
Trick question, it’s neither!
When we hear people use the term ‘error’ it is normally associated with being the cause of some type of bad outcome. We hear it all the time with airline accidents where they conclude ‘pilot error’.
‘Error’ is neither the cause nor the undesirable outcome! Let’s see why.
Is the only type of error a ‘human error’? I struggled to think of an ‘error’ that is not a human error, so I asked if others could think of something else. I would like to thank Dr. Peter Elias who commented that errors can occur in biologic processes, such as RNA and DNA replication or messaging. He also cited non-human animals make errors all the time as well.
A major asset is being installed, and the asset is vital to the success of a brand new, high-profit product being introduced to the site. This product is enough to keep the site operational for many years to come. The installation of the asset is critical, and there is extensive prep work to eliminate 


As the kids go back to school, maintenance, reliability, and asset management professional resume their professional learning. This learning usually takes place at one of the numerous world-class conferences available across North America and internationally. These conferences allow professionals to observe and connect with the latest tools, technology, and techniques in our amazing profession.


The first step to any reliability improvement program is to define what data or information will be required to drive defect elimination. In the previous posts, the following topics were discussed;
As maintenance, reliability, and asset management professionals, we are in an amazing time. We can collect virtually limitless amounts of data on the condition of our assets. With this data, we can determine the exact condition of the assets, predict when the next failure is likely to occur and how it will occur. Besides, with all of this data, we can move to prescriptive maintenance, where the maintenance actions are determined based on the asset condition, not a predetermined strategy. I’ll touch more on prescriptive maintenance in next week’s post. 

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