Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
All articles listed in reverse chronological order.
The clever Dr. John Snow mapped cholera cases during the epidemic of 1854 on a street map of the area. This type of mapping now called a measles chart, or defect location check sheet, or defect map, is useful when exploring the effect of location data.
The name measles chart may have come from the habit of using an image of drawing of a product and adding small red dots to signify defect locations.
Statistical Process Control is about addressing business needs. It is not about charts. It is not even about control. It is about focused learning and taking action. Our successful implementation history means that we can help you too! [Read more…]
“. . . not everything that can be counted counts” Albert Einstein
A key, but often missed, step in FMEA preparation is to identify and prioritize the functions that relate to the item being analyzed. These become candidate functions to be brought into the FMEA.
A recent call to us asked about “Understanding Variation.” What does that really mean? We explore the topic with you in this video. [Read more…]
Would you spend $100 every week to prevent a possible issue that will result in a loss of $10? Probably not, so why is that we do that with our maintenance programs every single day? Often, PM and PdM activities are put into place without any thought to the economic impact of the activity. While in theory the PM or PdM activities will prevent or mitigate the consequences of the failure, is implementing one of these activities the right thing to do?
Guest Post by Robert Pojasek (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)
There are two widely-used risk management standards:
In my previous blog[i], I presented details on how these risk management standards address the development of a risk-aware culture – a necessary foundation for risk management success. As promised, this blog will address the risk management “process.” This is how the organization addresses specific risks. [Read more…]
DOE is often seen as a manufacturing tool, or at least as a technical tool. However, any process with inputs and outputs can be improved with this tool. This video talks about 3 areas, including a focus on a running DOE which found a surprising medical issue. [Read more…]
The MTBF calculation is widely used to evaluate the reliability of parts and equipment, in the industry is usually defined as one of the key performance indicators. This short article is intended to demonstrate in practice how we can fool ourselves by evaluating this indicator in isolation. [Read more…]
In brainstorming, you may face a large number of unique ideas even after affinity diagraming. Multi-voting is a great tool to gain consensus on the top priority ideas with your team.
For less than 10 or so items we could use a rank ordering method, yet that method becomes cumbersome when there are a lot of items to prioritize. There are a couple of ways to conduct multiple-voting. Mastering this technique will help your team quickly focus on what is truly important. [Read more…]
Projects go wrong and in our binary world projects either succeed or fail. There is a plethora of articles, opinions and reasons for such success and failure but why, and how, is this possible when we have more and more ‘qualified’ project managers?
When a project is still moving or hasn’t fallen apart it may be categorised as “it ain’t broke” and optimistic project managers may conclude “no need to fix it“. However, we all know that preventive maintenance will allow for successful operation and minimise breakdowns and avoid trouble, “a stitch in time saves nine“. [Read more…]
What is numerical optimization? What are the limits of the approach? It can be used while trying to obtain robust design, but constraints need to be understood. [Read more…]
Nearly 10 years ago, on an early morning trip to Rochester, New York’s Public Market, my wife and I walked by an old quonset hut where I could see an artist was using a cutting torch to heat and shape a piece of metal. With his back to the street, the light emanating from the torch outlined his body in a flashing smoke-filled halo. While I focused on this image, my wife Leslie was eyeing up the Artists’ work that was proudly displayed outside his shop.
“He does nice work, we should stop on our way out of the market and look around.”
That day would be the first of many trips we would make to the Lasting Art shop.
John Grieco is a Firefighter, Business Owner and Artist from Rochester, NY. If you live in the Rochester area or for that matter, anywhere in Western, New York, you have seen some of John’s amazing metal work. [Read more…]
If you are lucky enough to have good failure data history in your CMMS, you are one of the few. But even if you have the data, can you use it to make a difference to your organization? Obviously, the data can be used to perform certain reliability engineering analyses, but what can those without reliability engineering experience do with the data?
Just think of all the changes occurring in your organization. New regulations. Changing customers with new product preferences. New competitive product offerings. New technologies. New branding. New business platforms. New business models. Compressed lifecycles. Change is no longer gradual. Change is rapid and abrupt.
Supply Chain Risk Management (SCRM) is being able to adapt to disruptive changes occurring in supply chains, management, and even all professions (quality, engineering, supply management, etc.). As well, we believe general management is evolving into risk management.
A few years ago, we believed competitiveness was the supply chain paradigm buster. We even wrote in Supply Management Strategies:
“Capitalism, competitiveness, dot.com profitability, and innovation are today’s paradigm busters. They are what drive today’s New Economy. Capitalism is triumphant in almost every activity in every corner of the world. National boundaries are disappearing as goods and services move freely. Competitiveness and innovation are continually destroying the current business paradigm. Just as a business feels it has found its niche and understands what is going on, supply management and sourcing rules change again.” [Read more…]
Tom Izzo has often talked about the difference between winning games and winning championships. Observing him, I believe I understand his comment better now. [Read more…]