Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
Does procedural and/or regulatory compliance with RCA guidelines ensure Operational Reliability? Does it ensure improved Safety? Operational Reliability involves the aggregation of Equipment, Process and Human Reliability methods and techniques.
What is the difference between troubleshooting, problem solving and ‘RCA’? Are the outcomes different when we use The 5-Whys, The Fishbone or a Logic Tree/Causal Factor Type Tree?
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Disruption has been one of the major news items in 2022. Disruption results in risk. You can see ‘risk’ in almost every video, magazine, and blog. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Supply chain disruption. Climate change. New business models. Reshoring. Inflation. Price of gasoline. Can you imagine $10/gallon gasoline?
Greg will answer the following:
What is risk-based, problem-solving, and decision-making in reliability engineering and quality?
What are risk PDCA, taxonomies, risk assessment, risk management, etc?
What are the two critical risk management frameworks for problem-solving and decision-making?
What are examples of risk assessment tools?
[Read more…]Disruption has been one of the major news items in 2022. Disruption results in risk. You can see ‘risk’ in almost every video, magazine, and blog. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Supply chain disruption. Climate change. New business models. Reshoring. Inflation. Price of gasoline. Can you imagine $10/gallon gasoline?
Greg will answer the following:
What is risk-based, problem-solving, and decision-making in reliability engineering and quality?
What are risk PDCA, taxonomies, risk assessment, risk management, etc?
What are the two critical risk management frameworks for problem-solving and decision-making?
What are examples of risk assessment tools? [Read more…]
Much like the song, “Lookin’ for Love in All the Wrong Places” sung by Johnny Lee; risk management professionals need to ask the question “Are we searching for risk in all the wrong places”? Are risk professionals being deluded or deluding themselves by seeing risk based on media driven analysis; applying outmoded tools, models, etc. that no longer reflect the reality of risk?
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How did railroads handle depreciation, repair, and fixed asset life-cycles in the mid 19th Century?
They were experienced in design, construction, project management and business.
They planned for maintenance and for repair.
They knew about wear mechanisms from aggressive operation and thought it was management’s role to contain this.
They shared data and used it. They gathered data from handwritten records, making spreadsheets, graphs, and KPIs by hand.
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What’s in a word?
The right word at the right time can make all the difference between a successful negotiation with an amicable agreement and collaborative banter, or a bitter and twisted tête-à-tête with an entrenched stand-off, raised hackles and, at best, fog-horn diplomacy. But what is the ‘right word’; unfortunately, it depends on the time and place and people’s personality but one thing is almost certain, if it begins with “n” it is oftentimes not considered to be right and many consider it to be downright wrong.
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“So, what did you think about the most recent five-year management assessment?” asked the Agency Director.
I knew it was a loaded question. If the executive team had agreed with the assessment, the chief operating officer would not have asked me to review it before the report was presented to the Board of Directors.
“I had some issues with the report,” I responded. “Out of the gate, they lost me and will probably lose your Board with that multi-colored, busy graph.”
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Welcome Paul to the Podcast. Paul is the founder of Scio Asset Management. Although, briefly, tell us about yourself.
I have almost 30 years experience in engineering reliability maintenance and both strategic and holistic asset management. At Scio we are providing frameworks for leadership in asset management that is based on first principle decision making. Also launching Assetiers that is a platform for leaders to discuss the challenges that we have in asset management.
In this episode we covered:
Bruce is an active company director and audit committee chair. He is a well-respected transformational leader with deep and broad professional governance, risk, compliance and audit experience. He was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the Queen’s Birthday Honours of 2015 in recognition of his significant service to public administration through governance and risk management practices, and to the profession of internal auditing.
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An undesirable event occurs (fancy term for unexpected failure) a Root Cause Analysis (RCA) is triggered. This usually means what occurred is a severe event as triggers are often set pretty high (i.e. – reportable injury/fatality, equipment damage in excess of x-thousands of dollars, production losses in excess of x-thousands of dollars, regulatory violation, etc.). Since there is urgency and visibility, how do I decide who will lead the investigation/RCA? Our natural tendency is to identify the technical ‘expert’ in the nature of whatever the undesirable event was. But does that typically produce the most effective outcome for the organization and its employees? This article will focus on which skills are needed most, under such conditions, and why
Despite our collective educational establishments that purport to teach so that people can learn, ‘education’ is not necessarily learning. Mark Twain wrote disparagingly that “Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned” and also that he never let schooling interfere with his own education. Education is not necessarily knowledge and real learning comes from the application of theory tempered with experience which will make for better decisions and better outcomes. Benjamin Franklin’s words from over 200 years’ ago “Tell me, I forget. Teach me, I remember. Involve me and I learn” still ring true today.
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The gang talks about how to start building proper data, and the trials and tribulations in convincing other departments of your causes.
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We cannot turn back the clocks and undo the damage the pandemic has done, but we can move forward with an anticipatory mindset and a firm plan of action. For many decades now, and in all industries, digital disruption has been on an exponential curve upward. Because the pandemic forced us to turn to technology for help on both a personal and business level, the pace of technology-driven change increased dramatically, far beyond merely exponential levels. Now that this change has been set in motion, the question remains: What do we do now?
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Sir George Findlay was a prominent British railroad manager. He was the general manager of the London & Northwestern Railway, a major company that underwent nearly 20 years of expansion under his leadership.
His 1895 book, The Working and Management of an English Railway, described an organization for railway track maintenance. The basic gang had four people responsible for 4 miles of track. Supervision and management included inspectors, a chief inspector, and a divisional civil engineer. Each division also had draftsmen, masons, and other special crafts at their disposal.
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