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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51 – The Reliability Improvement Journey with Jason Tranter

The Reliability Improvement Journey with Jason Tranter

This episode is about the reliability improvement journey of Jason Tranter who is currently the managing director—also the founder and owner—of Mobius Institute. He started his journey when vibration analysis was just in the early phase and organizations were keen to work on condition-based maintenance to have good productivity and improved availability. Reliability in the present times, depends heavily on the availability of the equipment and vibration analysis helps greatly in this endeavor to make your assets more dependable which ultimately improves reliability techniques of an organization. You want the systems to operate when you need them to operate and you make sure that they do so by improving reliability at different levels. This results in increased uptime, quality products leading to time and cost saving. The concept of reliability changes depending on the organizations but the main goal should always be to help the organizations achieve their objectives by taking measurements of running of equipment whenever needed.
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50 – Root Cause Analysis Made Simple with Susan Lubell

Root Cause Analysis Made Simple with Susan Lubell

This episode of the rooted in reliability podcast covers the Root Cause Analysis in the light of a book written by Susan Lubell – the guest herself—and the book is part of the made simple series. In this book, Susan has covered a number of matrices that need to be answered very specifically and clearly based on the methodologies adopted by different organizations. This book doesn’t just focus on the terminologies and specific techniques that are used by the experts. It actually covers the very baselines of the RCA methods such as how to get started with the analysis and what to look for in order to successfully implement it. This book is more of a guide for those who want to start their journey in the field and can use a bunch of best practices that are used by the top-notch organizations in the industry. It’s not about the fault tree analysis or other techniques that are used to determine the root cause. It’s more about the people managing side of the Root Cause Analysis like why do you need to perform an RCA and what are the factors that drive it.
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49 – Introduction to Vibration Analysis with Jason Tranter, Part 2

Introduction to Vibration Analysis with Jason Tranter, Part 2

This episode of the rooted in reliability podcast provides an introduction to the vibration and vibration analysis with Jason Tranter. There are a lot of failures that occur in the machinery of an organization just because their condition monitoring processes are not very good. Most of all, the technicians who are assigned these tasks related to the condition-based maintenance of the rotating machines either don’t have enough knowledge or they are not doing it correctly. And because of that not only the budget of the facilities suffer but also the reliability programs are affected by these failures at a great level.
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48 – Introduction to Vibration Analysis with Jason Tranter, Part 1

Introduction to Vibration Analysis with Jason Tranter, Part 1

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47 – RCM Reengineered with James Reyes-Picknell & Jesus Sifonte

RCM Reengineered with James Reyes-Picknell & Jesus Sifonte

In this episode, the guests, James Reyes-Picknell and Jesus Sifonte talk about the RCM Reengineered that they have also explained in their book—to be launched on 20^th April— with a lot of practical approaches as well. The RCM Reengineered is based on the original RCM technique to avoid and manage failures occurring during the asset management process, but it optimizes a lot of factors with a broad range of criticality measures and problems that come along with it. The RCM has been around for a long time and was developed to handle the safety issues in flights but RCM Reengineered focuses on the failures that are science-based and then it provides you with the exact solutions that must be implemented to achieve long-term and sustainable reliability operation depending upon the type of the industry.
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46 – The Importance of Roles & Responsibilities

The Importance of Roles & Responsibilities

How often to you find people duplicating work, or work not being completed? What about tasks being started by one person, to be completed by another?

As organizations continue to do more with less, ensuring everyone is on the same page and pulling their weight becomes increasing important. The lines of communications, expectations, and alignment on achieving the vision of the organization are critical to the success of a maintenance department.

Often most people are put into positions without fully knowing what they are responsible for and accountable for.
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45 – The Condition of PdM in Industry with Tom Wilk

The Condition of PdM in Industry with Tom Wilk

This episode of the rooted in reliability podcast is about the condition of predictive maintenance in the industry and the guest in this episode is Thomas Wilk who is the editor in chief in Plant Services—a publication in the field of maintenance and reliability. There is no doubt in the fact that predictive maintenance is very critical for increasing uptime of your equipment and the productivity of your plant. When you can predict the failures that are sure to occur in the earlier or later stages, that is where you start to make the smart decisions regarding the maintenance of your assets that you have placed in your organization.
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44 – What is a Monte Carlo Analysis with Fred Schenkelberg

What is a Monte Carlo Analysis with Fred Schenkelberg

In today’s episode, the guest Fred Schenkelberg explains the Monte Carlo simulation in a fair amount of detail. Before you get in the depth of how the tool works, you need to understand what basically this method is. The Monte Carlo simulation has been around since World War 2 and it is a mathematical technique that works based on probability functions, random variables, and the distribution of statistical data. The main concept of it to give the decision maker the most obvious choices while facing any risks to get the best out of every possible outcome. The tool serves the purpose for getting a better insight of the consequences relative to each choice the person making decisions has to make. When you’re looking for the reliability of your assets and checking the integrity of your different maintenance programs, it is a really powerful tool.
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43 – The Maintenance & Reliability Journey with Paul Crocker

The Maintenance & Reliability Journey with Paul Crocker

In this episode, the guest Paul Crocker tells his inspiring Maintenance and Reliability Engineering journey. He is an Uptime award holder in the innovative use of photography for maintenance in the Kansas City. He has been taking pictures of every equipment in the workshops, in the field, and everywhere he can. These pictures have worked like a living notebook for him—just a much better to look at, kind of. He suggests it to his coworkers and trains people to do the same as pictures of issues that an engineer faces in routine, failure data and equipment information can be pretty useful sometimes.
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42 – Unlocking Wrench Time with Parts Kitting

Unlocking Wrench Time with Parts Kitting

Implementing Parts Kitting is challenging as doing so requires numerous systems, processes, and people to work together. This paper describes appropriate steps for successful implementation of Parts Kitting in a sustainable manner and outlines pitfalls to avoid.

