Accendo Reliability

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All articles listed in reverse chronological order.

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The Difference Between Risk Management and Enterprise Risk Management

The Difference Between Risk Management and Enterprise Risk Management

The uncertainty concerning the future performance of a product or system is a risk to the customer and supplying organization. A product that fails too often or in an unsafe manner may require repair, replacement, or a recall.

A product’s performance including its reliability performance reflects on the organization that designs, builds, and sells the product. A poor reliability performance is no longer a risk to that individual product, rather it is a risk to the product line and organization as well.

Reliability professionals have long been involved with identifying and mitigating risks. The increased emphasis on enterprise risk management through standards such as ISO 31000 require reliability professionals to consider the larger risk management framework and how reliability related risks fit within the larger context. [Read more…]

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Facilitation Skills for Reliability Engineers

Facilitation Skills for Reliability Engineers

We facilitate. As reliability professionals, we often lead teams to identify risk. We help cross-functional teams find and implement solutions. We bring people together and ease their ability to communicate clearly with each other.

Whether a leader or participant we have a role to achieve the desired goals. Our ability to facilitate enables us to work with others to get things done. Understanding how to facilitate well permits us to add value when leading or participating on a team. [Read more…]

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Is Technology Failing Me?

Is Technology Failing Me?

I no sooner accepted the meeting notice for a public training event in Europe that my mind began to race. The dates were setting off bells in my head for some reason so I pulled out my cell phone and checked my calendar.

The only thing now scheduled for those dates were the training events in Europe yet for some reason I still could not let go of the thought that I had something else scheduled for those dates. [Read more…]

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The Importance of Reliability Education

The Importance of Reliability Education

The importance of reliability education in a product development program cannot be understated.  A design initiative with mechanical content can be created solely by the mechanical team, same for electrical, and software.  These other disciplines will create a better product if they collaborate from the start, but this is not necessary. A successful product can still be created if they intersect later.  Reliability doesn’t have this flexibility.  Reliability tools don’t have a deliverable like a function or a feature.  They are an assist for the function or feature during the process of creation.  As an assist discipline, it only works if implemented while the other processes are in motion.  Attempting to add it after the design has been completed requires a deconstruction of the previous work if improvements are needed. [Read more…]

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Understanding FMEA Effects: Part 1

Understanding FMEA Effects: Part 1

If a Tree Falls in a Forest . . .

Why do you think FMEA procedure requires effects to be taken to the system or end user? Why not describe the consequence only at the local level. If a bolt in a complex system fails, the parts that the bolt was clamping together may come apart. Isn’t that enough?

“Wisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences.”
Norman Cousins

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Leverage the Data within Your CMMS

Leverage the Data within Your CMMS

Unlock the Potential of Your CMMS by Accessing the Data Within

If you have properly selected and implemented your CMMS, you have the ability to truly make significant improvements in your operation.  This is made a reality by using the data within the CMMS to make data driven decisions instead of intuition or feelings.  This ensures the business resources are spent on the most important and strategic issues for the business.

In order to leverage the data within your CMMS, you have to ensure the data can be captured and reported easily.  This is usually done during the implementation phase. [Read more…]

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Changing Out Dust Bags in Reverse Pulse Dust Collectors

Changing Out Dust Bags in Reverse Pulse Dust Collectors

Changing out dust bags in reverse pulse dust collectors. The dust bags in pulse jet dust collectors require replacement if damaged and leaking or if blinded by the product. This work procedure indicates the process and methods to use to change-out and replace dust bags and cages in a dust collector. Keywords: tube plate, bag collar, air manifold, air plenum.

  • Clean out product in the plenum.
  • Mark-up a tube plate map showing the location of all blocked-off bags or leaking bags and hand-in with the work order on completion.
  • Lift cages out square to tube plate without damaging the cage collar. Use tee-handle hook tool that fits down the bag and hooks onto the cage wire ring two down from the top.
  • Remove the bags if they don’t come out with the cage.
  • Clean top AND underside of tube plate back to clean metal.

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4 Considerations When Designing A Risk Management Program

4 Considerations When Designing A Risk Management Program

The risk management framework in ISO 31000 provides a flexible approach to create the right program for your organization. The document doesn’t provide advice or wisdom, so you have to supply that yourself.

The details of the risk management program or specific framework in your organization includes policies, procedures, analysis, and reporting, yet it also has to work within the context of your organization.

Based on the work of Greg Hutchins in ISO 31000: Enterprise Risk Management here are four considerations to supplement your wisdom as you design and implement your program. [Read more…]

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Estimating the Normal Distribution Parameters and Tolerance Limits

Estimating the Normal Distribution Parameters and Tolerance Limits

Frequently, data collection is the most time consuming and expensive part of a project. Consequently, people work with small sample data. There is too little data to plot a histogram, so the analysis assumes the underlying population is normally distributed.

A frequent error is to assume the sample average and standard deviation are the population normal mean and standard deviation. When small sample sizes are being analyzed, these assumptions lead to estimation errors.

Methods to make better estimates are discussed in this article. [Read more…]

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Asset Healthcare Management

Asset Healthcare Management

Guest Post By: Luis Daniel Khalil

Condition monitoring can help to predict failures and anticipate to them, however it doesn’t always work like this — in the best case scenario we might be able to identify early phase failures or incipient stage of damage mechanisms or failure mechanisms, but if we use it in the wrong manner it will just be a reactive tool.

More than 80% of the failure modes could be randomly patterned. Although performance, vibration, temperature or lube oil condition are being monitored, many of the failures are still not directly predicted by only these conditions. [Read more…]

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Considerations and Pitfalls when Designing ALT

Considerations and Pitfalls when Designing ALT

I just returned from the IEEE ASQ Accelerated Stress Test and Reliability Conference, held this year in Austin, Texas.  It’s always been a great conference. There is such a good comradery and sharing of knowledge when a large group comes together on such a specific topic. I meet a lot of great people from many different industries, all with great experience to share. [Read more…]

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Plant the Seeds for Tomorrow: Implementing a CMMS

Plant the Seeds for Tomorrow: Implementing a CMMS

Most CMMS’ Fail at the Implementation Phase, Don’t Let This Be You

Most organizations only use 50% of their CMMS’s capabilities.  This is for a variety of reasons, but one of the largest reasons, is that the CMMS was not setup, configured or implemented correctly.  If the implementation of the CMMS was not done properly, the usability and information in the CMMS limits its potential.

How can you prevent the implementation from failing or delivering sub-par results?  There are a few ways to ensure a successful CMMS implementation.  This post will cover the 2 main ways to ensure a successful implementation. [Read more…]

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Bronze — Use the Right One in the Right Place

Bronze — Use the Right One in the Right Place

By Richard Lang of Abonnel Precision Engineering

This quarter we would talk a little about bronzes, their properties and applications. One of our readers said they occasionally hear people refer to a brass bush when in fact they want a bronze bush and could we write something on this. Lets also look at the range of materials one may come across:

  • Leaded Gun Metal (LG2)
  • Aluminium Bronze
  • High tensile brass
  • Phosphor Bronze (PB1)
  • Manganese bronze
  • Brass

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