Articles Archives - Page 36 of 215

All articles listed in reverse chronological order.

Five Ways to More Effectively Facilitate Tree Diagrams

This article discusses five ways to effectively facilitate tree diagrams by conducting pre-session exchanges, asking powerful questions, using exercises that engage, anticipating disruption, and controlling the tempo. The foundations of systems thinking and facilitation apply to tree diagrams because the analysis requires a group to establish the nature of separate and inter-related components.

Facilitation is defined as a structured session(s) in which the meeting leader (the facilitator) guides the participants through a series of predefined steps to arrive at a result that is created, understood, and accepted by all participants.” As provided in the definition, the fundamentals of good facilitation are always essential, including having a structure for developing tree diagrams that include predefined steps and a process for arriving at results that are created, understood, and accepted by all participants.

Facilitating Tree Diagrams

A tree diagram is a management tool that depicts the hierarchy of tasks and subtasks needed to complete an objective. The finished diagram bears a resemblance to a tree. (American Society for Quality, 2019).

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by James Reyes-Picknell 1 Comment

Resilience as We Return to a “New Normal”

Resilience has been lost – and it’s our fault. We need to get it back.

As the Covid pandemic transitions to endemic (I am optimistic) we will get back to a “new normal”. No one really knows what the “new normal” will be like (yet), but it’s safe to say that it won’t be the same as the “old normal”.

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by Mike Sondalini Leave a Comment

How a Plant Wellness Way EAM System-of-Reliability gets Operations to World Class Maintenance and Reliability Success

Companies end rat-race problems fast and get world class reliability by using the simple Plant Wellness Way EAM methodology to slash operational risk and make your plant and equipment world class reliable

How to get a Plant Wellness Way EAM system-of-reliability that ends your Production and Maintenance rat race is shown in the image below. It’s a simple strategy and plan for building a truly effective life cycle asset management system that purposely replaces old production and maintenance rat-race causing systems.

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by Greg Hutchins 1 Comment

Meeting Procrastination Risk or Productivity Opportunity

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

You wait 15 minutes for people to turn up, call-in, or get on-line. Some may have popped down to Starbucks to get their daily fix of skinny hazelnut caramel latte, or green tea or Evian water. The punctual few chit-chat away about anything and everything except the meeting agenda in case they commit some anticipatory faux pas. Then there are those, particularly the decision makers, who let everybody know that they only have a certain amount of time available; they will need to leave promptly so they won’t be late for their next meeting and with all plausible deniability may avoid decisions and conclusions; but wasn’t that the point of the meeting?

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by Ray Harkins 1 Comment

Understanding the Geometric Distribution

Coauthored with Mark Fiedeldey

The geometric distribution is a discrete distribution often encountered in reliability work, which contains some valuable properties worth understanding. Let’s take a look at some of these characteristics.

This model is useful when trying to answer the question, “How many trials are needed to get a particular result?” So, the number of trials is not set initially; we need to figure that out.

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by Alex Williams 1 Comment

The Most Commonly Underused CMMS Features

Want to achieve a worthwhile return-on-investment (ROI) from your software? Then it’s important to learn about some of the most commonly underused computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) functions. Many organizations do not use all of the features their preventive maintenance software provides, or don’t use the functions to their full capacity. According to a national CMMS survey conducted by Reliable Plant magazine, a majority of plant maintenance managers feel they aren’t using their preventive maintenance software to its maximum capability.

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by Sanjeev Saraf 1 Comment

1944 Cleveland LNG Incident: Lessons Learnt

An explosion occurred at East Ohio Company’s peak-shaving plant in Cleveland, Ohio on October 20, 1944. 128 people were killed and 225 injured as a result of the incident.

What Does it Mean to be ‘Safe’?

