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Expanding your Opportunities

Expanding your Opportunities

As the quality manger for a tier two automotive supplier, I recently had the opportunity to hire a quality supervisor following the retirement of a long-time member of our team. Our company’s human resource manager and I worked together through the entire selection process. Given the status of our region’s economy and the recent closure of several large factories, I wasn’t surprised when our mailbox started filling up with resumes in response to ads on the popular Internet job sites. The typical respondent was a mid-career professional with over 15 years of experience in manufacturing that had either been recently laid-off due or who wanted to move up in their career.

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Red Flags? They are All Red Flags

Red Flags? They are All Red Flags

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

“That’s a Red Flag!” goes the cry from some when something amiss is recognised.  However, many project participants don’t realise that their Project sails through a sea of flags and that, on some occasion, the flags can be read as red by somebody at some time.

In a similar nautical vein the Roman writer Ovid once poetized “The man who has experienced shipwreck shudders even at a calm sea“.  While written some 2,000 years ago it is as true today as it ever was and a reminder to us all that risks lurk everywhere.  Some risks may not be identified, let alone assessed and may go unnoticed until they strike.  We need to be aware and vigilant and avoid a complacent belief that a risk register is the be all and end all.

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What’s Wrong Now? Multiple Failures?

What’s Wrong Now? Multiple Failures?

How is failure testing done on the Space Station? Could FTA (Fault Tree Analysis) be used in reverse to detect multiple failures given symptoms? That’s what NASA was programming in the 1990s. I proposed that the ratios P[part failure]/(part test time) be used to optimally sequence tests. Those ratios work if there are multiple failures, as long as failure rates are constant and failure times are statistically independent. 

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Are your Asset Management efforts worth your TIME?

Are your Asset Management efforts worth your TIME?

What does asset management have to do with TIME? Everything.

My mentor, John Moubray, taught me that our most valuable resource is TIME. Time is WAY more valuable than money. 

How you spend your TIME determines IF and HOW your asset management efforts will pay off. In other words, will your efforts help you achieve the kind of equipment Reliability you’re looking for?

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So how Should I use the SAP-PM Breakdown Indicator?

So how Should I use the SAP-PM Breakdown Indicator?

Guest post by Ken Latino.

There are many opinions about the use of the breakdown flag in SAP-PM. I would like to offer my opinion on this debate. First, I do not like the term “breakdown”. With a name like breakdown, nobody will want to check the box! No one likes to admit that a something has failed or is broken. I wish the field were named “reliability event” to take away this negative connotation.  I will discuss this in more detail later.

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Cheap Way To High Pumping Circuit Availability

Cheap Way To High Pumping Circuit Availability

Using Reliability Principles for a Cheap Way To High Pumping Circuit Availability. High plant availability is achieved by having redundant equipment that can be brought on-line as soon as the operating unit has failed. Redundancy is expensive as there are two items to buy, two to install and two to maintain at full operating capacity. There is an alternate option for maintaining high pumping circuit availability by designing quick methods to bring mobile equipment into the circuit when pumps are down. This article explains how to set-up piping for a mobile pump to maintain operation when the normal duty pump is out of use.

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Email @50 Years – Blessing or Risk

Email @50 Years – Blessing or Risk

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

Email is 50 this year…its Golden Anniversary!  It ‘happened’ in 1971 when Ray Tomlinson, the late computer engineer and first user, sent a transmission to himself utilising two independent computers…a revolutionary innovation at the time.  The content of that primordial message is long forgotten and the same may also be the fate of many of the ~300 billion emails that are sent almost every day by the estimated 4 billion users around the world.  Communication is said to bring us together or set us apart and email is no different.

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Sharpening the Axe – Developing a Process Inspection Plan

Sharpening the Axe – Developing a Process Inspection Plan

Abraham Lincoln taught the value of adequate preparation when he said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” By training, quality professionals are often focused on verifying the correctness of a product. A traditional inspector at the Lincoln Timber Company might have dutifully marked in her audit log the date and time, the type and size of tree, followed by the comment, “Cut down.”

But Honest Abe would have advised her to take a closer look at the tools and process used to complete the job.

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Terrorism Risk: Years After 9/11 Is Your Organization More Or Less Vulnerable To Terror Threats?

Terrorism Risk: Years After 9/11 Is Your Organization More Or Less Vulnerable To Terror Threats?

Years after 9/11 threat of terrorism continues to persist. Organizations buying insurance to provide protection from terror attacks is on the rise.

Terrorism Insurance

Prior to 9/11, there was terrorism insurance was not a major concern. However, after 9/11 insurance and reinsurance companies found themselves with significant amount of exposure. Immediately following 9/11, insurance companies were refusing to provide terrorism insurance or providing it at a very high premium to high risk facilities.

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ALT Design using Damage Bins

ALT Design using Damage Bins

The Arrhenius Equation is widely used and accepted by reliability and validation engineers from many industries to develop accelerated life tests (ALT) for thermal aging environments.  

The general form of the equation describes the reaction rate of a process as a function of temperature (K), the Boltzmann constant (8.617E-5 eV/K) and two empirical factors.  It can be written as:

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Too Big to Fail – Suez Canal Risks

Too Big to Fail – Suez Canal Risks

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

The Ever Given grounding in the Suez Canal is one of those events that will be labeled a “Black Swan” for sure.  A rouge wind hits the ship turning the stern and wedging the vessel, bow and stern grounded straddling the canal and stranding ships entering from either end.  The date Tuesday 23 March 2021.  At around 7.40 a.m. local time the Ever Given ran aground.  At nearly 200 feet wide and 1,300 feet long, it easily took up the width of the channel.

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