Asset Productivity Articles
Our expert staff is well known throughout the industry for its breadth of knowledge gained through years of practical experience. The following articles, written by members of our staff, have been published in industry journals and Web sites.
What is Personal Reliability Excellence?
By R. Keith Mobley, CMRP, Principal, SME, Life Cycle Engineering
Two words reliability and excellence, used separately or together, are popular topics of discussion. The concept of reliability is usually discussed in the context of capital assets and too often tends to focus on the perceived relationship of maintenance performance to asset reliability.Are you working on the wrong problems?
By Rick Wheeler, Life Cycle Engineering
As published in SMRP Solutions magazineAnyone that has ever worked in a manufacturing site has been told “that area or equipment is our problem child or bottleneck”. But is it really? Would a detailed analysis of the data agree with the popular opinion?
Stretch Goals Fuel the Furnace of Excellence
By R. Keith Mobley, Principal SME, Life Cycle Engineering
Recently I had a long discussion with a client about goals and how they impact work culture. It started when one of their executives made an adamant comment about his approach—he could decide what they were and then deploy them to the workforce. “They will follow them whether they like them or not,” was his closing remark.It is Not About Me
By R. Keith Mobley, Principal SME, Life Cycle Engineering
I have a confession to make. I was born excessively self-centered and egotistical. All through my school years and into my early professional career it was all about me. I wanted and expected to be the center of attention, get all of the credit and earn praise for all that happened, not just what I personally accomplished but also for what those who worked with or for me did.Fighting Mistakes with an Open Mind
By Joel Levitt, Life Cycle Engineering
As appeared RxTodayNo one I’ve ever met who operates an automobile repair garage would leave wheel nuts loose because he/she didn’t feel like tightening them. But quite a few maintenance people have gotten distracted and let a car go out with loose wheel nuts. By the same token no surgeon would knowingly leave a sponge, clamp or anything else in a patient, yet to read the papers it happens all the time.
Visual Management Boards: What are they and how do you use them?
By Rick Wheeler, Life Cycle Engineering
What is visual management? We see it every day, all around us. How do you know when you can safely proceed through an intersection? How do you know how fast you can drive on a stretch of highway? How do you know how fast you’re going or how much fuel you have left?
What Will Your Legacy Be?
By R. Keith Mobley, Principal SME, Life Cycle Engineering
As a student of human behavior, I am constantly amazed by our culture’s quest for instant gratification. No matter what the topic, sports, business or personal, we are too impatient to wait for our desired future state. We are unwilling to expend the practice time, invest in business improvement or even spend time in our personal life to achieve sustainable success.Expediting Costs: How Much is Too Much?
By Doug Wallace, CPIM, Life Cycle Engineering
As appeared in RxTodayExpediting costs include premium transportation charges and incremental unit prices incurred as a result of expediting delivery of material from the supplier. Of course there are other indirect (and sometimes much greater) costs associated with expediting, such as lost production waiting for parts.
Preventive Maintenance and Care for the MRO Storeroom Inventory
By Wally Wilson, CMRP, CPIM, Life Cycle Engineering
Preventive Maintenance programs contribute greatly to equipment reliability and provide the data to support a proactive maintenance program. Most everyone would agree that performing a scheduled Preventive Maintenance (PM) activity should be focused on components within the operating equipment to monitor their performance.6 Mistakes to Avoid with EAM Software
Organizations invest millions of dollars each year in information management software “solutions” to manage their information requirements and documents pertaining to their asset management strategy. The newly released ISO 55002, Asset management — Management systems — Guidelines for the application of ISO 55001, defines this information technology as Support to the asset management system.
Success is the sum of repeated, day-to-day improvement
By R. Keith Mobley, Principal SME, Life Cycle Engineering
As appeared in the February 2014 Edition of Reflections on ExcellenceAs a student of human behavior, I am constantly amazed by our culture’s quest for instant gratification. No matter what the topic, sports, business or personal, we are too impatient to wait for our desired future state. We are unwilling to expend the practice time, invest in business improvement or even spend time in our personal life to achieve sustainable success.
Maintenance Planning and Scheduling: the Key to Reliability Excellence
By Al Emeneker, Life Cycle Engineering
In concept and function, maintenance planning and scheduling is like a key that can unlock Reliability Excellence® and its benefits. It’s an apt comparison because a key is a pretty useless piece of material without all the interfaces that make it functional.Luck is made, not given
By R. Keith Mobley, Principal SME, Life Cycle Engineering
Have you ever known someone who seemed blessed with the ability to excel at everything they tried? Perhaps in school there was an athlete in school who seemed to effortlessly excel or a student who never seemed to study but destroyed the grading curve by consistently recording a perfect score.Ten Things to Know about ISO 55000
These three components of the international standard for asset management, ISO 55000, are all currently in draft format.
Incorporating Risk-based Asset Management into your Drug Shortage Prevention Program
By David J. Mierau, PE, CMRP
Risk-based asset management policies and practices for physical assets are valuable additions to operations within the pharmaceutical industry. These practices have strong parallels to commonly used quality risk management (QRM) concepts, and have specific benefits related to preventing drug shortages.Department of Equipment Health: Why Does Everyone Hate Maintenance Activity?
There’s a common perception in many organizations that everyone hates maintenance activity. Is it possible that this stems from conversations about maintenance work that we and others in our business community hear and repeat to ourselves? Perhaps the reason we look at maintenance the way we do is because there are disempowering conversations traveling around the organization.
The Role of Critical Spares Analysis in Validating Spare Parts Recommendations
By Chris Endrai, Life Cycle Engineering
One Monday morning, I arrived at the daily Production Meeting and joined a tense discussion about the three-stage, recycle compressor that had failed over the weekend. It had been a fairly reliable machine, but it was going to result in a lot of downtime while we repaired it. Being a world-scale polymer production facility, this translated to a couple million dollars of lost economic opportunity. It was going to be a long week, but at least we had all the parts.The Sole of Understanding is Empathy
By R. Keith Mobley, Principal SME, Life Cycle Engineering
Grudgingly I will admit to getting older and I hope, with that age, wiser. I do know that one of the attributes of growing old is that one spends more and more time looking backward, reflecting on what one has seen, experienced and learned.Autonomous Maintenance: Can you go too far?
By Rick Wheeler, Life Cycle Engineering
As appeared in RxTodayCompanies are still pursuing the dream of autonomous maintenance as taught by Tokutaro Suzuki in his book “TPM for Process Industry”. The theory is that basic tasks such as cleaning, inspecting, tightening, and lubricating can and should be done by the equipment operators because they are the equipment owners and closest to the equipment on a daily basis.
It's Good Business
By R. Keith Mobley, Principal SME, Life Cycle Engineering
Business success is far more than the science of managing scale and cutting costs. An organization focused single-mindedly on cost cutting, minimizing costs through scale, and doing the same things more cheaply, will too often ignore opportunities that would yield sustainable improvement.