So what does it mean to be ‘safe’? Is a company ‘safe’ because they have not had an OSHA recordable injury in say over a one year period? Does that mean they will continue to be ‘safe’ in the next year? Does it mean they are at a higher risk of an incident in the near term, because they weren’t safe…but lucky? These are the debates I read about online and as an outsider, I can see both sides. But there has to be a practical middle ground as Safety and Reliability depend on each other for their individual successes, they are interdependent.

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by JD Solomon Leave a Comment

Five Ways to More Effectively Facilitate Failure Modes & Effects Analysis (FMEA)

This article discusses five ways to facilitate failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) more effectively by conducting pre-session exchanges, asking powerful questions, using exercises that engage, anticipating disruption, and controlling the tempo. The foundations of systems thinking and facilitation apply to failure modes and effects analysis because the analysis requires a group to establish the nature of separate and inter-related components.

Facilitation is defined as a structured session(s) in which the meeting leader (the facilitator) guides the participants through a series of predefined steps to arrive at a result that is created, understood, and accepted by all participants.” As provided in the definition, the fundamentals of good facilitation are always essential, including having a structure for an FMEA that includes predefined steps and a process for arriving at results that are created, understood, and accepted by all participants.

Facilitating Failure Modes and Effects Analysis

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by Doug Lehr Leave a Comment

The Statement of Requirements

Your team has put together the Statement of Requirements (SoR) for the new completion tool wand it contains the target ratings. But the product must have a 10-year minimum service life at maximum rated operating conditions. And reliability expectations are high. Also, the product has electromechanical content and must have operational redundancy and allow contingency operation. However, there are no requirements for these in the SoR.

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by Mike Sondalini Leave a Comment

Preventive Maintenance Planner Shows Preventive Maintenance Schedule

A Preventive Maintenance Planner Shows When Preventive Maintenance Jobs are Due to Be Done

Preventive Maintenance is the replacement of equipment assemblies and parts which have aged from the normal wear and tear of use. It is a good idea to show people well in advance on a wall planner calendar what dates the work is scheduled to be done.

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by Greg Hutchins Leave a Comment

What is Risk Management?

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

Asking ‘what is risk management?’ often gets you the trite answer ‘it’s the management of risk’ or we get a list of activities associated with risk management. Neither result is satisfying and we need a better definition that explains the intent of risk management along with some clarification of what this is and is not. Here, I’ve presented some initial ideas on a definition along with four components that should give us a more thorough definition.

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by James Reyes-Picknell Leave a Comment

Communicate Performance Measures Effectively

Do those that manage the performance, understand the measures?

This article is authored by Leonard G Middleton

As noted in other articles, performance measures are used to drive behaviors to make positive organizational changes in support of the organizational strategy and goals. However how well the performance measures may be developed and defined, if they are not effectively communicated to those individuals whose behavior is important to achieve the strategy and goals, then the performance measures have little value.

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by Nancy Regan Leave a Comment

How to Choose Proactive Maintenance Strategies

When it comes to our machines, we can do Condition-Based Maintenance and Preventive Maintenance in addition to other actions such as No Scheduled Maintenance or equipment redesigns. With those options available to us, how do we choose what to do and when to do them? This is a great strength of Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM). RCM helps us to identify the right maintenance to do and how often to do the maintenance tasks. For example, should a Scheduled Replacement task or a Condition Based Maintenance be implemented? Join me as I share how RCM can help us develop the right Proactive Maintenance so we can achieve the Reliability we need.

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by Bryan Christiansen Leave a Comment

4 Ways Of Cutting Maintenance Costs That Won’t Impact Asset Reliability

Physical assets require continuous maintenance throughout their useful lives. That makes allocating and tracking maintenance expenses a necessity for companies. Maintenance cost is any expense that facilities incur while keeping assets in good working conditions. Typical maintenance costs include:

Amount spent for procuring spare parts or replacement components.
Cost of purchasing or leasing maintenance tools.
The amount for procuring and maintaining digital maintenance tools.
Wages for maintenance staff.
Costs associated with inventory management.

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