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Re-Introducing Communicating with FINESSE on Accendo Reliability

We launched Communicating with FINESSE two years ago to help technically trained professionals become better communicators and facilitators. Breaking it away from JD Solomon, Inc. as a not-for-profit organization was a first step in building a broader community to execute the mission. We have done that in many ways, although such endeavors never go as fast as you first imagine. Today, we summarize seven key concepts of Communicating with FINESSE.

#1 Systems Thinking Is the Foundation

The good news for most of us is that communication is indeed a system. Even better, as technical professionals, we are blessed with the reality of what that means. The next time you serve as a trusted advisor, remember that effective communication requires systems thinking.

Why Systems Thinking Produces Effective Communication – Accendo Reliability

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Is MTBF a True, Beneficial, and Timely Metric

Is MTBF a True, Beneficial, and Timely Metric

How Good is MTBF as a Metric?

Let’s look at the characteristics of a sound reliability metric and how MTBF is not true or beneficial. A metric should be true, beneficial, and timely. We’ll start with a rock climbing analogy.

A bolted hanger along a rock climbing route is often a welcome site. It provides the climber safety (clipping the rope to the bolt), direction (this is the way), and confidence. Does MTBF as a metric do the same for your organization?

As climbers, we count on the bolts to provide support in case something goes wrong or we need to rest along the route.

A reliability metric is often used in the same way as a climbing bolt. The measure, whether MTBF, Reliability, or Failure Rate, assures that the product’s reliability performance is as expected.

The organization’s profits are or will be safe. The development team uses the measures to guide design and supply chain decisions. The measure provides confidence to the organization regarding meeting customer expectations around reliability.

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Robustness, Reliability and Quality

Robustness, Reliability and Quality

Robustness:  That Often Overlooked Yet Powerful Discipline and Toolset.  Most companies have a Quality organization, and some have a Reliability organization.  But rarely will you find a company with a Robustness organization or even a single Robustness Engineer.  And yet, of these three disciplines, Robustness can have the largest impact on your customer satisfaction because Robustness as a discipline and toolset addresses:  

  • a wider range of field issues than reliability and quality
  • those issues that occur during the “design life”

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ISO 31000 Risk Assessments

ISO 31000 Risk Assessments

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

This article is the eleventh of fourteen parts to our risk management series. The series will be taking a look at the risk management guidelines under the ISO 31000 Standard to help you better understand them and how they relate to your own risk management activities. In doing so, we’ll be walking through the core aspects of the Standard and giving you practical guidance on how to implement it.

In previous articles we’ve looked at the core elements of the risk management framework, as well as the role of leadership and commitment, integration, design, implementation, evaluation and improvement more specifically. We’ve also briefly looked at the risk management process in a general sense, and we’ve also focused on the importance of communication and consultation, as well as how to set your scope, context and criteria. In this article, we’ll be looking at risk assessments and the role of risk identification, analysis and evaluation in such assessments.

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How Big Fortunes Are Made with the Plant Wellness Way 

How Big Fortunes Are Made with the Plant Wellness Way 

 Let a Plant Wellness Way EAM System-of-Reliability halve your Annual Maintenance Costs 

A Plant Wellness Way enterprise asset management system is a powerful solution for world class enterprise asset management (EAM) success. There are three scenarios when it is justifiable for a business to adopt PWW EAM as your company’s EAM methodology.

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Total Productive Maintenance and CMMS

Total Productive Maintenance and CMMS

For conscientious plant managers and production leaders, achieving successful and sustainable Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) is a top priority. TPM is the key to reducing downtime, preventing breakdowns, and ensuring top-notch product quality during the process of manufacturing maintenance. But how do you put a TPM plan into action, and what steps should you follow to seamlessly integrate it into your existing operations and maintenance procedures? Keep reading, and we’ll break down what TPM is, how to implement it step by step, and why it matters. [Read more…]

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Weibull Probability Plotting of Complete Data

Weibull Probability Plotting of Complete Data

This video explains step-by-step procedure for probability plotting of failure data. Probability plotting is a technique used to determine whether given data of failures follows a distribution. The video also explains various types of failure data: complete, right censored, left censored and interval censored data. Viewers can try Weibull Probability Plotting to estimate shape parameter beta and scale parameter Eta. The video also shows how to estimate median rank for complete data.

