Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
All articles listed in reverse chronological order.
A few weeks ago, I had written about a recent fire at the alkylation unit in Citgo’s Corpus refinery, and raised the question about HF usage. Today, I would like to further delve into the alternate technologies for alklyation and also take this opportunity to summarize feedback I have received from a few readers: Mike Bordeaux, Sujith Panikkar, Menno van der Hauw, and Fabienne Salimi.
[Read more…]
Any maintenance manager at a manufacturing plant or facility is likely aware of the problems caused by faulty equipment. Even if just one piece of equipment out of thousands breaks down, it could cause your entire operation to come to a halt. Preventive maintenance involves scheduling various maintenance activities to keep your equipment in peak condition and prevent breakdowns and failure. EAM/CMMS software is an essential tool for scheduling preventive maintenance and monitoring performance. The following are 5 tips to improve preventive maintenance with maintenance management software.
As you begin design validation (DV) and product validation (PV) testing you are entering the more formal phase of a test program. Usually, you are working to internal and/or customer test specs with timelines that are critical and little margin for error. If you’ve conducted adequate design verification testing and given your parts a chance to fail on test exposures that are similar to those your product will see in the field, you have reason to expect to be successful in validation [see previous article outlining accelerated test methods: Expect to Pass Validation].
[Read more…]
Becoming a risk manager can seem to be more art than science. There’s not a clear pathway from degree to junior risk manager to senior risk manager to CRO (Chief Risk Officer) in the same way that you can chart the progress from freshly minted CPA (Certified Public Accountant) to head of Ernst & Young. (Financial risk management is the exception here as there is usually a clear path there.)
So why is the risk manager career path fuzzy compared to other professions?
[Read more…]
Full of new, powerful solutions, the Plant Wellness Way EAM methodology ensures operations and companies get to world class equipment reliability
Let a Plant Wellness Way EAM System-of-Reliability halve your Annual Maintenance Costs
People investigating the Plant Wellness Way enterprise asset management (PWW EAM) methodology want to know exactly what happens when they use it, especially how the analysis and implementation will be done in their own operation. A PWW EAM System-of-Reliability brings you three massive business advantages:
[Read more…]
The most valuable advice John Moubray ever gave me applies to everyone no matter who you are, what you do, or where you’re from. It took me twenty years, but I finally got it.
When John gave me this gift, he simply made two statements.
Here they are: I don’t own a television. I won’t allow one in my house.
Simple – yet VERY complex.
[Read more…]
A chemical facility is mandated to have an emergency response plan by OSHA PSM and EPA RMP. An accident in the plant, a hurricane, and a potential terrorist attack are a few scenarios that mandate emergency response and planning. However, there is a vast difference between having an emergency plan and having a plan that works.
Read the remainder of the article to find out if your facility’s emergency plan is an effective one.
[Read more…]
If you are like most people who work in a manufacturing or process plant, you have a plan for your day when you arrive in the morning. As soon as you walk through the gate, you are hit with the equipment failures from the night before. You immediately spring into action to help find parts, drawings, millwrights, fitters and anything else needed to get the equipment repaired as quickly as possible. Once that is underway you are told to compile that urgent report for corporate that is needed immediately. And who can forget the countless meetings that must have your attendance. The next thing you know, it is 7:00 PM and you have done nothing from the plan you had for your day. Sound familiar?
[Read more…]
Here’s a video of a discussion event that was organized by UpKeep. Asset Operations Management (AOM) unites maintenance, operations, and reliability data to help teams make important business decisions, with full visibility across the entire life cycle of maintenance, asset management, and operations.
[Read more…]Googling ‘what is a risk manager?’ will get you variations on ‘it’s the person who manages that organization’s risks,’ which is a pretty weak answer. It’s certainly not enough to help anyone who’s just starting in the role to understand what they’re supposed to do. Similarly, if someone’s thinking about this as a career, we need a bit more.
So here’s a more detailed answer.
[Read more…]
Use the ACE 3T culture change technique to design, teach and adopt the best safety culture into your organization
Here’s a workplace safety culture change fact we’ve known about for a long time. This quote from G. J. Hofstede in his book, Cultures and Organisations, explains a lot about how you create the right workplace safety culture.
[Read more…]
Process Safety has evolved significantly since the introduction of PSM in 1992. Here are top five challenges facing the process safety community today.
[Read more…]
Thomas Savery patented a steam-powered pump in 1698. This was an important but imperfect step in the early development of steam engines. Savery’s pump was intended for dewatering mines, but it was more practical for other applications. Savery demonstrated the pump to the Royal Society of London in 1699. YouTube hosts several 3D animations and working scale models that are very interesting.
[Read more…]
When designing components consider fatigue or stress corrosion cracking. It’s important to be cognizant of the residual stresses in the component. Understanding residual pressure and its sources is important when making decisions about a component’s shape, features, alloy, and fabrication process.
Fatigue and stress corrosion cracking require the presence of tensile stresses on a component. When residual presures are tensile they add to the applied tensile pressure, reducing the life of a component. In fact, components sometimes fail due to stress corrosion cracking when residual stress is the only source of tensile stress.
[Read more…]
Product Validation Testing is a critical and expensive endeavor. The part build process must align with the latest prototype process (for Design Validation (DV)) or production process (for Product Validation (PV)) and be fully documented for posterity. Depending on the product and application, the validation test plan consists of a battery of tests, some of which are lengthy – often six months or more. Because of this, DV and PV test plans are invariably on the critical path for a customer program. Test failures that require fixing the design and repeating DV or PV jeopardize project timing and company profits. Further, they jeopardize the customer program along with your company’s reputation.
[Read more…]