Rooted in Reliability: The Plant Performance Podcast

A weekly Maintenance and Reliability podcast covering common industry challenges and what you can learn from them. Each episode dives deeper into critical issues and explains how you can begin correcting theses maintenance flaws today. Sharing new tips and techniques to help you achieve industry best practice and shining a light on widely debated maintenance topics with special guest experts.

Your host and founder of High Performance Reliability James Kovacevic, will take you on a weekly tour of his 13+ years of shop floor experience, along with special guest that lend an expert look inside your maintenance departments problems and concerns.

Plane, train, or automobile, however you’re traveling to work Rooted In Reliability is compatible for listening on the go.

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128 – How to Deal with the Top 5 Most Frequent Pump Failures with Heinz Bloch

How to Deal with the Top 5 Most Frequent Pump Failures with Heinz Bloch

In the first part of this podcast episode, we covered the state of pumps in facilities and process industries and the top 5 pump failures and their causes. What’s the best way to deal with these? Is it proper design specifications, proper engineering upfront? Is it a maintenance program? Or is it a combination of the two? In this second and last part of our podcast episode with Heinz Bloch, we are going to find out what has been implemented to address these failures.
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127 – The Top 5 Most Frequent Pump Failures with Heinz Bloch

The Top 5 Most Frequent Pump Failures with Heinz Bloch

Being one of the most important parts in automotive and aircraft industries, pumps are no exception to failure modes. The reason why pump failures exist is because either people think the pumps are not that important or they just know it and simply don’t want to take enough time to fix the problems. They just go about either replacing the pumps or just relying on the reserved pumps. They don’t even bother to eliminate the repeating failures by finding the root cause.
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126 – What is Mobile Maintenance with Scott Deckers

What is Mobile Maintenance with Scott Deckers

Imagine going on a trip or being someplace and you remembered something important that you wanted to check on your organization’s CMMS but didn’t have access to where you at currently? How would you handle such situation? This is where app technology comes in and one of the top quality features that every industry has got its eyes on.

With the Mobile Maintenance apps or software installed in your tablets or mobile phones, you can now remotely access any CMMS information, failure data, historical data, and everything else at your finger tips, anytime. It’s like doing maintenance on the go.
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125 – Inventory Optimization with Andrew Jordan

Inventory Optimization with Andrew Jordan

Inventory management program is intrinsic in every organization. Although the structure varies from one organization to another, however, it typically includes setting the limits for every asset, capital investment and stock, as well as setting the lead time for stock purchases. Some organizations focus on optimizing their inventory based on reducing the capital investment. Others take availability of the assets into consideration. If you think about it, the latter strategy is much more effective if implemented successfully. It not only ensures the availability of assets when needed but also reduces unnecessary maintenance cost. Thus, resulting in capital optimization along with increased ROI.
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124 – Building a Maintenance Management Program with Brandon Weil

Building a Maintenance Management Program with Brandon Weil

When you think of an asset management program, what comes into your mind? Is it the CMMS? Is it the EAM? Or is it any other tool that helps you keep track of your assets and allows you to manage them? While CMMS and EAM help a lot in managing organizational assets efficiently but a comprehensive asset management program is much more than just computer software. It consists of all those other systems, procedures, and processes that support your CMMS or any other system you might have in place. You might not need a detailed asset management program if you have small-scale business.
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123 – World Class Lubrication with Robert Kalwarowsky

World Class Lubrication with Robert Kalwarowsky

In a previous episode with our guest speaker Heinz Bloch, we covered how certain organizations were able to achieve best-in-class reliability programs. In this podcast episode, we’ll dig into what makes for a world-class lubrication program. Truth be told, only a very few organizations achieved and are implementing world-class lubrication programs. Obviously, there are certain best practices that they do that others don’t.
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122 – Asset Effectiveness Model with Paul Daoust

Asset Effectiveness Model with Paul Daoust

In asset management, the organizations have a lot to do. They can’t go about making intelligent decisions every time without the help of team leaders and their engineering team. They are the ones who have to find the balance between performance cost, risks, and ROI. If they make good decisions, the organization’s top-level management will be able to focus on other things. They will be able to make sure that all the resources are provided for. The training, coaching, and implementation processes are going the way they are supposed to. This is where Asset Effectiveness model comes in handy.
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121 – Starting with Mathematical Foundations with Fred Schenkelberg

