All articles listed in reverse chronological order.

Performing the Right Corrective Action

When something doesn’t work as expected, it is a failure. A common response to a failure by an organization is to restore the system or remedy the situation.

Each failure is unique to the product, industry, customer situation, expectations, etc. Selecting the appropriate response or corrective action when confronted with a failure may or may not be obvious.

Selecting the right corrective action depends on the business and legal factors, along with customer expectations.

For a given failure, thinking through the range of possible responses and selecting the right one takes care to meet the various stakeholder’s requirements or expectations. [Read more…]

by Kevin Stewart Leave a Comment

What is the Goal Of a Reliability Initiative?

Change happens slowly

The goal of a reliability initiative is to save money, not to “install” a system.

If that is not your current goal, then how did it get changed? Change sometimes happens slowly, so slowly that we don’t notice it.

I’m reminded of a fable about a camel and a Bedouin. It is cold outside and the [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg 2 Comments

The Environmental and Use Manual

Environmental and Use Manual

How well can you describe the use conditions your product will experience?

How well do you need to know the use conditions?

For some situations, the environment for your product is assessable, others are not. For some situations, we guess the range of expected stresses, others we measure.

The design process and the myriad decisions that impact product reliability rely on characterized environmental stresses.

A great place to consolidate how and where customers will use your product (including the relevant stress factors) is in an environmental manual. [Read more…]

by Doug Plucknette Leave a Comment

Engaging Your Workforce

Engagement

A word that has several meanings- most think of an upcoming wedding, a young couple excited about the idea of getting married, starting a home and a family together and all the exciting things that come with being in love.

But this isn’t the kind of engagement I want to talk about today. [Read more…]

by James Reyes-Picknell Leave a Comment

Searching for Quick Fixes Now Leads to Problems Down the Road

I want it now and I want it cheap! Oh – and I don’t want to do any work for it.

When it comes to information, entertainment, finding your way around and communications these days, we more or less literally have it all at our fingertips and available to us just about anywhere.

We can even order and pay for coffee to pick up on our way from the commuter train to the office – no lineups for delays. We can book hotels, airlines and rental cars at the touch of our fingers with apps that show us the cheapest options.

We live in a world where instant gratification is a reality in many aspects of our private lives.

Consumer electronics has transformed a great deal of business – basically, anything where there is a service or goods that a consumer might buy on their own, we can get it easily and immediately.

We’ve grown used to instant gratification in much [Read more…]

by nomtbf Leave a Comment

Learn Reliability, Not Just MTBF

MTBF is a Starting Point, Only

MTBF is not meant to be used for anything other than teaching someone new to reliability how the various functions and tasks work.

Using MTBF in the real world is an oversimplification to the point of being less then useful. Possibly even harmful.

You see MTBF is books, articles, and papers, often with the caveat of the assumption to simplify the math to illustrate the process or concept. Hence, does not apply for actual use. [Read more…]

by James Kovacevic 4 Comments

What is Maintenance Planning?

Measuring tape on construction drawing — Photo by Markus Spike

Understanding what is included in maintenance planning will enable your program to be successful.

Maintenance planning = doing things right. Identifying and addressing any possible issues ahead of time enables our craft to complete work quickly and correctly.

Maintenance planning identifies the what, why and the how. These three items allow the planner to identify most potential issues and provide the information, and materials to avoid them. [Read more…]

by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

Solution Aversion

Guest Post by Ed Perkins (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)

There is no end to helpful advice about making decisions.

Most of this advice assumes that decision-making is fact-based, procedural, and decision-makers can follow a process. You need to have proper “framing”, know desired outcomes, be objective, evaluate alternatives, etc.

In theory, this is very good advice. [Read more…]

by Mike Sondalini Leave a Comment

Agitator Shafts Thrust Bearing

Vertical tank agitator bearings are required to take both radial and thrust loads.

To protect the gearbox it is common practice to install intermediate bearings on the shaft. If these bearings are exposed to the process vapors then special care is needed to protect them from contamination and ensure adequate lubrication.

Keywords: thrust bearing, bearing stool, roller bearing. [Read more…]

by Fred Schenkelberg 4 Comments

Building and Using a System Reliability Model

From the simplest to the most complex system, building and using a reliability model permits the entire team to make better decisions.

Understanding and monitoring system reliability involves knowing both:

the reliability of elements within the system,
as well as how the elements relate to each other reliability-wise.

We use system reliability models to identify weak links, and focus resources, to meet our desired reliability goals.

Being able to build the right model to meet your team’s needs best is one of your roles as a reliability professional. [Read more…]

by Adam Bahret Leave a Comment

Annual Apex Ridge Seminar “Balancing Reliability with Product Development Goals”

We just held the Annual Apex Ridge/NEHALT seminar, sponsored by Qualmark. We had a full house again which was great. This year’s seminar was in three sections.

The first section discussed the methodology for balancing reliability with other product goals during a development program.

The second session was on Reliability testing tools and how to use their outputs to steer program decisions and design improvement. The third session was on specialized HALT testing techniques. [Read more…]

by Kevin Stewart Leave a Comment

RCA – Show Me the Money

Reliability initiatives are implemented to improve a company’s bottom line, period.

Root cause analysis is one of the fastest ways I know to achieve this improvement. My boss used to say “show me the money” because he realized that upper management was driven by ROI (Return on Investment) or ROC (Return on Capital).

You can argue all you want on whether that is good or bad, but it is the way things are. [Read more…]

by Kirk Gray Leave a Comment

When Smart TV Content Delivery Fails, Who is to Blame?

A Crisis in the Home IT department

If you are the head of your home IT department, you may relate to this tale

Last night my wonderful wife Stacy was riddled with angst over the disruption of her binge watching a spy series, a mild crisis with our own IT hardware.

The cause of her disappointment was the failure of our new large screen Ultra High Definition (UHD) Smart TV to deliver a drama series with a reasonable picture and sound quality. [Read more…]

by Doug Plucknette Leave a Comment

The Top 5 Signs of a Reliable Plant

Having visited hundreds of manufacturing plants in the last 15 years, someone recently asked me if there were any traits the most reliable plants all had in common.

I have listed below the top 5 signs of a reliable plant.

Sign 1 – The plant is clean!

The plants that are top performers are clean all of the time, clutter is unacceptable, and the tasks required to keep the plant clean are routine business. [Read more…]

by James Kovacevic Leave a Comment

Planning for Profitability

Man working at desk — Photo from Seattle Municipal Archives

How Maintenance Planning & Scheduling Can Improve Your Profitability

What if you could improve your maintenance department to the point where you increase the efficiency and the amount of work completed of your department by 80%? Would this be something that interests you?

A properly setup and managed Maintenance Planning & Scheduling Program can enable that type of success and enable your operation to plan for profitability.

This type of increase in efficiency may seem farfetched, but it can be achieved. The typical maintenance department operates between an efficiency of 30-35%, with best in class departments operating at 55% or better. What separates these operations? Planning & Scheduling! [Read more…]