Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
I would find it hard to believe that any successful person achieved that success without having at least one mentor along their journey – someone who was instrumental and influential in the life journey of the person being mentored (the mentee). But what is mentorship? [Read more…]
Forming an ideal system’s approach to designing new systems involves developing paradigms, standards, and design process models for developers to follow in their future design efforts. These paradigms are called “words of wisdom” or golden rules [1]. They become the guiding lights for your product management needs. [Read more…]
The title is based on a comment: “The quality fear factor is gone.” The assumption behind the comment is that fear often motivates behavioral change. This was certainly true for the quality movement. But, if the movement was driven by fear, what happens when the fear is no longer there? Does anything replace it? This piece looks at these questions. [Read more…]
If your machines aren’t running smooth, clean, cool, and dry, there’s no way you will ever be able to get its lifetime out of it. When you are facing such situation where one of these indicators isn’t being met by your machine, it’s time for a change. To make a change in the way you treat your assets, you need to start asking the questions. If you don’t know or understand something, ask someone who can help you make sense of things. If you don’t have the tools for solving a problem, start getting the support of management to invest in the equipment.
In this episode, we covered:
And much more!
There’s no denying the power of the Internet of Things (IoT) on our everyday lives. Connected devices provide us with the convenience we’ve become so accustomed to. Take the Amazon Echo, for example. It’s much easier to ask Alexa to add an item to your grocery list than it is to write it down. But IoT technology doesn’t just impact consumers, it’s transforming the way companies do business. And integrating IoT with CMMS software opens up a world of new possibilities for maintenance management professionals.
The use of CMMS (computerized maintenance management systems) software to streamline maintenance operations and reduce costs has existed for many years. However, new capabilities within CMMS software have been realized thanks to IoT technology. Aside from convenience, the IoT provides greater reliability through its vast data connections. Going back to the Amazon Echo example, you can’t always rely on yourself to remember to bring a written grocery list with you to the store. But you can rely on a list generated by a cloud-based voice service and access it through your mobile device. Data stored within the cloud works to the same advantage for maintenance professionals—it gives them the ability to simplify and improve many tasks.
This week on Masterminds in Maintenance, we hear from James Kovacevic, Principal Instructor at Eruditio, joining our podcast all the way from Ontario, Canada. James is principal instructor at Eruditio an adult education firm based in Charleston, South Carolina focused on applying core skills associated with Asset Management, Lean Six Sigma, and organizational change leadership. We discuss James’ journey from electrician, to maintenance planner and manager, reliability engineer, then global reliability consultant.
[Read more…]
There are very few people that actually enjoy meetings. I have never heard anyone say, “I can’t wait for the meeting this afternoon” unless it’s followed by “I won’t have to eat at my desk.”
Certainly, the people who are called to attend a meeting largely lack enthusiasm are energetic unless they, or their project, are the reason for the meeting – and even then, only if it’s expected to be a positive experience for them. And the person calling the meeting will not usually be enthusiastic or energetic unless the reason for the meeting is something joyous or dreadful – or unless they are an autocrat or narcissist who just wants to tell people what to do, how to do it – and otherwise ladle-on (usually unreasonable) commands and demands. [Read more…]
No Surprises! author, James Reyes-Picknell is a regular writer of the Conscious Asset series. You can learn more about James at his bio.
If we are to be good at Asset Management we need to understand what it is and what it is not, begin to think of our business more holistically, consider our role as contributing to a greater whole and start behaving differently. Once we’ve achieved that, Asset Management should be sustained – it never stops. Putting it in place is not just a project with a beginning and end although it may start that way. It is really about putting in place a new corporate culture and continually improving it. This book speaks to those changes and how to go about doing it.
CMMS stands for Computerized Maintenance Management System. These systems have been in existence since somewhere around 1965. They have, however, seen a dramatic shift from punch cards to the modern architecture we see today.
Steve Ricard of Fiix joins in this episode to share his insights on how organizations can make a successful transition from older to more modern CMMS.
The focus areas for the episode are:
The U.S. federal government is beginning a shift from a reactive approach to a risk event such as a flood or hurricane, to a proactive approach to risk management. This can be seen clearly in the changes to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) requirements as stated in the 2018 Disaster Recovery Reform Act (DRRA) and the Draft National Mitigation Investment Strategy. This piece looks at these changes. [Read more…]
Guest Post by Geary Sikich (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)
Some interesting points about how organizations apply current standards such as Business Impact Analysis (Assessment) (BIA), risk assessment methodologies, compliance and planning has been written about lately. Each author presents good arguments for their particular methodology. Nassim Taleb created the concept of “Antifragile” because he did not feel that “resilience” adequately described the need for organizations to be ready to absorb the impact of an event and bounce back quickly. [Read more…]
Chris and Fred discuss reliability leadership. What is reliability leadership? Writing a book? Putting together a few slides? The first thing to know is that there is a difference between a reliability manager and a reliability leader. A reliability manager will tend to oversee practices and processes that others have identified or put together. Reliability leaders come up with the rationale, the motivation, the linking with business outcomes and everything else that creates or sustains organizational change. You can have the ‘best’ reliability engineers – but without reliability leadership, you won’t make reliable products. Want to learn more? Listen to this podcast.
ᐅ Play Episode
“Luck is not chance, it’s toil; fortune’s expensive smile is earned.”
Emily Dickinson
The Oxford English dictionary defines “occurrence” as “the fact or frequency of something happening.”
Reference the article Understanding FMEA Occurrence Risk – Part 1 which discusses how Occurrence is defined and applied in FMEA.
The internet of Things (IoT) is often assumed to be understood by everyone. However, there is somewhat of a disconnect between what we know IoT to be, and actually implementing it especially on larger scale.
Kevin Clark helps us clear the air around IoT and how organizations can prepare themselves to make the most of it.
ᐅ Play Episode
Reliability is a procedural science at its core. This simply means that it is guided by a discipline to follow the set procedure and incrementally improve. As human beings, we tend to have a slight weakness in strict adherence to procedures. Sometimes with reliability, it is usually a result of not having the fundamentals down that we end up with inconsistent operations. Ricky Smith, a renowned reliability expert shared nuggets of wisdom from his seasoned experiences. ᐅ Play Episode