Starting with Mathematical Foundations with Fred Schenkelberg

Every system in the world, no matter how complex, is designed on an algorithm. All the systems use the same basic principles of mathematics. When there is a failure in a system, there’s a logical explanation for its occurrence. Every engineering principles that vendors follow to build the machines and every calculative functionality they add to it so that it will work the way it is is based on mathematics. That’s why it is very important to have strong mathematical foundation in a reliability-oriented organization.
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120 – What is the Difference between RGA and Weibull with Fred Schenkelberg

What is the Difference between RGA and Weibull with Fred Schenkelberg

Predictive maintenance is the backbone of reliability and maintenance industry. This is why every organization tends to use tools that can help them foresee the possible failures ahead of time and take preemptive measures. No matter how much you spend on building a sustainable program, there are always deficiencies left somewhere. You have to know at every stage what these deficiencies are to successfully get where you want to go exactly. This is where Reliability Growth Analysis (RGA) (or Crow-AMSAA, as oftentimes referred to) helps you with its wide applications. When you have a specific problem, focusing on a single failure mode, and have all the data related to it, it is good to use Weibull Analysis.
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119 – What Customers Need is an Asset Management Program, Not Software with John Reeve

What Customers Need is an Asset Management Program, Not Software with John Reeve

When organizations feel the need to run their sites in a better and informed way, they tend to purchase different software that will help them get the answers they need. What they don’t realize is that software is only as good as the people using it. When you don’t have data input to the system, the output is most likely to be inaccurate. You can purchase a CMMS or any other reliability software but if you don’t know what it is that you want from the software, it is no good to anyone.
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118 – Leadership with Erin Saylor

Leadership with Erin Saylor

Leadership is the key to achieving your goals in an organization. Without leadership, every process is destined to fall apart with time. That’s why it is so important to know what does it mean to be a true leader and how to improve your leadership skills as you move along. The first thing a leader needs to have is a code or principle that he never breaks no matter what. That means he needs to follow the rules first before he starts making any. He should be a good follower in as much as he is a good leader.
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117 – RCM with Nancy Regan

RCM with Nancy Regan

RCM principles have been around for nearly 50 years now, and its process for nearly 40 years. Surprisingly, there is still a wide misconception and most people still don’t understand the term that is RCM. So, what is RCM or Reliability-Centered Maintenance? RCM is one of the most efficient and effective proactive maintenance processes that is considered one of the most powerful asset management tools. One of the great things about RCM is that you can apply it to any industry or your daily life. It has one of the most diverse applications in the world.
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116 – Repair vs Replace Decision Making with Susan Lubell

Repair vs Replace Decision Making with Susan Lubell

Without questions, organizations in the world need their assets to be optimal and to run efficiently. They can’t afford downtime because of the production targets they have to achieve. That is why they have to make a smart decision. They can either refurbish the assets or replace them. But the question is, when is refurbishing preferred over replacement? With refurbishment, you check the life-cycle cost of an asset. Sometimes, companies make small repairs because it’s relatively inexpensive and they can easily get the asset up and running quickly versus replacing the asset which may take time in lieu of internal approval process and purchase lead time.
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115 – Ultrasound-Assisted Lubrication with Adrian Messer

Ultrasound-Assisted Lubrication with Adrian Messer

Proper lubrication is one of the most important things to consider to keep the equipment up and running. When the equipment is over-lubricated or under-lubricated, it can lead to premature failures and increased maintenance costs. So how do we know how much lubrication a machine or a parts needs? What tools can be used for a precise amount of lubrication?
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114 – Electrical Safety Survey Review with Tom Wilk

Electrical Safety Survey Review with Tom Wilk

The usage of electricity in doing the day-to-day tasks in the workplace is a common practice. The safety of the workers and maintaining the electrical equipment is just as important as the maintenance of other systems. There are electrical safety programs in place but still, there are a lot of fatalities in the workplace because of exposure to sensitive electricity-based tools. There are safety manuals in place but there are other reasons that these safety issues occur all the time in the maintenance and reliability industry. This may be due to lack of training or with electrical safety programs not in compliance with the work environment—region, country, and other regulatory compliances.
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