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All articles listed in reverse chronological order.

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How to Measure Success: The 7 Key Performance Indicators You Must Measure

How to Measure Success: The 7 Key Performance Indicators You Must Measure

Being able to see what world class Reliability & Maintenance looks like is one thing. Communicating that success and level of performance to non-maintenance people can be difficult. Not to mention, that we always need to improve, and how can we if we only use qualitative measures?

I remember one time, trying to explain how Maintenance Planning & Scheduling has improved our maintenance department. I used explanations like; “The team isn’t wandering around looking for parts” and “They don’t need to leave the job to get the manuals anymore”. I was met with blank stares and was asked “How much were we saving on labour” and “How much were we able to reduce planned downtime”. [Read more…]

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Basic Care Leads to Reliability

Basic Care Leads to Reliability

Welcome to part four of my 10-part series of blogs called “Uptime Insights”, where we explore a journey of excellence in maintenance. To stay on top, managers must implement strategies that keep operations performing at high levels. In these articles I will show you how to achieve excellence in maintenance – a critical business process in any capital intensive industry.

Uptime Insights Part Four:

Mastering Basic Care to Achieve Excellence

Like the human body, our plant and mobile equipment will break down if it’s not looked after.  It will tolerate some abuse but it won’t do it forever and it won’t do it if you don’t take care of it at a basic level. Basic care is all about taking care of our physical assets so they continue to do what we need them to do.  To choose excellence it’s essential to master the basics.  They keep you compliant with regulations and keep you operating. Beyond them you expand in the direction of excellence. [Read more…]

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Future Proofing the Process of Active Analysis

Future Proofing the Process of Active Analysis

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

Overview 

The ability to effectively respond to and manage the consequences of an event in a timely manner is essential to ensure an organization’s survivability in today’s fast paced business environment. With the emergence of new threats, such as cyber-terrorism and bio-terrorism; and the increasing exposure of companies to traditional threats such as, fraud, systems failure, fire, explosions, spills, natural disasters, etc. an “integrated” approach to Business Continuity Planning is essential. [Read more…]

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Job Types on Work Orders

Job Types on Work Orders

Historically numbers have been used to represent the work type.

As numbers are not a universal human method of description, the work type is also described using words.

The proper choice of words is critical if classification errors are to be minimized.

Keywords: CMMS, computerized maintenance system, breakdown, corrective, work order, implementation.  [Read more…]

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Building an Effective Work Management System

Building an Effective Work Management System

Welcome to part three of my 10-part series of blogs called “Uptime Insights”, where we explore a journey of excellence in maintenance. To stay on top, managers must implement strategies that keep operations performing at high levels. In these articles I will show you how to achieve excellence in maintenance – a critical business process in any capital intensive industry.

 Uptime Insights Part Three:

Building an Effective Work Management System

At the core of the maintenance function is work management – a six step process for getting maintenance work done.  Without it workforce deployment becomes reactive to emergencies and maintenance costs are high.  Work done in those reactive situations is anywhere from 1.5 to 3 times as expensive as work that is fully planned and executed on schedule.  In some industries the cost of emergency work is even higher.  If you choose excellence then master the work management process. [Read more…]

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The Top 10 Signs That You Have a World Class Reliability & Maintenance Program (Part 2)

The Top 10 Signs That You Have a World Class Reliability & Maintenance Program (Part 2)

Last week we had the opportunity to view the first five of the top 10 signs that you are Maintenance & Reliability Best Practices by Ramesh Gulati. I hope you were able to compare your operation to the first five and see where you are excelling and where you may have challenges.

Those first five focus on the specific work streams in Reliability & Maintenance. These next five are a combination of the main work streams and the foundations to a successful operation. [Read more…]

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Confidence Interval Interpretations and Misunderstandings

Confidence Interval Interpretations and Misunderstandings

Confidence intervals (CIs)provide a means to judge point estimates based on a sample from the population.

If that statement excites you, you may well have the makings of a fine statistician.

CIs are a form of internal estimate and specify a range within which a parameter may reside. CIs helps us evaluate the trustworthiness of point estimates. [Read more…]

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Building a Highly Successful Team Model

Building a Highly Successful Team Model

Welcome to part two of my 10-part series of blogs called “Uptime Insights”, where we explore a journey of excellence in maintenance. To stay on top, managers must implement strategies that keep operations performing at high levels. In these articles, I will show you how to achieve excellence in maintenance – a critical business process in any capital intensive industry.

 Uptime Insights Part Two:

Building a Highly Successful Team Model

Any organization is nothing more than an extension of the people who make it up.  It stands to reason that we need to focus on people if we want our organizations to thrive and change.  Without your people nothing happens.  They are the most important part of your business.  If you want excellence your people need to choose it with you. [Read more…]

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The Dirge of the MTBF Bias

The Dirge of the MTBF Bias

14586667289_a699805f98_m_dThe Dirge of the MTBF Bias

We use our biases every day to make choices.

We select the beige sweater because we have a color bias concerning our sweaters.

Many of our biases help us quickly make decisions. We rely on biases to move through the day. Many of our biases are under the surface, unconsciously guiding our daily decisions. Mostly, biases are good or at least inconsequential.

The problem is the bias that shields us from achieving our goals.  [Read more…]

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The Top 10 Signs That You Have a World Class Reliability & Maintenance Program (Part 1)

The Top 10 Signs That You Have a World Class Reliability & Maintenance Program (Part 1)

During a recent business trip, I had the opportunity to attend a sister plant in another part of the world. I had been told how good the plant was in Planning & Scheduling. When I attended the weekly planning meeting, I was shocked.   It was chaos and confusion, with the planner writing notifications to be put on next week’s schedule, which started the next day. They thought this was good practice.

Often, we don’t know, what we don’t know. This leads the belief that an operation is not world class when it is and vice versa. [Read more…]

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Failure Analysis of a Gearbox, Fan, Bearing and Shaft

Failure Analysis of a Gearbox, Fan, Bearing and Shaft

Failure Analysis of a Gearbox, Fan, Bearing and Shaft

When equipment breaks unexpectedly it is good practice to investigate why it happened so that the root cause can be rectified and the problem prevented from again happening.

There are no mysterious causes, only poor systems or system failures. It is not often that people intentionally sabotage plant and equipment.

By analyzing why a thing happened the lesson can be absorbed and changes made to business systems to reduce its probability of reoccurrence.

In this article, four equipment failures are reviewed and investigated to determine their cause and the resulting necessary changes.

Keywords: root cause failure analysis, failure mode. [Read more…]

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Beware the Walls May Be Listening and the Appliances Are Loose

Beware the Walls May Be Listening and the Appliances Are Loose

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

Unsuspecting consumers, thinking they have found a bargain, or that they have joined the latest gadget trend, or both, can be unpleasantly surprised, according to recent revelations on how mobile and IoT (Internet of Things) devices can have built-in security issues. [Read more…]