Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
It is my pleasure to welcome back Paul Daoust to the podcast.
In this episode we covered:
Paul Daoust thinks for a living with over 25 years of international experience in asset management and operational excellence in the energy sector as a team leader and lead practitioner in a corporate center, industrial site and remote work locations.
As the founder of Scio Asset Management, Paul is declaring war on mediocrity and providing supportive leadership to progressive operational leaders to make more, better decisions to stop value leakage in their organizations through learning, coaching, advising services and management platform solutions.
Paul is a leading international advocate for asset management practices for industrial and infrastructure asset-owning organizations.
Specializing in asset management leadership, asset strategy & planning, operational risk management, asset performance management, asset investment planning, maintenance and reliability management, competency management, and organizational change management.
This phrase ‘a little bit bold & outrageous’ was constantly used by my father, Charles J. Latino early in his Reliability career. Charles founded and led one of the first corporate, global Reliability Engineering R&D groups in the U.S. for a company called Allied Chemical at the time (known as Honeywell today). This was in 1972!
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Micromanagement is rarely praised but is sometimes very necessary. When new operations commence and procedures are being developed, or there is a high degree of complexity, it is essential to get things right and ‘micromanagement’ comes into its own. Training new people can require micromanagement until they get up to speed, understand an organisation’s processes and procedures, and develop any necessary experience. Also, if there is a need for greater control over an operation requiring accurate performance metrics then micromanagement will be the order of the day.
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Reliability engineers are responsible for keeping equipment or facilities operational, extending their useful lives, and managing maintenance costs by formulating relevant maintenance management policies and programs. They offer guidance to maintenance teams, analyze existing maintenance programs to identify opportunities for improvement. Unlike maintenance supervisors, these professionals rarely engage in the daily execution of maintenance tasks. The roles of reliability engineers span the entire lifecycle of an asset beginning from the design phase, operational stage to disposal. How do reliability engineers influence the gradual improvement of maintenance management in different organizations? [Read more…]
Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) is a relatively new concept (been around 10-12 years). It is a top down approach to business system management and execution It is a risk-based problem solving and decision-making process. Everything is looked through a risk prism.
I suspect that many of the companies that have adopted ERM have not implemented it to the fullest extent of its capabilities. The reason is it takes a cultural change to do so and many companies do not know how to do it. This paper by example explains how to change the culture in a company to fully and completely implement ERM. [Read more…]
Organisations exist in a dynamic world where business uncertainty and socio-political volatility can adversely affect their existence. The mass of data available and the contradictory interpretations that can be made add ambiguity and complexity to the mix. Our modern day organisations, or at least their management or leadership team realise, or should realise, that their operating environments are changing and, in order to adapt and survive, they too need to change.
Studies show most projects fail due to poor management of known risks. The known risks on a project are:
The question is how do we manage known risks better? Known risks can be significantly mitigated with application of basic Project Management methods and processes.
This article will address scope. The other known risks will be addressed in separate articles.
FMEA has an important relationship with risk management. This article provides an example of this relationship.
The suggested sequence is to first read the article “Relationship between FMEA and Risk Management” to learn about the interactions between FMEA and Risk Management at a high level. [Read more…]
Asset Management in Public and Private Sectors have some similarities and some contrasts. Most of our clients are in the private sector but occasionally we do some public sector work so we see both sides. Often, we notice distinct differences in practices and in what motivates those practices. Both have strengths and weaknesses. Both can learn a lot from each other. [Read more…]
How often does your facility run out of raw materials? Chances are it is not very often, if ever. Why is this? It may be because the organization has invested heavily in gathering the right data, analyzing and developing contracts for the materials. This prior work ensures a steady supply of materials.
So why is it that within the same organization there is virtually no data to support the spare parts? Not having a spare part can dramatically impact an organization in the same way as not having raw materials. The result is no production. [Read more…]
In an era of rapidly advancing technology, the need for training to keep up is imperative. But training alone is not the panacea to a facility’s problems. Management’s must be aware that the environment in which their people work, will either progress or obstruct any training that is provided to them. We will refer to our need to address the human element, as the “soft side” of technology. It is estimated that over $60B U.S. is spent on industrial training a year and that only 20% of that training investment is ever applied. Are we getting our money’s worth from our training investment? If not, here are some things to consider when training our personnel and using their valuable time from the field. [Read more…]
We’re excited to have Lucas Marino back. He works at Amentum and is the owner of the East Partnership. He’s also working on the book Level of Repair Analysis. In the past, he spent many years in logistics engineering and the coast guard. Lucas will be delving into Project Management as a vital aspect of any maintenance or reliability professional’s role.
Some of the important insights include:
and so much more!
COVID-19 is now among the ranks of The Black Death, Spanish ‘Flu, and SARS. Another submicroscopic demon is attacking humanity and bringing the mankind of this Information Age to its knees both physically and economically despite its insignificant size.
Viruses have been around longer than man and, when we become part of a future paleaontological record, they will still be plaguing whatever species takes over from us.
We also live alongside other virulent diseases that continue to plague the world. In 2018, TB affected 25% of the world’s population and caused some 1.5 million deaths while malaria affected 220 million people causing another 405,000 deaths. In addition, HIV/AIDS and other diseases such as measles, cholera, and typhoid contribute to the millions of deaths annually. Starvation, while not a disease, decimated mankind at an estimated rate of 21,000 per day in 2019. [Read more…]
Most of my career was spent with the Department of Defense (DOD) industry. The many programs I worked on included a fairly difficult reliability requirement. I was taught that reliability is designed into a system. I learned that verifying a reliability requirement was done by analysis. But for the system reliability to succeed, you need to consider the manufacturing and installation of the system. This is when risk management comes into play to ensure system reliability requirements succeed. This paper explains why. [Read more…]