At an average facility, maintenance staff wrench time is approximately 30% (Figure 1). That means that they only spent this amount of their time performing repairs and Preventative Maintenance or other value added work. The rest of the time is lost for a variety of reasons. Businesses work to address this lack in efficiency by implementing a maintenance planning & scheduling functions. When properly implemented, many realize the benefits in craft efficiency. However, improper implementation of these planning and scheduling functions leads to minimal or no improvement in work productivity. One of the main reasons for this lack of improvement is the time the craft spend traveling & looking for parts.
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41 – 2016 SMRP Conference Round Up with Christopher Mears

2016 SMRP Conference Round Up with Christopher Mears

This episode of the weekly podcast is focused on the 2016 SMRP conference and is described in detail by one of the Board members of the SMRP itself, the education director Christopher Mears. Society for Maintenance and Reliability Professionals is a shared group where you get many opportunities to learn, experience, and improve your working skills for your own and your organization’s benefit. They have an annual event in October called the SMRP conference where professionals from around gather and get a know-how about the best practices that many good quality CMRPs use in different industries. It is shared event in which many companies exhibit in workshops which technologies they are using right now. What have they come across while dealing with the reliability improvements and what are they up to—not the specific details like confidential designs, documents, and charts. But kind of keynotes that are food for thought if you are keen to make yourself better in the race of reliability professionals. Apart from this yearly event, you can find the webinars of SMRP members on the official site along with the presentations of different professionals that are working in the leading organizations of the field. The exhibitors of this society are very successful at what they do and if you want to start your reliability engineering journey—doesn’t matter if you’re a student, earlier in the career, or an experienced professional—there’s plenty for you to do in the workshops along with a chance to see the best facilities of the city in which the conferences are held.
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40 – Moving to Proactive Maintenance with Scott Kelley

Moving to Proactive Maintenance with Scott Kelley

In this episode of the rooted in reliability podcast, the guest Scott Kelly explains the sixth cell of the hexagon of Plant-Hexcellence Model. All the cells of this model are linked together so that every cell is critically important to get good results from your plant. But there are always prioritized standards for different people working in the organization and most of them consider the proactive maintenance above all as it’s the best way to save both time and money. Basically, it is a strategy through which you plan your asset management process from the very start till the end by looking at the design of the machines, construction, visual inspection, and so on.
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39 – Managing Performance in Asset Management with Scott Kelley

Managing Performance in Asset Management with Scott Kelley

In this episode of the weekly podcast, the guest Scott Kelley explains the 5th cell of the Hexcellence Model. All of the previous cells of this hexagon are connected to each other and are equally important when it comes to getting the superior asset management outcomes. But when it comes to achieving optimum results for the company some sort of performance measures must be done and each of the factors involved in determining the performance level must be taken care of. Not only that you need to understand these factors deeply, you need to relate them to your baselines for budget and time as well. In this way, you will be able to meet the expectations and standards that ultimately lead to focused improvements in the long run. Now, these measures will change the behavior of your organization. So, you have to be careful while using any metrics for measurement to get those numbers that will determine the behavior of your people. A good performance metric is always balanced to avoid any counter-productive outcomes. You can create as many metrics as you want but unless those are aligned with your strategic goals, they won’t be of any help at all. That’s why all the metrics that you use should be fit for purpose—meaning that look at the overall picture and make the indicators in a comparative fashion if you want those to make sense.
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38 – Utilizing Policy and Procedures with Scott Kelley

Utilizing Policy and Procedures with Scott Kelley

In this episode, the guest Scott Kelley explains another cell in the hexagon of Plant Hexcellence model and that is, Policies and Procedures. This cell is pretty much based on standards and the directions to follow these standards but before you get into the details, it is extremely important that you understand the basic terminology. A policy is comprised of the written guidelines that are officially part of any organization where the employees are bound to respect and follow these documented and published, set of rules. The procedure is a technique or method that you use to support and repeatedly implement these guidelines in that particular organization. Then these terms are tied back to the processes as they include the step by step graphical interpretation of the methods that you are going to adapt—answering what’s and how’s to achieve the guidelines. Another term that is often confused with the policy is the practice that is different—unless organization wants to make it officially part of the policy—as it’s not documented like policies. Now as all of these terms as dependent on each other because written guidelines are always easy to keep in mind and follow one way or another. The procedures are documented to make them easier to follow or at least the standard and basic procedures are to be strictly adapted in every good organization.
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37 – The Benefits of Processes with Scott Kelley

The Benefits of Processes with Scott Kelley

In this episode of the rooted in reliability podcast, Scott Kelley talks about the benefits of the processes. A process is a visual representation of work depicted in flow diagrams that demonstrate the path you have chosen along with alternative paths to accomplish your goals, also including the decision making.
A process gives you the insight into the most efficient methods of doing your work and then document them for future use. These processes are directly tied to policies and procedures of an organization. You can also use CMMS for gathering information and then implement these methods accordingly in a better way as you will know exactly what kind of system you need depending upon your requirements.There are following things that you need to know while building a process map; who does the work? Who authorizes the work? Who hands-off the work and who they hand out to? Who verifies the work? Who approves the changes? This part continues until all the stakeholders such as suppliers, owners, customers, community, employees, and regulators are involved.
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