Rooted in Reliability: The Plant Performance Podcast

A weekly Maintenance and Reliability podcast covering common industry challenges and what you can learn from them. Each episode dives deeper into critical issues and explains how you can begin correcting theses maintenance flaws today. Sharing new tips and techniques to help you achieve industry best practice and shining a light on widely debated maintenance topics with special guest experts.

Your host and founder of Rooted in Reliability James Kovacevic, will take you on a weekly tour of his 13+ years of shop floor experience, along with special guest that lend an expert look inside your maintenance departments problems and concerns.

Plane, train, or automobile, however you’re traveling to work Rooted In Reliability is compatible for listening on the go.

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160 Transition on the road to Asset Management with Susan Lubell

Transition on the road to Asset Management with Susan Lubell

Asset management means to get the best value from your assets in a collaborative way. It helps you manage your assets safely and in a cost-effective manner. The organizations need to understand the risks involved in introducing unsafe practices into the field. These unhealthy practices can put the lives of your engineers at risk and cost you heavily in terms of asset damage and equipment repairs. Asset management is a journey and even though your organization might already be doing asset management, there’s always room to improve.

In this episode, we covered:

The first steps of Asset Management
Asset Management isn’t a crash diet!
What departments should be involved?
And much more!

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159 Maintenance Metrics with Stuart Fergusson

Maintenance Metrics with Stuart Fergusson

Maintenance metrics is a very important part of a maintenance and reliability program because you can’t improve what you can’t measure. Performance measurement is necessary to derive those improvements that will help you carry out your maintenance activities the best way possible. It is a cycle that can be divided into three steps. First you have to enable you team members, then you have to train them, and in the end you have to measure their performance on a consistent basis using some standard KIPs. It is repetitive process and you have to perform these three steps often to make sure everything is going according to the plan.

In this episode, we covered:

What steps to take?
The differance between KPIs and metrics!
Where to start!
And much more!

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158 LORA with Lucas Marino

Level Of Repair Analysis with Lucas Marino

Most of the organizations in the maintenance and reliability industry have limited resources and they want to make the best use of what they have got. If the maintenance requirements of an organizations don’t match its resources, it is always going to result into an increased cost and decreased employee performance. The type of maintenance that an asset required throughout its life cycle needs to be performed in a balanced way. That’s why it is so important to have a maintenance philosophy when you are planning the life cycle cost of an asset. Level of Repair Analysis or LORA is a framework that helps you manage between maintenance cost and resources.

In this episode, we covered:

What is LORA?
How to start using LORA!
The value of having a maintenance philosophy!
And much more!

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157 PdM in RCM r with Jesus Sifonte

PdM in RCM R with Jesus Sifonte

Condition monitoring is time-based solution to mitigating and preventing failures and it is a huge part of RCM or RCM R. RCM R is the advanced, updated version of RCM that entails predictive maintenance as the main technique to perform condition-based monitoring to improve asset performance. The reason that RCM and PDM fit together perfectly is because reliability can never be complete without having some sort of predictive maintenance method in place. Condition monitoring is the perfect tool for that. It also incorporates vibration analysis, oil analysis, and the use of infrared from time to time but it’s all a part of running PMs smoothly.

In this episode, we covered:

What is RCM R?
How RCM and PdM fit together!
The best technology out there to help your PdM program!
And much more!

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156 Manufacturing Analytics with Bryan Sapot

Manufacturing Analytics with Bryan Sapot

Data is the single important thing—whether it’s quality data, failure data or any other kind of data—that helps you make decisions in the best interest if your assets and the organization. You may have set data points but those don’t mean anything unless you know what you are looking for. When you take unstructured data, analyze it, and then turn it into meaningful information to improve manufacturing, it can be called manufacturing analytics. You can use it to make your reliability processes better or you can use it for performance measurement for your assets or personnel, it works great for both.

In this episode, we covered:

The value of data!
What to do with your data!
The uses your data has!
And much more!

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155 Bearing Installation with Bernd Seidenthal

Bearing Installation with Bernd Seidenthal

Predictive maintenance is a huge part of the overall reliability of your assets. Most of the times, equipment fails because of the bearing or seal failure. Bearing failures are very common in the facilities and improper installation of a bearing is one of the biggest reasons it fails. If you don’t do it right with proper tools, you are going to damage the bearing and it is only a matter of when rather than how. Before installing a bearing, you need to have a clean space and all the necessary tools should be with you when you are installing it.

