The Maintenance & Reliability Series

Short articles on maintenance and reliability engineering subjects.

James Kovacevic is the primary author writing articles for the series.

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Let us know your reaction and thought, plus any questions. Please use the comments section below each article.

by James Kovacevic Leave a Comment

The P-F Curve Revisited

Understanding The Importance of Proper Equipment Installation

There has been much discussion (and often debate) around the P-F curve. The P-F curve illustrates the relationship between the warning signs that are detectable by various technology or methods and the progression of the failure. What is often not discussed and overlooked, is what happens before the equipment starts to deteriorate.

If the ultimate goal of an organization is to be proactive and ensure equipment uptime, wouldn’t the organization want to prevent the equipment from failing in the first place and not catch it after it has already started to fail? [Read more…]

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Standardize Your Maintenance and Reliability Program

Utilizing Recognized Standards in Your Maintenance & Reliability Program

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…]

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Standards? We Don’t Need No Stinking Standards

How Your Organization Can Benefit from Standardization

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…]

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What’s Stopping Your Organization from Improving?

A View From the Shop Floor on What is Preventing Improvement

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”.

[Read more…]

by James Kovacevic 2 Comments

Learning About Asset Management

My personal insights on Asset Management

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…]

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Assessing Your Asset Management System

What You Must Know About Assessing Your Asset Management System

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…]

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The 39 Subjects of Asset Management

Understanding the different functions and disciplines of asset management

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…]

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The 7 Requirements of an Asset Management System

Understanding the Requirements of the ISO 55001 Standard

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…]

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The Key 3 Asset Management Documents

Understanding these asset management documents will set the stage for an asset management program.

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…]

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Making Asset Management Work

Understanding the Concepts and Principles of Asset Management

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…]

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Why Do You Need An Asset Management Program?

Understanding the Business Benefits of an Asset Management Program

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…]

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What is Asset Management?

Understanding the Value of an Asset Management System

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…]

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Ethics In Maintenance? Are You Kidding?

How Ethics Influence The Reliability of The Plant

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…]

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Who Is Responsible For Reliability? Everyone!

Why Your Operators Need To Be Part Of Your Reliability Program

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…]

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What Can You Do With Data?

A Question & Answer Period with Fred Schenkelberg and James Kovacevic on what can be done with your data and analysis.

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…]