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All articles listed in reverse chronological order.

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Break-Even Analysis: To Paint or Not to Paint

Break-Even Analysis: To Paint or Not to Paint

As a teenager, my father was a house painter. He started out as a “brush and roller guy”, climbing ladders and cutting in windows. But as his business grew, he caught the attention of commercial developers with large jobs like grocery store ceilings and outfield fences. These can’t be completed with old school tools; they require a sprayer.

I remember my dad walking me through his logic of whether or not to buy a commercial sprayer. I didn’t recognize it then, but he was explaining to me “Break-Even Analysis”. [Read more…]

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PFMEAs can Identify Special Process Characteristics

PFMEAs can Identify Special Process Characteristics

[This is a companion article to “Using Design FMEAs to Identify Special Product Characteristics.” These two articles should be read in sequence.]

Identification and application of special product and process characteristics help to focus assembly and manufacturing processes on the most important areas, in order to achieve the right outcomes.

“Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding” – Brian Greene

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Solving Human-Caused Failure Problems

Solving Human-Caused Failure Problems

Guest post by Charles J. Latino

At the root of most mechanical and system failures lurks a human cause. Insights into what to look for when solving human-caused failures are essential. Human error is generally described as behavior that goes beyond the norm. A proper definition in the context of this article is, “an action planned but not carried out according to the plan”. To find a means of minimizing human error, one must first understand its characteristics: [Read more…]

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Culture, Competence & Consequences

Culture, Competence & Consequences

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

Major projects, particularly infrastructure projects, can be spectacular in terms of their scale, timeframe, public and private investment, and the capital cost for their implementation.  Completion is often celebrated and overruns of time and cost are temporarily put aside, technical calamities become bygone memories, and ‘success’ is the order of the day. [Read more…]

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Why Is Product Development So Hard

Why Is Product Development So Hard

When a new product development effort begins, we have a clear plan to get to completion. However, part way through we start feeling it is much harder than expected. If you have ever felt that way, this video will talk about some ideas that might make it easier. It will never be simple, but it can be much less painful. Having worked to resolve the highest technical risk on a large Army program, I know it can be achieved. [Read more…]

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Is All RCA the Same?

Is All RCA the Same?

In order to know if all RCA is the same, we first have to define ‘What is RCA?’ On the surface this seems quite simple, but unfortunately it is quite complex. When I train or present speeches around the world, I often poll my audiences about how they define ‘RCA’. The fact is I will get as many answers, as I have people that I ask. This is unfortunate because there is no universally accepted definition of what ‘RCA’ actually is. Are there definitions out there, absolutely! There are hundreds of them. Various regulatory agencies have their own such definitions, as do corporations and companies. However, when definitions differ between agencies, corporations and industries, it is hard to measure the effectiveness of ‘RCA’ across the board, because everyone considers whatever they are doing, as ‘RCA’.

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Cmk! How could there possibly be another capability index?!

Cmk! How could there possibly be another capability index?!

The deeper you drill into process capability analysis, the more you realize just how many capability indices are available. The two most common capability indices are Cpk and Ppk, and the closely related Cp, Cpu and Cpl, and Pp, Ppu and Ppl, respectively. Cpm is less commonly used, and has a unique way of accounting for the centeredness of a process within its specification limits. (See my past blog posts for extended discussions about all of these.) [Read more…]

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Checklist to Develop Your Practical COVID 19 Business Continuity Strategies

Checklist to Develop Your Practical COVID 19 Business Continuity Strategies

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

Here are some practical considerations you need to make in developing and implementing your COVID-19 business continuity strategies for your organization or business, or even for yourself.

If you already have some form of business continuity plans already developed, execute them. Otherwise, you have to take a practical short-cut and use the information below to flexibly develop your next steps as you go. [Read more…]

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Myth Busting 16: Who should run stores?

Myth Busting 16: Who should run stores?

Perhaps the number one excuse that maintainers use for being unable to get repairs executed in a timely manner is to blame parts and their supply. For the maintenance technician on the tools, it’s a very obvious problem. No parts or materials means that work simply cannot be done without some sort of work-around / jury-rigged solution. The alternative is to get the needed materials as quickly as possible – often incurring substantial premiums on the price of the materials and premium shipping charges. When the parts arrive, usually after some waiting period, all emphasis is on getting the job completed even if it requires overtime effort and costs. This makes compliance to budget a real challenge and invites plenty of queries from accounting, finance and general management about our ability to work within a budget. As fire fighters we are sometimes heroes, but as managers we are failures. [Read more…]

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Accepting We Could Be Part of the Problem

Accepting We Could Be Part of the Problem

No matter where we work, we will experience failures or ‘undesirable outcomes’ of some kind. As long as we work with other humans, this will indeed be the case. These failures may surface in the form of production delays, injuries, customer complaints, missed deadlines, lost profits, legal claims and the like.

In order to prevent recurrence of any such undesirable outcome, we have to truly understand the causes that led up to that bad outcome. In many of our worlds, the process used to analyze and understand what went wrong is called Root Cause Analysis or RCA. However, for the sake of this article, call this process whatever you want; problem solving, brainstorming, troubleshooting, etc. The common denominator of these terms, is they desire to resolve a failure and ensure it does not happen again.

Let’s get away from labels and specific industries and focus on the anatomy of a ‘failure’. Where does a failure come from? Think about this no matter where you work and see if it applies. [Read more…]