James Kovacevic — Thought Leader

Author of Maintenance and Reliability articles, ebooks, and host of Rooted in Reliability, co-host on Speaking of Reliability.

This author's archive lists contributions of articles and episodes.

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149 – Football and Downtime Don’t Mix with Frederic Baudart

Football and Downtime Don’t Mix with Frederic Baudart

Cloud-based technologies have really improved data sharing. All you have to do is capture the data, transfer it to your smart phone, and then share it with anyone who need to know that information via cloud. It is a very efficient and secured way of sharing information that helps take smart measures in a matter of minutes anytime and anywhere. FLUKE provides such remote data monitoring solutions that have the ability to share asset data based on the performance and outputs. This data can include the operating conditions of the asset and the voltage variations that are recorded every minute.

In this episode, we covered:

Cloud-based technology helping data sharing!
Why large events need power monitoring?
How does the FLUKE 3540 work?
And much more!

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148 – Leveraging Failure Data for Better Decision Making with John Reeve

Leveraging Failure Data for Better Decision Making with John Reeve

Failure data is very important for leaders to make effective and efficient decisions. That’s why they are always looking for industry best practices and new implementation techniques to understand failure codes and failure modes in a better way. The organizations always focus on understanding failure codes so that they can design their CMMS. They always configure their CMMS to better analyze the failure data. They have a process in place that allows them to run failure data against different fields based on the failure codes. Failure data must be synchronized to hold RCM analysis results. CMMS can be built in way that it perfectly serves the purpose.

In this episode, we covered:

What is failure data?
How can we get failure data out of the CMMS?
What can we do with failure data?
and much, much more!

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147 – What is Oil Analysis with Robert Kalwarowsky

What is Oil Analysis with Robert Kalwarowsky

Lubrication is an important part of asset management and oil analysis plays a major role in keeping the lubrication system of your machines well. There are a number of factors that need to be taken into account while checking the lubricant for impurities and high viscosity etc. That’s why it is important to check the oiling process of the gearboxes and other machine parts that would fail if the condition of the lubricant is not up to the standards. There are a lot of precautions and different tests to make sure that the machines run smoothly.

In this episode, we covered:

Why is oil analysis important?
Why it’s important to have leaders!
Where do you start?
And much more!

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146 – Distance Learning and Coaching with Bill Leahy

Distance Learning and Coaching with Bill Leahy

Distance learning is becoming more trendy in the industry and is preferred by a lot of students especially the ones doing their Masters. The biggest reason that the students choose distance learning over traditional learning is because of the flexibility of the process. Due to this supreme advantage, anyone can get into an online course. It is particularly very advantageous for people who have jobs or need to take care of their families. It is really good for the parents who have limited time and need flexible study hours which distance learning provides. The institutions are becoming more inclined towards it these days.

In this episode, we covered:

What is distance learning?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of distance learning?
How to excel in distance learning?
And much more!

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SOR 397 What to Learn at a Reliability Conference

What to Learn at a Reliability Conference

Abstract

James and Fred discussing the many ways to learn while at a conference.
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145 – How to Choose the Correct Seal Type with Chuck Tanner

How to Choose the Correct Seal Type with Chuck Tanner

Seals are very important to contain machine fluids and keep them from different sort of contamination. There are different types of seals in the market such as traditional packing, mechanical seals, air seals, and other seals that keep bearing hoses in check. Traditional packing is one of the cheapest sealing solutions out there in the market. The only difference between a mechanical seal and packing is that the mechanical seals work very well for the rotating piece of equipment. They give precision and accuracy where is needed as compared to the traditional packing where there are a lot more chances of errors while holding the fluids in.

In this episode, we covered:

What are seals?
What are the different types of seals?
What seal types are best for various applications?
Can you retrofit different types of seals?
And much more!

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144 – Understanding Asset Hierarchy with Shon Isenhour and Brandon Weil

Understanding Asset Hierarchy with Shon Isenhour and Brandon Weil

Asset hierarchy is very important to utilize the limited resources of an organization in the best way possible. It helps manage time and cost by prioritizing our assets. That’s why every organization needs to have a hierarchy. There are a lot of standards out there to help you build an asset hierarchy. ISO 14224 helps greatly in the matter. It contains guidelines that a maintenance and reliability organization can use to define some sort of organized processes and procedures that are important to have in the facilities. When they have laid out a foundation that way, it gets easier to do all sorts of things.

In this episode, we covered:

What is Asset Hierarchy?
Why is the asset hierarchy needed?
How should an asset hierarchy be organized?
How to develop an asset hierarchy?
And much more!