In this episode, we covered:

Steps for bearing installation!
The value of proper bearing installation!
The tools you need!!
And much more!

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154-Asset Condition Monitoring with Jack Nicholas

Asset Condition Monitoring with Jack Nicholas

Asset condition monitoring can be defined the process to determine the health status of the equipment using high-tech tools, predict future status based on the deficiencies found, and return health to normal before complete loss of function. That way you can plan the maintenance of the equipment at your own best time rather than having the equipment fail at a bad time. There are a lot of tools out there that can help you with predictive maintenance or asset condition monitoring. Using sensors is one of the best examples of advanced tools being used to achieve maintenance and reliability goals for the equipment.

In this episode, we covered:

Why the basics are the first steps!
What tools you should be using for each step!
Measures to take to sustain improvement!
And much more!

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153-What tool when with Ron Moore

What Tool? When? with Ron Moore

Today’s episode is based on What Tool When by Ron Moore. The book covers all the common tools that are handy in a workplace for a maintenance engineer. Then, it covers concepts like Manufacturing, six sigma, TPM, reliability and maintenance along with information about lots of tools. In the early chapters, it provides insights into leadership and culture change. It tells you about the very basics of having a tool around and how to use it but it also provides you the basic things that should be in place before you get to the tool part.

In this episode, we covered:

The tools a Maintenance Engineer needs!
How to make change!
The steps you need to build a performance tool!
And much more!

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152- Field Balancing with Gary James

Field Balancing with Gary James

There are a lot of aspects that need to be taken care of in condition monitoring and field balancing is one of those. There are two types of balancing; static and dynamic. The first one deals with balancing in a controlled environment and other one is purely balancing a piece of equipment in the field. When you have balanced an asset against a bunch if parameters, you know when there’s an unbalance in the equipment. There are different defects that can caught using a balancing frequency or other parameter. There are a lot of causes for unbalancing such as; corrosion, part damage, assembly error, and other machining tolerances.

In this episode, we covered:

Why laying the ground work out is where you should start first!
Why you want to look at a graphic balancing and studying the tools before you go out into the field.
Knowing resonance against different frequencies!
And much more!

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151- First Day as a Reliability Engineer with Fred Schenkelberg

First Day as a Reliability Engineer with Fred Schenkelberg

It is always a difficult first day for a reliability engineer in a new place. There are a lot of things to get yourself involved in and there are some tips that can really help you get through that successfully. The job of a reliability engineer requires always moving around, so there is hardly the need of finding the station first. A good reliability engineers always starts with getting the lay of the land first. This would involve getting to know the relevant personnel on the job and the people who can give you basic logistics of it.

In this episode, we covered:

Tips for an RE’s first day!
Why you should know the flow of data before analyzing.
Understanding the type of communication you need to provide!
And much more!

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150 – Machinery Failure Analysis and Troubleshooting with Heinz Bloch

Machinery Failure Analysis and Troubleshooting with Heinz Bloch

The organizations often tend to ignore some simple things when they are mitigating a machinery failure. Some of the important things being; why did the failure occur? Who should be asked about it? What kind of measures can be taken so that it doesn’t occur again? Most of the time, it is just changing parts without doing the proper analysis or troubleshooting for that matter. What you should be doing as a professional organization is, train your technicians about step by step problem solving by giving them test examples. The technicians should be able to contribute to the solutions and they should be encouraged to do so.

In this episode, we covered:

Why is communication is critical?
The value of continuing education!
Why do you need to include all departments?
And much more!

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SMRP18 – Working Man’s iIoT with Kevin Clark

Whenever people talk about the iIOT or other advanced technologies, they are not considered as the tools the technicians at the shop floor can benefit from. The reason is that they are so complex that you need proper training to get the results that you need. But it is vital that such technologies and tools are made available to the people on the plant floor. They are the ones who can benefit the most from it as they spend all their time being close to the asset. Whenever a problem occurs, they can be just notified to take care of it.
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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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