Reliability Engineering Articles

  • Eight Common Misperceptions of Management of Change

    By Sam McNair, P.E., CMRP, Life Cycle Engineering
    As appeared in RxToday

    Whenever I mention Management of Change to plant personnel, I generally get one of several predictable responses. The knowledgeable ones will cite the regulation OSHA 1910.119(a)(2) and tell me that they aren’t a “covered process” so that it does not apply to them – generally with a great sigh of relief.  Another frequent response is: “We have a drawing management procedure, but we are so far behind it would take years and resources we don’t have to catch up.” Others still will tell me that they have a perfectly fine procedure for their managers to approve small projects and alterations. And a few will sheepishly think about the pennies and nickels filling up their car’s ash tray. So what is Management of Change (MOC)?

  • What Do Your Preventive Maintenance Tasks Really Do For Your Asset Care Strategy?

    By Jeff Jones
    Proper asset care is critical to ensure that equipment is available to meet production schedules, support process flows and comply with environmental, health, safety, and regulatory requirements. Asset care is the execution of the most cost effective control strategy to address the predominant failure modes of that particular asset with its operating envelope. The intent of this strategy is to provide the required asset utilization at the lowest life cycle cost while also ensuring the asset makes it to the budgeted end of life. This care could be an operator care task, a predictive technology, a preventive maintenance task or job plan, and even doing nothing at all (run to failure).

  • How a Reliability Engineer Improves Reliability

    International standards define reliability as the probability that a unit will perform its required functions, without failure for a specified time period when used under specified conditions.

  • What’s the role of the Reliability Engineer?

    By Life Cycle Engineering
    The primary role of the Reliability Engineer is to identify and manage asset reliability risks that could adversely affect plant or business operations. This broad primary role can be divided into  three smaller, more manageable roles: Loss Elimination, Risk Management and Life Cycle Asset Management (LCAM).

  • What Root Cause Analysis (RCA) tool is best for Operators?

    Whenever one is asked to specify the best tool for an application one must first consider a few things before settling on an answer. One has to consider who is going to use it, what this tool would be used for (its application), and what the outcome is intended to accomplish. We know the answer to the first consideration to be Operators. With this in mind, let us step through the remaining areas of concern to arrive at an answer.

  • Improving Availability Is Much More Than Maintenance

    By R. Keith Mobley, Life Cycle Engineering
    Many confuse availability with equipment reliability. In reality, it is only one part of the calculation. Availability is the actual time that the machine or system is capable of production as a percent of total planned production time. Availability rate should not be confused with overall availability. The latter is calculated using total calendar time as the divisor, not planned production time.

  • Finding the Root Cause of Energy Consumption

    By Josh Rothenberg, CMRP, Life Cycle Engineering
    As appeared in Reliable Plant Mail e-newsletter

    Whenever one is asked to specify the best tool for an application one must first consider a few things before settling on an answer. One has to consider who is going to use it, what this tool would be used for (its application), and what the outcome is intended to accomplish. We know the answer to the first consideration to be Operators. With this in mind, let us step through the remaining areas of concern to arrive at an answer.

  • How Does a PM Program Help Eliminate Component Failures?

    First we must define what PM stands for. According to Life Cycle Engineering’s RX Definitions, this could have one of many meanings. It could refer to Periodic Maintenance, Planned Maintenance, Predictive Maintenance (although normally abbreviated PdM), and Preventive Maintenance. Despite the definition of each and how they differ, they all relate to asset care.

  • Eliminating Defects through Equipment Reliability

    As appeared in Reliable Plant Mail e-newsletter

    Since the rise to prominence of quality-focused business initiatives such as Total Quality Management (TQM) and eventually Six Sigma, companies have been focusing on reducing their final product defects to the absolute bare minimum.

  • How Can I Keep My Reliability Efforts on Track in this Recession?

    By Paul Borders, Life Cycle Engineering
    As appeared in Lean Manufacturing Journal e-newsletter

    The vast majority of Reliability Excellence practitioners currently find themselves and their plants in a fiscal chokehold that they have never experienced before in their careers.

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