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on Maintenance Reliability

A listing in reverse chronological order of these article series:


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Safety vs Reliability

Safety vs Reliability

by Alan Ross

I went to Washington recently to represent the SMRP Government Relations Smart Grid Committee, of which I am now the chair. I was there with other folks from SMRP to talk about the smart grid, and we ended up talking a lot about safety. The Society for Maintenance and Reliability Professionals—the fastest growing reliability organization in the world—is about to become an OSHA Alliance organization. That’s a big deal, because there are only a few organizations in the alliance and you have to jump through a lot of hoops to get in. SMRP has done that. [Read more…]

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Myth busting 28: RCM is expensive

Myth busting 28: RCM is expensive

Many of you may be surprised to learn that Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) was actually developed with cost cutting in mind! Aircraft maintenance costs were huge. For example the Douglas DC-8-32 aircraft (a four engine narrow body jet liner built from 1958 to 1967 that carried 150 passengers) required upwards of 4,000,000 man hours of maintenance work for only 20,000 hours of flying time! That’s 200 maintenance hours per operational revenue earning hour. With growing demand for air travel in those years, wide bodied aircraft were being designed (B747, DC-10 and L-1011). But air travel was prohibitively expensive. That limits the size of the market and growth potential. A solution was needed. [Read more…]

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Root Cause Analysis vs. Shallow Cause Analysis: What’s the Difference?

Root Cause Analysis vs. Shallow Cause Analysis: What’s the Difference?

In a recent BMJ article entitled ‘Our current approach to root cause analysis: is it contributing to our failure to improve patient safety?‘, the authors’ state “Although RCA’s have been proposed as a mechanism for change, safety scientists believe the lack of improvement of adverse event rates in healthcare is largely because our methods of approaching change are ineffective”. [Read more…]

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5 Ways To Improve Reliability Of Performed Maintenance Work

5 Ways To Improve Reliability Of Performed Maintenance Work

Improving the reliability of performed maintenance work helps in the refinement and improvement of policies that shape a cost-effective maintenance strategy that aims to address dominant causes of asset failure.

Before we continue, we have to define how reliable maintenance looks like. In the context of this article, we will define it as consistently performing adequate maintenance in the required time frame. In other words, it means performing good maintenance work while respecting due dates.

[Read more…]

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Myth busting 27: RCM is only for new assets

Myth busting 27: RCM is only for new assets

Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) was developed in the airline industry to be used for developing maintenance programs for new aircraft. There’s no doubting it – originally RCM was intended for new designs and arguably where the results of failure could be catastrophic, specifically the loss of life and where costs of maintaining had grown ridiculously high. Aircraft maintenance costs had indeed grown very high by the 1960’s and 70’s before RCM came along. In fact, one of the big drivers behind RCM was cost reduction. It worked too – in both the aerospace and nuclear power industries! Safety and other benefits were there too, but they were not primary drivers. Then, as today, cost was the problem that got the attention. [Read more…]

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Leaders & Losers

Leaders & Losers

by Alan Ross

As professionals in the field of electrical system reliability, we have a choice.

We can follow the leaders, or we can follow the losers.

 

It may seem harsh to say that there are “losers” out there, because that’s one of the words that nobody likes to hear. Well, I don’t mean “loser” in the same way kids do when they hold up an “L” on their foreheads on the playground (see above). I mean it in the literal sense. A loser is someone who has experienced loss. [Read more…]

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Myth busting 26: I’ve read the book, now I’m…

Myth busting 26: I’ve read the book, now I’m…

Educational institutions realize that we all learn differently and combinations of learning styles will reach most of us. Some of us learn by seeing (reading), some by doing (tactile), some by hearing (aural). Most of us have a bit of each of these and rarely only one is enough. In college and university there is reading as well as assignment and lab work. We need both, so, how do we learn once we leave the academic world? [Read more…]

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Swiss Cheese and Our Healthcare

Swiss Cheese and Our Healthcare

The graphic of the Swiss Cheese Model (attached is an expression from AHRQ) is a good one and one that many will remember and relate to.

However, I would like to expand on that model and express that more commonly, there is a not a singular or linear path to failure. There are typically multiple paths of failure that converge together at some point in time to cause an undesirable outcome. [Read more…]

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Myth Busting 25: We need engineers to do RCM

Myth Busting 25: We need engineers to do RCM

Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) is method for determining the most appropriate failure and consequence management strategies. It deals with your physical assets in your current operating context. The first four questions in the RCM method, are defined in standard, SAE JA-1011, “Evaluation Criteria for Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) Processes.” They utilize the time proven engineering method, Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA). [Read more…]

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Why is Nobody Talking About This?

Why is Nobody Talking About This?

I had to learn a lot to become a transformer reliability leader. I have an engineering background and a transformer maintenance and testing background, but to be the practitioner I wanted to be I had to get educated. I sought out reliability knowledge. I found much of that knowledge through reading and research. It started with Google searches and Wikipedia articles, and it eventually led to half-a-dozen subscriptions to magazines and journals related to the field. It’s incredibly important to keep up-to-date with the industry and with reliability. [Read more…]