Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
A listing in reverse chronological order of these article series:
by Alan Ross
When you start to put a risk and reliability program together for high voltage electrical equipment—primarily transformers—you have to go through a cultural change. I’ve seen it repeatedly, both in the industrial marketplace and the utility marketplace.
It’s never a one-person decision. [Read more…]
This article is directed at those ‘first responders’ who arrive immediately at the failure scene. These are the people who have to ensure the area is safe, preserve the scene for investigators and contribute to a plan to expedite a quick, safe return to production norms.
Many do not understand how valuable failed parts are to the metallurgical/forensic investigators. Broken parts are to metallurgists’, like the murder weapon is to a forensic crime investigator.
This article is meant to educate those that have access to the failed parts first, as to why they should preserve them in their failed state (not cleaning them up). We want to give them enough knowledge to be dangerous and raise their curiosity as to making a call on the fracture patterns they see. [Read more…]
Manufacturers always publish recommended maintenance for users of their products. There are a few myths about this maintenance – one is that it will result in reliable operation of the equipment. In some cases it does, but in most, it does not. Why? [Read more…]
If you think it’s expensive to figure out what kind of scheduled maintenance you should be doing on your equipment….wait until you get the bill for NOT doing it! Check out how Shakespeare inspired me on this one! [Read more…]
Guest post by Mark Latino
If managers knew what the overall power of a well supported Root Cause Analysis (RCA) effort meant for their bottom-line, they would be breaking down doors to implement the process.
Unfortunately, this is often not the case, so this paper is an attempt to educate such individuals about the characteristics of an effective RCA methodology. The paper focuses on three aspects of RCA:
These days everyone seems to be cutting spending. It’s entirely discretionary, so it’s easy to eliminate. But is that a smart move?
But today, times are tough. Trade wars, protectionism, and generally sluggish economies before those were a factor have all contributed to poor corporate performance. Shareholders want more. But can you really cut costs to become profitable? No – of course not, at least not in the long term. Cost cutting, if not done intelligently, is an immediate measure that often ends up reducing capability and / or capacity and leaves the organization weaker than it was before. [Read more…]
Functions is the first step in the RCM process and they serve as the foundation of the RCM process. Properly written Functions serve two very important aspects of asset management. [Read more…]
by Alan Ross
When you think about maintenance from a reliability perspective rather than an engineering perspective, it becomes clear that transformers are somewhat of a red-headed stepchild, even though they are the heart of the electrical system.
Why? Let’s take a closer look.
Guest post by Mark Latino
This case history takes place in a packaging facility in Virginia. The packer on module E5 was checked for vibration integrity during a pre-machine care evaluation. A problem was detected in the folding arm gearbox. The frequency characteristics indicated a bearing was deteriorating.
This seems very straight forward but let’s put the reality of the situation into the problem detected. The gearbox is located in a section of the packer that is not easily accessible. To do the necessary repairs it will require separating the two sections of the machine. When the packer is split it will take an additional two days of work before the unit can be restored to service. [Read more…]
This one is a HUGE MYTH. Maintenance costs are a direct result of what you do and what you do produces capacity for service delivery or production (depending on your business). Cost is a consequence of your actions, available cash (in a budget) does NOT determine what you will spend. [Read more…]
It’s another Saturday at my house. In this video we use RCM principles to determine if the replacement task my husband is performing on his 1989 Toyota Supra is both technically appropriate and worth doing. [Read more…]
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…]
The last article speaks to who should run your storeroom – NOT maintenance. It also leaves us hanging a bit – what should go into the store room to ensure good supply of needed materials, when needed? [Read more…]
My mentor John Moubray taught me that managing the consequences of failure is the essence of RCM. Watch how I used RCM principles to change the consequences of failure with a Default Strategy. [Read more…]
by Alan Ross
As VP of reliability at my company, I often meet customers when they are at the tyranny of the urgent. They’ll have a significant problem, multiple questions, and a big decision to make.
Just recently I was with one of our customers as he was facing one of those big decisions. It was a tough one. [Read more…]