Accendo Reliability

Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site

on Maintenance Reliability

A listing in reverse chronological order of these article series:


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RCM Leaders and Followers

RCM Leaders and Followers

Funny how times change.

When I first began speaking at conferences in 1999 some of the statements I made regarding how to most effectively manage a Reliability Centered Maintenance program were publically criticized by practitioners of other methodologies.

Sixteen years later it seems that those who were at first critical of RCM Blitz® seem to have adopted nearly every change I made to make RCM easier to Manage, Facilitate and provide a return on investment (ROI) for the time it takes to train people, perform the analysis, implement the results, and perform the RCM tasks. [Read more…]

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Managing Failures Before They Occur

Managing Failures Before They Occur

Welcome to part eight of my 10-part series of blogs called “Uptime Insights”, where we explore a journey of excellence in maintenance.

To stay on top, managers must implement strategies that keep operations performing at high levels. In these articles, I will show you how to achieve excellence in maintenance – a critical business process in any capital intensive industry.

Uptime Insights Part Eight:

Asset Reliability

Being proactive with your assets is all about managing failures before they occur.

You can reduce or eliminate the consequences of failure by forecasting what is likely to happen and deciding in advance about what to do about it.  The advantage to doing this is that major business impact due to equipment breakdown can be avoided.

High performing companies manage proactively – they foresee and avoid problems.

It’s good for business! [Read more…]

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5 Days to a Reliability Culture

What you can do to foster a reliability culture at your operation

Reliability culture is like clockwork
© William Warby

Improving reliability is easier said than done.

Often times you can develop great PM routines, improve equipment and have the right processes in place, but reliability doesn’t improve. Why is that?

It all comes down to people. People are the heart of reliability, whether they run the equipment or maintain it.

Changing people’s perception of reliability can be a very difficult task. So where do we start?

When trying to implement such change, you will often hear of change management and change framework.

This is a great exercise and contributes greatly to success. But what if you are a Maintenance Supervisor who needs a tangible action that you can run with? [Read more…]

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Support Systems Improve Efficiency

Support Systems Improve Efficiency

Welcome to part seven of my 10-part series of blogs called “Uptime Insights”, where we explore a journey of excellence in maintenance.

To stay on top, managers must implement strategies that keep operations performing at high levels. In these articles, I will show you how to achieve excellence in maintenance – a critical business process in any capital intensive industry.

Uptime Insights Part Seven:

Support Systems Improve Efficiency

Computerized systems are important and now seemingly indispensable tools for business.  Just remember the last power failure you experienced and you’ll understand.

There isn’t much that isn’t computerized these days.  Technology and its business applications continue to grow and proliferate.  The world of maintenance is no exception.

Most maintenance work is not computerized, but it is complex and managing it requires sophisticated tools. Using those tools effectively will improve the efficiency with which you deliver maintenance services.

Use them poorly and you only add cost. [Read more…]

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Do You Make This Critical Mistake? Find Out If You Are Contributing to Reactivity

Do You Make This Critical Mistake? Find Out If You Are Contributing to Reactivity

What is the one thing that all operations have? If you guessed a breakdown hero or fire fighter, you are correct.

You know the person who swoops in like Superman and repairs a machine quickly. These breakdown heroes are the people who reduce the time to repair, but do they contribute to or reduce the reactivity of the site? [Read more…]

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Achieving Cost Effectiveness with Performance Management

Achieving Cost Effectiveness with Performance Management

Welcome to part six of my 10-part series of blogs called “Uptime Insights”, where we explore a journey of excellence in maintenance.

To stay on top, managers must implement strategies that keep operations performing at high levels. In these articles, I will show you how to achieve excellence in maintenance – a critical business process in any capital intensive industry.

Uptime Insights Part Six:

Achieving Cost Effectiveness with Performance Management

The work management process is essential to keeping costs under control in maintenance but how will you know if you are doing well if you don’t measure what you are doing and the results you get?

Performance management is another essential for maintenance management. Costs are important, results are important and so are the processes you use to turn costs into results.

Performance management is central to managing those processes so you get the most output for the least input – the greatest cost effectiveness. [Read more…]

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Focus on the Foundation: It Will Sustain You

Focus on the Foundation: It Will Sustain You

As Engineers, Craft and Maintenance people, we have a tendency to be excited by the technological advancements that become available.

This is not a bad thing provided we do not let them become the flavor of the month or take our attention away from what we are here to do. Enable Reliability and Maintenance.

Often we find much information on the advanced technical topics such as Reliability Engineering, Life Cycle Costing, or various CBM technologies. When properly deployed, these techniques allow us to further our success in Reliability and Maintenance.

But what about the foundations that make these interesting techniques successful? [Read more…]

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Isolation Valves for Different Services

Isolation Valves for Different Services

Valves can be used to both isolate and regulate liquid and gas flow.

Valve used for isolation duties must provide secure, tight shut-off. Consideration must be given to the nature of the process chemical, the quality of sealing and the impact of outside environmental occurrences.

Keywords: bubble tight, design pressure, leakage rate, fire rated, differential pressure. [Read more…]

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Building Excellence in Materials Management

Building Excellence in Materials Management

Welcome to part five of my 10-part series of blogs called “Uptime Insights”, where we explore a journey of excellence in maintenance. To stay on top, managers must implement strategies that keep operations performing at high levels.

In these articles, I will show you how to achieve excellence in maintenance – a critical business process in any capital intensive industry.

Uptime Insights Part Five:

Building Excellence in Materials Management

Without parts, many jobs can’t be done.  There’s no point planning and scheduling work if you can’t rely on materials management to provide the parts when you need them.  If you want excellence in maintenance you need excellence in materials management. [Read more…]

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See How Easily You Can Succeed in Reliability: 7 Critical Steps in Making Reliability a Way of Life

See How Easily You Can Succeed in Reliability: 7 Critical Steps in Making Reliability a Way of Life

Why is it that Reliability Programs often fail and are not sustained? Bringing about such a change in a large organization is often one of the most difficult tasks that we undertake.

This undertaking requires a shift in mindset and in the ways people work. People love the status quo and are often afraid of the change. We must show them that there is nothing to be afraid of and that the change will be beneficial.

[Read more…]

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Performance Reviews for the Crew

Performance Reviews for the Crew

One method to provide a formal means of appraising people’s performance is by using performance reviews. The employee and manager together use a structured check sheet to work through keys duties of the employee.

They address both the good, and not so good, aspects of performance. The end result is an unbiased assessment of the employee’s current performance and a plan to improve it over the coming year.

Keywords: rating scale, verifiable, performance standards. [Read more…]

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How to Measure Success: The 7 Key Performance Indicators You Must Measure

How to Measure Success: The 7 Key Performance Indicators You Must Measure

Being able to see what world class Reliability & Maintenance looks like is one thing. Communicating that success and level of performance to non-maintenance people can be difficult. Not to mention, that we always need to improve, and how can we if we only use qualitative measures?

I remember one time, trying to explain how Maintenance Planning & Scheduling has improved our maintenance department. I used explanations like; “The team isn’t wandering around looking for parts” and “They don’t need to leave the job to get the manuals anymore”. I was met with blank stares and was asked “How much were we saving on labour” and “How much were we able to reduce planned downtime”. [Read more…]