The 3 Major Causes of Variation that Kill Reliability

by Ricky Smith, GPAllied

Variation is the worst enemy of Reliability and most people are not even aware of it.

How do you reduce Variation and thus increase Reliability of your assets? We could probably make a long detailed list of items on “Causes of Variation” in our maintenance process which impact Reliability, but let’s look at three of the major causes.

Variation Tag Cloud

Variation is Your Enemy

Number 1:

Preventive Maintenance (PM) is not effective. It is not the appropriate maintenance strategy to address most failure modes. Even if it was, we continue executing PM, and equipment failures continue to occur. If a PM procedure does not address the prevention or detection of a specific failure, then why do we do it?

Number 2:

Work Procedures for Corrective Maintenance (restoring to a maintainable state). PM, Lubrication, and Operator Care are written in a manner that does not address Variation caused by humans. If a procedure is not written to the lowest level of the people performing the work with the specifications, standards, procedures (step by step), then you have major Variation and you wonder why you have failures! Let’s face the fact, humans do not have an unlimited or infallible memory, so effective procedures and the following of these procedures are critical. No excuses accepted unless you enjoy living in a reactive world.

Number 3:

Managing with metrics which drive the right behavior. I have had people tell me they can not measure Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) or PM Labors vs Emergency Labor Hours, Percent of Assets with No Identifiable Defect. I know everyone has an excuse, so we don’t know where we are until we have a ship wreck. If you are managing with Lagging Metrics, such as cost, you have a problem because we need to be measuring everything before it, which impacts cost, and share a few of those metrics in order to drive the right behavior. I know MTBF is a lagging metric, but I also know it can drive the right behavior when used properly. The great industrialist once stated.

Please watch this 2 minute video

Variation is Your Enemy

Comments (16)

Ricky - thanks for continuing to remind us about doing the right work at the right time. Please keep these videos coming.
1) Posted 2:30 pm, 21 February 2009 by tohanlon
Love it Ricky, The World Reliability Professor!

YouDaMAN!
2) Posted 10:07 am, 23 February 2009 by Joel Leonard
Ricky, great video and I would like to have more like this one. Javier N
3) Posted 10:36 am, 23 February 2009 by Javier N
Good Video. You are talking about topics that good maintenace people understand. But this is taboo to those outside of our profession.
4) Posted 10:43 am, 23 February 2009 by Ron bitely
Ricky, Thanks for the 1 - 2 - 3 punch of reliability fundimentals. I love my daily dose of Ricky!
5) Posted 12:23 pm, 23 February 2009 by Larry Hoing
Ricky,

You're right on as always. The struggle for me typically has always been not only trying to convince the right individuals within the company that have the responsibility of ensuring the appropriate manner by which to reduce the variations which you have mentioned, but also to get executive management to ensure that these efforts become sustained and consistent via discipline and accountability.

Keep up the good work, and I'll do my best to keep working on developing, maintaining and sustaining reliability cultures within these companies and corporations as these are the evident keys to asset performance and success.
6) Posted 12:45 pm, 23 February 2009 by Lewis Ferguson
Thanks Ricky, for the good articale

regards,
Alaa
7) Posted 12:49 am, 24 February 2009 by Alaa
Ricky,
this makes a lot of sense! I'm a non-technical but when I read this I got it! Great video too!
8) Posted 12:53 pm, 24 February 2009 by Amy
Great Stuff Ricky!

I've noticed a lot of people like to get involved and express their opinions on how to solve the fire fighting challanges, but very rarely do they understand that their efforts are in the wrong areas. Get back to the basics. That's what we need to do!
9) Posted 12:58 pm, 24 February 2009 by David Krause
I enjoyed your video and as usual you are right. Using cost as a metric is after the fact.
Thanks again. I would like to get more info on ways to implement MTBF (Users guide) and any info about KPI's
Thank You very much!
10) Posted 3:07 pm, 24 February 2009 by Cesar Bogino
Very nice. Your contribution is good.
11) Posted 8:24 pm, 24 February 2009 by Gary Cone
Thanks for sharing a brief insight into reliability secrets. Doing the little things right on time, the first time, every time may not seem like much, but it is the root action (pro-action?) of all complex maintenance, repairs or operations. How much would it be worth if all the supervisors on site could reach such a simple understanding of how we drive performance improvement by improving our systems and use? How much more would it be worth if they could lead our hourly employees (if even only the 20% who are always willing) to involvement and ownership (intgernalization) for the MRO process and continuous improvement process?
12) Posted 1:15 pm, 25 February 2009 by Monte Ackerman
I am the team of Engineering with other that not familiar with RCMA, How can I implement this topic?
13) Posted 6:40 pm, 12 March 2009 by Golayooth Gosaswiang
Great knowledge!

Thank you.
14) Posted 9:59 am, 15 March 2009 by Bon Truong
Great reminder Ricky. Keep em coming.
15) Posted 7:08 pm, 17 March 2009 by Matt
Keep up the passion! The world needs this message in the worst way!

Joel Leonard
SkillTV.net
16) Posted 7:34 pm, 11 April 2009 by Joel Leonard