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Reliability Polls and Quizzes

Take a moment to participate in our Reliability Polls and Quizzes

Things To Think About and Do in 2012

We are pleased to announce the 2012 edition of Things To Think About and Do

Reliabilityweb.com and Uptime Magazine invited thought leaders in the maintenance and reliability community to contribute a single page communication directed toward creating a new idea or action on the part of the readers, the maintenance and reliability professional community at large.

Uptime Magazine - April/May 2012 Index

Article Index for Uptime Magazine April/May 2012 Articles on Reliabilityweb.com

1 Minute Maintenance Tip - Effective Work Procedures

1 Minute Maintenance Tip

Effective Work Procedures

10 Things You Can Do Right Now To Improve Reliability

Publishers Note: We recently challenged our good friend and maintenance expert Ricky Smith to tell us 10 things we can do today - not 10 things we can buy today - to improve reliability at our plants. No new software, no new hardware, no new consultants. Ricky did as Ricky usually does and showed up with goods!

We admit he did include one "buy recommendation" but we let it pass because it falls under US$100. Here is what he came back with. - Terrence O'Hanlon, CMRP

16 Question Survey

The Manufacturing Game has developed a short 16-question survey based on Joseph Campbell's concept of a Hero's Journey.The survey is designed to facilitate the story writing process, and it guides the writer through the writing process. They provide this survey to maintenance and reliability professionals for their own use. Clients may opt to use the written story internally or share their success with others by approving it for publication in external publications such as the our quarterly TMG newsletter or a monthly magazine like Uptime Magazine.

See the list below for the 16 questions in the survey, as it relates to writing about Action Team successes.

2 Minute Audio Tip - Mean Time to Restore

Take 2 minutes to hear what Ricky Smith, CMRP of GPAllied has to say about Mean Time to Restore as a preformance metric.

2005 Summit Award presented to RCI President, Charles J. Latino

Terrence O'Hanlon, CMRP, Reliabilityweb.com and RELIABILITY Magazine together with Robert Baldwin, Editor of Maintenance Technology, selected Charles Latino as recipient of the 2005 Summit Award. Mr. Latino was gracious enough to enlighten us with some of the wisdom he has collected over his years as a reliability pioneer and leader.

3 Steps and 3 Tools that Organize and Improve Your Problem Solving Capability

Basic Elements of a Comprehensive Investigation
By Mark Galley, ThinkReliability

The terms failure analysis, incident investigation, and root cause analysis are used by organizations when referring to their problem solving approach. Regardless of what it’s called there are three basic questions to every investigation: 1 - What’s the problem(s)? 2 - Why did it happen (the causes)? and 3 - What specifically should be done to prevent it.

5 Critical Success Factors for Effective BOMs

Presentedy by: Doug Wallace

If your company was manufacturing automobiles, appliances, iPads, or even cardboard boxes, you certainly wouldn't think about scheduling production without a complete and accurate Bill of Materials (BOM) for each finished product so you could determine your raw material requirements from a master schedule. So why is it that many process industries not only begin operation without equipment BOMs, but go for years, sometimes decades, without them?

When we ask people to assess the quality of their equipment BOMs, the comments we get most often are either, "they don't exist," or, "we have some of the data, but we don't know if it's accurate." When we ask why that's the case, the response is usually, "we don't have the information," or more likely, "we don't have the resources to do all that work."

5 Minute Audio Tip - Maintenance Function Tip

Click the play arrow below tp hear Ricky Smith CMRP discuss the maintenance function.

 

 

5 Minute Audio Tip - Rules of Thumb for Maintenance and Reliability Engineers

Ricky Smith, CMRP explains Rules of Thumb for Maintenance and Reliability Engineers

50,000 Hour Off-Highway Diesel Engine Rebuilds: They Are Possible!

By Mark Barnes

From dozers to graders and loaders to haul trucks, diesel engines are everywhere. For companies who rely on diesel power to make their living, there's no greater emphasis than diesel engine reliability. But when it comes to diesel engines, they also have some of the shortest life expectancies.

7 Years of Sustained Reliability Culture Change at Alcoa Warrick Smelter

Mark Keneipp, Alcoa,
and Randy Heisler, Life Cycle Engineering

Background

It is not often that one runs across an organization that is able to undertake a significant business transformation, implement the changes successfully, and then sustain the gains for seven years with no end in sight. Here is the compelling story of one organization that has succeeded-Alcoa Warrick Smelter.
The story began in 1997 when Alcoa decided to implement the Toyota Production System globally across all 250 locations. Significant progress was made, but the Alcoa Primary Metals division leaders were not seeing the results that they expected. A business unit level internal analysis showed that their assets and reliability processes were lacking stability and this was holding lean manufacturing gains hostage. Stability is a foundational element to the Toyota Production System. If one is familiar with the Toyota House, or any other house for that matter, having a solid foundation is the key to long-term sustainability. (See Figure 1)
In 2002 Vince Adorno, Vice President of Engineering for Alcoa Primary Metals, decided to form a corporate-led team to develop a business case and reliability implementation strategy. External consultants were included in this process to ensure that best practices and reasonable estimates of potential savings were incorporated into their strategy. They also looked at their own pockets of excellence and best practices that were in place in the plants.

A Better Black Liquor Process

Finding Vacuum Leaks in a Multi Effect Evaporator

by Karl Hoffower and Allan Rienstra

So many industrial processes depend on creating a stable vacuum, but system leaks impair process efficiency and, if left unchecked, will shut it down.  Finding these leaks can be challenging in noisy plant environments and reliability engineers must weigh the balance between the costs of downtime versus the cost of continuing production with a leaky, inefficient system.

©2012 Reliabilityweb.com