Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
A listing in reverse chronological order of articles by:
In the previous article (Enabling Agile Enterprise Risk Management Part II: Disciplines) I identified the disciplines necessary to enable you to transform your enterprise at speed. At the conclusion of that article, I promised to present a design for a repository and system to support AERM. This article will fulfill that promise.
[Read more…]
This is not an article about an endangered species plundered to near extinction as trophies for big game hunters or being poached for its aphrodisiacal ivory or describing a mythical elephant’s graveyard…it’s about those metaphorical elephants that frequent rooms in political corridors of power, boardroom suites and project offices around the World. Although these elephants are known to exist they are either not immediately recognised or conveniently avoided.
[Read more…]
I’m sure you’ve heard people referring to COVID-19 as a ‘Black Swan’ – something that no-one could have seen coming – but is that actually the case?
Terrible though it is, I don’t think it’s accurate to describe the current situation as a Black Swan because we’ve had to deal with highly contagious, deadly diseases before.
Calling this a ‘Black Swan’ is, therefore, a way to excuse a confused response: ‘how could we have prepared for something that no-one could see coming?’
However, genuine Black Swan events do exist and we need to understand these because the consequences can be significant. It’s also useful to know what we can and cannot do to prepare for Black Swans due to the uncertainty that these involve.
[Read more…]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.
[Read more…]
Failure Simulation has confirmed all root causes in the Storm Packer failure analysis. The focus is now on mitigations that prevent them from occurring again.
Mitigations are controls that prevent failures or reduce their probability of occurring. Ideally, an OEM implements mitigations to the product through Design for Reliability (DfR) activities before commercialization. Some mitigations may be best practices in product design. Others may be best practices for installation or maintenance processes. Some have been acquired through FRACAS programs. However, all will be based on institutional knowledge.
[Read more…]In David McKee’s book for children ‘Not Now Bernard’, a young boy tries to warn his parents about a monster in the yard, but they’re too busy to pay attention. All they say is ‘not now Bernard’ and ignore him. In the end, the monster eats Bernard and moves into the house, but his parents are still too busy to notice.
[Read more…]Punch lines, ad-libs, and instrumental solos, even a single note on a Tibetan singing bowl, all depend on one thing…timing. Project Communication is also about timing and, whilst many people speak and opine with impunity the timing of written communication and converting possibly wild words into black & white can often mean the difference between collaboration and cooperation or resistance and antagonism.
[Read more…]
With the Storm Packer Root Cause Analysis complete, the probable RCs will be known. The next step is to confirm causation of the failure. In Failure Simulation (FS) the goal is to confirm cause and effect. When more than one probable RC has been identified, the FS will consist of multiple simulation tasks. How extensive will the Storm Packer’s FS program be?
[Read more…]
In many ways, I am sure society is well aware of certain leadership principles that have stood the test of time in business environments. Personality traits such as integrity, honesty, and responsibility immediately come to mind; however, in a disruptive world, there are more that, many do not realize, are vital to professional success to find certainty.
[Read more…]
The information collected in the Storm Packer (SP) failure (Information) will establish:
When people think of problem-solving, their mind may instinctively jump to thoughts of things that are broken or things that need fixing.
Problem to most people is a matter or situation regarded as unwelcome or harmful and needing to be dealt with and overcome. [Read more…]
In failure analysis, the collection of information is a tedious but necessary step that determines success in the root cause analysis (RCA), simulation, and mitigation phases. In Article 2, the SME identified five areas of possible root causes for the SP failure, further explained in Table 1.
[Read more…]
Studies show most projects fail due to poor management of known risks. The known risks on a project are:
How to minimize the schedule risk on a project is addressed in this paper. The approach to do this is based on my 30 years of project and project risk management experience and knowledge.
[Read more…]
Effective execution is a matter of dealing with scarcity: a scarcity of time, a scarcity of resources, and scarcity of information (although too much information can also cause problems). Tools like a risk assessment help manage this scarcity by prioritizing things to allow you to better allocate resources on what’s most important.
[Read more…]
Analysis of the Storm Packer (SP) failure in Article 1 will be complicated. Some stakeholders will assume that the SP was defective, some will assume the drilling crew made mistakes, and others will assume that wellbore conditions predisposed the SP to fail. Any of these may explain the failure of the first SP, but only rigorous due diligence will uncover the root cause(s). What should be investigated, and what will be the roadmap for the analysis? [Read more…]
