit into maintenance, you first have to understand ethics. [Read more…]
You drive your car (almost) every day, you will immediately notice a new noise, vibration, or feel to the car. Once you detect this you would report the issue to your mechanic (or if yourself and do the repair), and he would investigate the issue. The repair would be made and the car returned to you.
This same approach is what should be happening in your plant. The operators of the plant equipment, operate the equipment every day and know the equipment. Any changes or variation in the equipment or process would be noticed by them and should be reported to the maintenance department.
Based on this approach that we use every day with our cars, why is it that in many plants the operators do not notify maintenance of changes? Or the notifications go unused or not acted on? [Read more…]
Data and the analyses that use the data can be tricky to manage at best, let along extremely difficult.
In this last post of the series on using the maintenance data you have, Fred and James will answer many of the common questions asked about data and the analyses. [Read more…]
Every failure is part of a puzzle. The equipment we are maintaining is trying to communicate with use with each and every failure.
Often the message is not obvious.
There is the immediate failure. And, if we’re paying attention we can sort out the root cause of the failure along with replacing or repairing the damaged parts. Sometimes though the damage is caused by another issue with the system.
Something was hidden. [Read more…]