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Find all articles across all article series listed in reverse chronological order.
If you have ever been involved in manufacturing or quality-related conversations, you may have heard of ‘Statistical Process Control’ or SPC. And if you Google SPC you will find a bunch of ‘textbooky’ definitions which are likely going to make you run away and never think of it again.
But you shouldn’t. [Read more…]
Critical is defined as “a situation or problem having the potential to become disastrous”. A system of physical well barriers is used in offshore wells to mitigate against a disastrous event. The United States Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) refers to Category 1 and 2 well barriers. A failure of a barrier can lead to a blowout or fluids spill into the ocean, either of which is high severity. Thus, it is customary in the upstream energy industry to refer to well barriers as “critical equipment”. [Read more…]
Disruption is a central component of the Anticipatory Organization Model, focusing closely on how Anticipatory Organizations and individuals can look at disruption and see enormous opportunities.
The untimely situation we currently face with COVID-19 is no exception; not only has every industry been touched by the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent lockdown, every country has. There is literally no safe haven from this disease, and businesses both large and small have found themselves in a predicament unlike ever before. [Read more…]
The original edition of Uptime had “process re-engineering” as a 4th level at its pinnacle. It reflected what was then widely regarded as an approach to obtain beneficial change quickly. But, since the 1990’s that approach, was abused and used as a smoke-screen for downsizing or right-sizing as many would prefer to call it. That was never intended by the originators of “Business Process Re-engineering”, but it is what happened. It was lopped off the top of the pyramid in the 2nd edition – process re-design belongs as a result of strategy, not as a panacea for poorly designed and executed process. Processes should be revisited BEFORE implementation of IT / IM and occasionally it should all be reviewed as part of good governance, just like audits. The fundamental processes of good maintenance management practice are already described in this book’s chapters – how they appear on flow charts or value stream maps is up to each user. The third tier in Uptime (1st edition) was about Continuous Improvement, but it contained methods that were both more fundamental in their importance and more sophisticated than the tweaking that “continuous improvement” implies. [Read more…]
Manufacturer recommended maintenance tasks may be technically right for the machine. But watch to discover why not all maintenance tasks are one-size-fits all. [Read more…]
Statistical Process Control charts have been called the Voice of the Process. Progressive manufacturers utilize control charts to “listen” to their processes so that potentially harmful changes will be quickly detected and rectified. However, not all SPC programs deliver to their highest capability as there are many elements to get right to achieve maximum utility. Highly effective SPC programs combine technical competencies, such as using an appropriate chart and sample size for the application, with effective management techniques such as enabling operator buy-in and involvement. This article identifies ten keys that unleash the power of SPC. [Read more…]
I guess I am writing this just as a reality/sanity check to see if it’s just me, or do my peers in the Reliability profession have the same problems I do, communicating with non-Reliability professionals?
If anyone has been in the Reliability game for a long period of time (I am in my 32nd year), we know that Reliability is a way of life and not just a job. So our proactive thinking, involuntarily bleeds over into our personal lives. [Read more…]
(Association) football (or ‘soccer’ in some countries) is the world’s most popular sport. Most professional leagues (especially in Europe) have different tiers of competition where the bottom performers of one tier are ‘relegated’ to the next tier down at the end of each season, while the top performers of each tier are ‘promoted’ to the next tier up. This means that any club could feasibly work its way to the top tier of every league. [Read more…]
Ralph Evans was editor of the IEEE Transactions on Reliability from 1969 until 2004. He was a very good editor for my 1977 article, and he used me as a reviewer, because I was critical of BS and academic exercises. Ralph moved to University Retirement Community, Davis, CA. He died in 2013, https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6587564. I wish I’d known he lived nearby so I could have visited and argued with him.
Ralph’s editorials [1 and 2] pled, “Data, Data, Oh Where Art Thou Data?” He wrote, “Field-data are largely garbage. I believe they deserve all the negative thinking possible.” “True field-data are wonderful-much better than fancy equations. Unfortunately, they are very difficult to get. Thus data from the field are largely garbage because they do not represent what really happened.” [Read more…]
If you have invested the time to layout the storeroom correctly, and gather the right data, you are on the right track to a successful storeroom. However, if you don’t take the time to map the various processes in the storeroom, and hold staff to those processes, the work is done so far will be a waste.
When processes are mapped and responsibilities defined, the staff know who does what when. This eliminates unnecessary communication and work, enabling more time to do what is required. In addition, when all activities are repeated in a consistent way, it allows organizations to evaluate the process and determine better ways of working. [Read more…]
In my previous post, I asserted that many companies are not good at managing risks and I’ll stand by that statement. They’re not good at identifying them, poor at pinpointing dependencies, don’t understand the interactions that create or exacerbate risks and fail to actively quantify and evaluate the effectiveness of their risk management programs. I believe that a number of disciplines should be applied to help address these issues.
Let’s talk about Enterprise Architecture. No! Don’t run away. We’ll keep it at a layman’s level and try to avoid the need to employ an electron microscope to voluminous diagrams of elements of your company’s structure in order to make any sense of it. [Read more…]
In the first edition, the second tier of the pyramid was called “control”. Of course the harder we try to control something, the more complex we make things, and the more likely they will go awry. If you have teenage children you can see that very clearly! You want them to learn and mature, but if you try to control how they do it, you will have trouble. Less control, while providing guidelines and advice, and letting them make their choices will work far better. In “Uptime” the emphasis is on successful practice, not control. Control is exercised in how you decide to implement the practices. The practices remain “essential” to your success no matter how you deploy them. The subjects covered in this level of the pyramid have remained much the same throughout all three editions of Uptime but they’ve grown richer in detail, providing more insight, and with emphasis on how tightly integrated they really need to be with each other. [Read more…]
Aside from meeting specific requirements within quality standards such as ISO 9001 and ISO 13485, well-designed quality system metrics can also serve as meaningful indicators of the strengths and weaknesses of your organization’s processes. As a quality manager, I often consider how precisely our quality system objectives and other metrics describe the effectiveness of our quality processes. Certain metrics such as customer-reported DPPM and customer survey results usually serve to indicate your customers’ satisfaction related to quality. As metrics such as these are tracked over time, managers get a general sense of improvement or decline. Composite measures such as these, however, do not discriminate between quality assurance (preventive) and quality control activities. [Read more…]
Do you ever feel married to your equipment? That’s because Inherent Reliability is like a marriage in one big way… [Read more…]