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The P-F Curve Revisited

Understanding The Importance of Proper Equipment Installation

There has been much discussion (and often debate) around the P-F curve. The P-F curve illustrates the relationship between the warning signs that are detectable by various technology or methods and the progression of the failure. What is often not discussed and overlooked, is what happens before the equipment starts to deteriorate.

If the ultimate goal of an organization is to be proactive and ensure equipment uptime, wouldn’t the organization want to prevent the equipment from failing in the first place and not catch it after it has already started to fail? [Read more…]

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143 – The Soft Skills Reliability Engineers Need with Fred Schenkelberg

The Soft Skills Reliability Engineers Need with Fred Schenkelberg

In every industry, people skills contribute a lot to the success of an employee. The thing is that engineers and especially reliability engineers are not taught soft skills like change management and communication strategies across different facilities in the maintenance and reliability oriented organizations. The reason that engineers don’t have enough soft skills because organizations don’t have enough time or resources to do this. Most of the times, an organization just doesn’t realize how important it is to be able to communicate the procedures in the right way to the people that are concerned with it.

In this episode, we covered:

What are the soft skills reliability engineers need?
Why are these soft skills required?
How can a reliability engineer develop these skills?
What skills are most important?
And much more!

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142 – Developing Failure Codes with Bill Leahy

Developing Failure Codes with Bill Leahy

Failures codes help the reliability engineers to make intelligent business decisions regarding the issues with the assets. It is a formula that helps you understand how an asset fails and how can you gather the needed data to mitigate a failure? A good failure code contains a hierarchy of the problem towards a suitable solution. The best practice to devise a failure code would be to break it into a sequence of Part, Problem, and Cause. In short, failure codes help you describe and understand the problem based on the failure data, and you can trend that data to prevent those failures in the future.

In this episode, we covered:

What are failure codes?
Why are failure codes needed?
How can organizations develop meaningful failure codes?
What role does ISO 14224 play in failure data?
And much more!

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SMRP18 – Online Monitoring with Maureen Gribble

Ultrasound is a great tool but using it to monitor your equipment needs resources and time. When you install sensors for data capturing, there are a lot of values that come up. That much amount of data can overwhelm your engineers. That’s why it is better to have an online monitoring solution that can do that job for you. One of such tools is ‘Forecast’ designed by UE systems. All you have to do is plug the device to the critical equipment, put the sensors at various vulnerable points, and you have a got a wired online monitoring system for you.
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SMRP18 – SMRP Conference Discussion w Fred Schenkelberg

This episode is about the learning and value that conferences hold. In SMRP 2018 conference, there were a lot of companies that participated along with their workers so that they learn something new. This yearly conference is a great opportunity for people who are struggling with different things in reliability and maintenance programs. There are presentations, workshops, and discussions all around from where you can learn to change reliability practices, improve, and sustain the process for a long term. There are a lot of new engineers or trainees who are looking for a field that would help them or catch their interest.
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141 – Continuously Identify Problems w/ Peter Horsburgh

Continuously Identify Problems w/ Peter Horsburgh

Extraordinary Reliability Engineers always have some habits that differentiate them from the rest. One of these habits is that they identify the problem and really make sure that they understand it before they continue working towards its solution. A successful reliability engineer doesn’t just rely on the failure data, he actually analysis the problem, understands it, takes feedback from different people, and then deploy resources to fix that problem. When you really know what’s going on with your assets, only then you can hope to come up with a good solution that will stop that problem to occur repeatedly.

In this episode, we covered:

What are the 5 Habits of an Extraordinary Reliability Engineer?
What is Habit #1?
Why Habit #1 is so important?
How to incorporate Habit #1 into your day to day activities?
And much more!

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SMRP18 – Power Monitoring with Alex Desselle

Condition-based monitoring is one of the best ways to proactively approach the solution to the problems. When you are looking at the equipment for expected failures, it is very important to check the power conditions. There are a lot of failures that can be captured ahead of time if you have the power quality checks in place. When we talk about Power monitoring, the maintenance managers have to look for voltage spikes, current flow, and thermal changes in the operating environment of the equipment. This can be done by using thermal sensors but there are specific solutions for doing it in efficient ways.
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SMRP18 – The Importance of Procedures with Adrian Messer

There are a lot of plant facilities that do everything right but the results are never what they expect. The reason that they can’t get a hold of the problem and solve it for good is that they don’t have the procedures in the place. So, they are doing the right things but not in the right way. That’s why there should be procedures in place before any kind of maintenance work is done. Procedures not only help and support the maintenance personnel does their jobs the best way but they also support them to improve what they are doing. ᐅ Play Episode