Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
A listing in reverse chronological order of these article series:
By Guest Blogger Traci Hopkins, senior training & education advisor, SDMyers
Whatever style of workforce training your organization practices—on-the-job training, trade school, equipment-specific skills courses, internships, or external technical training—there is one thing that can amplify that training’s effectiveness and increase retention significantly: continuity. [Read more…]
Imagine working in an organization that does not provide training or has zero tolerance to taking a risk, trying something new and failing. Or it is expected that you have all of the answers and do not need any assistance ever. Sound familiar? If it does, how is the performance of your plant? Chances are it is not as good as it could be. This example is great at illustrating what a learning culture does not look like.
“A learning culture is a set of organizational values, conventions, processes, and practices that encourage individuals—and the organization as a whole—to increase knowledge, competence, and performance.” A learning culture is vital to the long-term sustainability of any maintenance & reliability program and improving plant performance.
If you don’t have an organization that believes in training, or risk taking or learning from failure, what do you do? You can take steps to build a learning culture. The first step is to recognize the concern. The concern could be around cost, past returns on training, or experience that says the employee will leave after receiving the training. Whichever it is, it must be addressed.
Also, any organization can start to develop a learning culture by doing the following;
I recently had the opportunity to work with two great organizations. Both organizations had recognized the need for assistance. They were looking to make improvements in areas in which they had no experience, but they had a willingness to learn. They did not want a “turn key” solution but instead wanted to build the capability of their internal team, let them develop the solution and implement the solution.
There was and will be some follow-up support, but here are two organizations that are not only investing in their people with training but allowing them to take the risk, learn and grow. Talk about ownership; these were some of the most passionate people that I have had the pleasure to work with. It is always a pleasure to work with organizations such as this, and I am truly enjoying watching the team come together and grow.
People are the heart of any improvement, so make sure you invest in them and create a learning culture. In closing, I ask you to think about the following, “What if we train the staff and leave?”, but the better question is “What if we don’t train them and they stay?”
Remember, to find success; you must first solve the problem, then achieve the implementation of the solution, and finally sustain winning results.
I’m James Kovacevic
Eruditio, LLC
Where Education Meets Application
Follow @EruditioLLC
References
Some organizations are poor or marginal performers, some high, and some truly great. Jim Collins, in “Good to Great” (2001) describes the differences among the latter two. Much of the difference boils down to people and the culture that is fostered within the organization. They foster learning in all forms, including learning from mistakes. They are typically “humble” and accept helpful input from outside, admitting when and where they need to improve. [Read more…]
There are three important things we can learn about Inherent Reliability…from a cotton field! Watch as I explain what Inherent Reliability is. And, I discuss two important points any responsible custodian needs to know to achieve the Reliability that’s required from an asset. [Read more…]
The Reliability Approach… “Something understood and practiced by engineers and highly specialized technicians,” is apt to be the first reaction of the line supervisor, “certainly not an area where I can be expected to become involved.” Although this reaction is understandable; nothing is farther from reality. Let’s explore why in this paper. Please read until the surprising end (I know it is lengthy) and you will find that these Reliability Principles apply to any industry, any where at any time! [Read more…]
Maintenance Planning & Scheduling is one of the most important processes in the maintenance function. Without it, work will not be completed on time, nor will it be efficient. So why, is the maintenance planning & scheduling process often ignored, or not implemented successfully? [Read more…]
If you want to achieve your Maintenance and Reliability goals, here’s where to begin. But…don’t fall into the same trap I did…! [Read more…]
The Greatest Benefit of RCA is Generally an Unknown…Intellectual Capital
Because business is measured based on credits and debits, this is how we must express effectiveness of initiatives in reality. However, the physical costs are NOT the greatest benefit derived from RCA when done properly. [Read more…]
In May 2018, we sponsored a summit that brought electric power reliability leaders from all over the country to Houston to discuss the gap in reliability. I’ve had a few weeks now to reflect on the event, and I want to share those thoughts with you.
If SDMyers was the mother of the Electric Power Reliability Summit (EPRS), then I feel like I was the midwife. [Read more…]
In my book, Uptime, I talk about doing a review or assessment to determine your current state as compared with your vision of some desired future state. This suggests to many that a formal assessment is needed. However, you might also notice that I removed the Appendix containing sample assessment questions. Here’s why… [Read more…]
I’m all about realizing the Inherent Reliability of my teeth and I use Condition Based Maintenance (CBM) to do it! Join me for a trip to my dentist’s office where Josie, my dental hygienist, details the Potential Failure Conditions she’s looking for. [Read more…]
Understanding now what perspective the executives have of an RCA initiative, how should RCA efforts be designed to report their results to the “C” level? Many would like to say “to express the results in a manner that demonstrates an increase in patient safety”. In a perfect world that would be nice, but what single metric expresses an increase in patient safety? Is there a line item on the Income Statement (IS) or Balance Sheet (BS) labeled “patient safety”? Not likely. [Read more…]
Reliability Centered Maintenance is an analytical process used in decision making about how best to manage equipment and system failures, and their consequences. Much of its output comprises maintenance tasks with assigned task frequencies. Those tasks will ultimately be managed in your Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) or Enterprise Asset Management Systems (EAM). You don’t need software to perform RCM analysis, but it is helpful. Given the link between RCM output tasks and the proactive maintenance program you will manage using your CMMS / EAM, it seems to make sense to link or integrate the two software tools. Integration should enable automatic updates of the PM program stored in your CMMS/EAM whenever the RCM analysis is updated and possibly feed failure event historical data back to your RCM analysis with a notification that perhaps the analysis should be reviewed. Alas, that’s not going to happen. [Read more…]
Let’s celebrate the birthday of a very special Maintenance and Reliability event. In July 2018, the MSG-1 document turned 50 years old. Since many of the principles found in MSG-1 are embodied in RCM, that means RCM principles are also 50 years old! Take a trip down memory lane with me and MSG-1…the first of two documents that led us to Reliability Centered Maintenance! [Read more…]