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Ancient Japanese Text Contained A Warning For 2011 Fukushima Disaster

Ancient Japanese Text Contained A Warning For 2011 Fukushima Disaster

Nihon Sandai Jitsuroku – is an ancient Japanese text compiled in 901.

It talks about an earthquake and Tsunami that occurred in 869: 

“Then the sea began roaring like a big thunderstorm. The sea surface rose up and the huge waves attached the land”

People died in landslide or were crushed by the collapse of their homes.

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Two Books Help Reliability Engineers Communicate and Collaborate

Two Books Help Reliability Engineers Communicate and Collaborate

These two books help technical professionals improve their communication and collaboration skills. Employers seek soft skills across the many market sectors to complement the technical skills they assume are present. These two groundbreaking books provide the fuel to propel your career.

Facilitating with FINESSE

The results of our work often depend on the quality of the facilitation. Facilitating with FINESSE addresses ways to improve interactive, peer-to-peer communication when working in teams.

The book provides the techniques to facilitate ten different technical applications from good to great. [Read more…]

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Using RAM models for Criticality Analysis – Advantages and Limitations

Using RAM models for Criticality Analysis – Advantages and Limitations

Introduction to RAM Models and Criticality Analysis

Building a Reliability, Availability and Maintainability (RAM) model can provide numerous benefits to an Asset Management program. This includes conducting a Criticality Analysis. Criticality Analysis involves ranking assets based on their potential risk to the organization. It considers risk categories such as Production Impact, Safety, Environment, and Reputation, amongst others. The category list can vary and is a reflection of the organization’s structure. Organizations generally have a finite financial pool allocated to preserving asset function. A Criticality Analysis helps optimize the allocation of resources to each asset according to its importance in the system network. Ultimately this helps maximize revenue, minimize spend and maintain the organization’s license to operate.

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First Impressions

First Impressions

Note: This first article in the NoMTBF campaign was published on April 1st, 2009. Thus, we’ve been at this and making progress for a long time and come a long was since starting the NoMTBF campaign. I am looking forward to your comments, contributions, and suggestions.

Fred

At first, MTBF seems like a commonly used and valuable measure of reliability. Trained as a statistician and understanding the use of the expected value that MTBF represented, I thought, ‘Cool, this is useful.’

Then, the discussions with engineers, technical sales folks, and other professionals about reliability using MTBF started. And the awareness that not everyone, and at times it seems very few, truly understood MTBF and how to properly use the measure.

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SAE JA1011 Standard

SAE JA1011 Standard

Article first posted at Conscious Reliability by James Reyes-Picknell, Jesus Sifonte, and team.

Evaluation Criteria for Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) Processes

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, one of the accepted definitions for standard is: “something established by authority, custom, or general consent as a model, for example.” In our case, a standard comprises a document or sets of documents providing requirements, specifications, guidelines, or characteristics that can be used consistently to ensure that materials, products, processes, and services fit their purpose. There exist international standards on quality (ISO 9,000), risk (ISO 31,000), environment (ISO 14,000), energy (ISO 50,000), management and many other fields providing information and guidance on the practices, methods, and processes designed by groups of highly qualified international experts. Most technical field professionals utilize international standards to base their practice on trusted mathematically and/or scientifically proven methods. Trial and error are no longer acceptable out of the laboratory anymore today. But, lessons learned from its practice in conjunction with regretful real-life incidents and accidents provide knowledge on their risks, mitigation, and prevention. Most asset and maintenance management best practices and techniques are standard-driven, meaning they have been carefully defined and established. The SAE JA1011 Standard on Evaluation Criteria for Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) Process has an exciting background, including disappointing and successful stories before its principles were conceived and eventually incorporated into an international engineering standard.

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Is ERM the Solution to Climate Change?

Is ERM the Solution to Climate Change?

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

The 2022 Global Risk Report is the 17th risk assessment report. The preface to the report notes: “The 17th edition of the Global Risk Report identifies tensions that will results from diverging trajectories and approaches within and between countries and then examines the risk that could arise from such tensions.” (1)

The results of the survey have substantive implications as the above notes. These implications go beyond diverging trajectories and approaches, to something more fundamental. That is whether the survey has any probative value.  This piece discusses the results of the survey. It also examines its probative value.

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