Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
Why is it that Reliability Programs often fail and are not sustained? Bringing about such a change in a large organization is often one of the most difficult tasks that we undertake.
This undertaking requires a shift in mindset and in the ways people work. People love the status quo and are often afraid of the change. We must show them that there is nothing to be afraid of and that the change will be beneficial.
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Last week we had the opportunity to view the first five of the top 10 signs that you are Maintenance & Reliability Best Practices by Ramesh Gulati. I hope you were able to compare your operation to the first five and see where you are excelling and where you may have challenges.
Those first five focus on the specific work streams in Reliability & Maintenance. These next five are a combination of the main work streams and the foundations to a successful operation. [Read more…]
The University of The West of Scotland Quality Centre is an internationally renowned Centre which offers post graduate taught and research programmes in Quality Management as well as training, consultancy and short courses for industry.
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It’s Friday afternoon and the phone rings. It is another customer complaining about your product not working. This is the fifth call this afternoon. Something is wrong and you’re responsible for making it right.
The natural failure analysis process starts across your team. Gather information, determine the scope of the issue, work to understand the root causes, and implement an appropriate solution. This may involve stopping production, halting shipments, or even a product recall.
Initially, you just have more irate customer calls than a typical Friday afternoon. [Read more…]
Yes…is that a ‘yes’ in that something is correct and there is affirmation of acceptance? Or is it “yes?” in response to having one’s attention attracted, or “yes?” as a question as to how something should be done or “yes” affirming one’s agreement regarding a decision on a particular course of action. Not all yeses mean the same.
How often though do we hear the word ‘yes’ and assume it’s what we would like it to mean. Many take ‘yes’ to mean that there is agreement with what has been said and a positive alignment with their way of thinking or writing and the course of action to be taken. But that’s not entirely so.
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In the previous article we discussed Waterfall, WaterScrumFall, big-A Agile and business agility. Dissonance abounds among organizations struggling to transition their approaches to building solutions and maintaining their existing legacy infrastructures while remaking how they evolve themselves. In attempting to navigate this they often adopt approaches that are destined not to really get them where they need to be.
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Teaching manufacturing-related skills online offers a host of intangible benefits such as:
And in one specific piece of the teaching process, I can experience all four benefits simultaneously, that is, answering student questions.
In this first article of a three-part series, I will share with you some of my favorite questions and answers from “Statistical Process Control (SPC) Using Microsoft Excel”, a course 7,800+ students from 126 countries have taken over the past since I launched it nearly 7 years ago.
[Read more…]We should all be aware by now that business agility is the primary enabler for companies seeking sustainability. In the past, companies would evolve in chunks, a project at a time. The costs and risks of implementing change, whether system-related or otherwise, were large, so designing and planning upfront (the Waterfall approach) was applied to create predictability and moderate risks.
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Discover 15 ways to operate so there is less maintenance, fewer maintenance people, lower maintenance costs and (because there is less maintenance) your plant runs reliably for longer! Most of the 15 topics covered are new to operations and maintenance. Each one reduces downtime, save money and improves operating uptime and performance.
This is a brief overview of the tools we use to make this site happen. For those that are interested, here we provide a peek behind the screen at the technology and processes that allow us, collectively, to enjoy the knowledge of our peers.
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Recently, I was talking to the Managing Director of a large recruiting firm for safety professionals in Toronto about the importance of communication skills.
It was very clear that safety leaders are just expected to be experts in the technical aspects of safety, but it’s the ability to communicate about safety that sets apart the great safety leaders from the mediocre.
[Read more…]
An endless Dilemma confronts every business. It is how to ensure that the activities we undertake will always produce the intended results.
Explosions, workplace deaths, harmful accidents, physical injuries, damaged goods, scrapped jobs, repeat work, manufacturing errors, operating mistakes, bad repairs, misunderstanding, wrong decisions, supplier miscommunication and poor delivery performance are all examples of the many unwanted troubles and problems caused by the Dilemma. Its impacts and effects have been written about for more than 6,000 years of recorded human history.
The Dilemma’s prevalence throughout the world indicates that human beings are a major contributor. A second major factor is business design: how your processes are configured and operate determines your degree of success in addressing the Dilemma. A third big cause is our training and education processes which have transferred the Dilemma all through businesses and across cultures for over 60 centuries. To stop the Dilemma affecting your company you can use what we have learnt about the universe, people and business processes during the last 100 years.
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The project hasn’t been going too well; KPI’s indicate problems, staff are demotivated, the customer is complaining, the schedule is in double digit revisions, rework and resubmissions reflect quality, and you may be on your third or even fourth project manager, and cash is all but flowing. Phew…what will happen next?
Despite these symptoms the project is allowed to struggle on until, one day, one brave soul has the courage to admit that enough is enough! The self-help applications of Band Aids and a couple of paracetamols obviously haven’t worked. Making an appointment to see your local GP or even a trip to the emergency room at this juncture may also be a tad late. It’s time for a surgeon or, in project terms, a troubleshooter.
[Read more…]