The 5 Habits of Great Reliability Engineers

by Peter Horsburgh

Editor’s Note:

The author’s fascination with technology dates back to his youth. His father was a blacksmith, an engineer of metal work, and was instrumental in helping the author discover his love of creation through construction. He also passed on his passion for airplanes, which led the author to a career in aeronautical engineering, where he first encountered aspects of reliability. A subsequent career in reliability guided him along a path of confusion, frustration, curiosity, learning and change. Although still going through those stages constantly, they taught the author the five habits presented in this article. Now, those five habits make achieving meaningful change that much easier. They have been so effective, in fact, that it prompted the author to pass them on to Uptime readers.

Bottom Line: Consumers Prefer Companies That Care

by Karla Jo Helms

In this fast-paced world of meeting deadlines, quotas and targets, one facet of business that can easily get overlooked is corporate social responsibility. (For reference in this article, the corporate responsibility acronym, Cr, from the Uptime^® Elements will be used.) It’s a corporation’s initiative to take responsibility for the environmental and social well-being of the world. Cr generally applies to efforts that go beyond what may be required by regulators or environmental protection groups.

7 Ways to Ensure Better Maintenance of Electric Motors

by Jeson Pitt

Electric motors may look like any other electrical component, but they have a massive impact on the company’s profitability and productivity. As such, it is critical to perform regular preventive maintenance checks on electric motors¹ to ensure they always perform at their peak.

For starters, prepare a checklist that focuses on examining and monitoring the motor and electrical wiring. This allows you to detect and identify potential problems that the motor may face and lets you address these problems ahead of time. This will drastically bring down unexpected repair expenses.

How to Optimize Big Data in Factory Maintenance

by Jeremy Wright

If you work in any aspect of manufacturing today, there is no doubt you are aware of a significant revolution underway. It is a new era for the industry, dramatically evident when you take a look around any reasonably maintained and updated manufacturing facility. It no longer reflects the “gritty side” of the industry: dark, dirty and dangerous oversized rust belt garages that are dreary to visit, let alone work in. Instead, most forward-thinking facilities today are clean, bright and efficient workplaces that use, or are starting to use, some of the most cutting-edge technological advances available today in order to get ahead of the competition.

Why Is ISO27001 Security Standard Certification So Important?

by Tyler Caldwell

ISO27001 is a quality standards specification for information security management systems (ISMS). The ISMS is an overall framework that encapsulates business procedures and policies pertaining to the control of a company’s information security risk management processes. It covers physical, technical and regulatory controls.

Is Wrench Time Worth Measuring?

by Ron Moore

Wrench time, or tool time as it’s called in some countries, is an often touted measure for determining maintenance productivity since it’s intended to measure the actual time technicians spend working with their tools at a given job. Typical numbers observed are 25 to 35 percent, meaning technicians typically spend 65 to 75 percent of their time not working or, at least, not getting the work assigned done. Is this a valid measure or conclusion? Is it useful to measure wrench time? The answer is yes, if properly done, as well as a resounding no, if not properly done, which happens more often than not!

Back to Leadership Basics

by Andrisa Jefferson

With so many advancements in world-class technology, many maintenance leaders have failed to set a strong leadership foundation. All too often, they get distracted with starting predictive maintenance and oil analysis programs because these are the hot topics and buzzwords. Instead, maintenance leaders, prior to doing anything, must first gauge what their organizations need and set goals to achieve them. Everyone in an organization knowing what is expected of them and working toward one goal of success is much more valuable than any latest or greatest program. This article pinpoints the basic leadership skills for establishing a maintenance leadership role. The type of leadership role can vary from manager to reliability engineer to predictive maintenance leader. However, the main focus is to lead others to get results.

The Next Industrial Revolution: Transformational IoT

by Charles Rathmann

The Internet of Things (IoT) has its roots in manufacturing and industrial companies. As consumers are just beginning to look for IoT-driven thermostats to turn down the heat when away from home, manufacturers are already moving IoT off the plant floor and into other settings where it can transform their business.

A Strong Approach to Reliability in the Refinery & Petrochemical Industry

by Marcin Kowalski

PKN ORLEN operates six refineries (daily crude oil processing 728,000 barrels) and the region’s largest network of service stations located in Poland, Czech Republic, Germany and Lithuania. Crude oil is processed into gasolines, diesel oil, fuel oil and aviation fuel. PKN ORLEN is also a leading producer of petrochemicals, with its products used as basic feedstocks by a large number of chemical companies.

Does Your EAM System Ensure Work Safety?

by Neeraj Gupta

Most enterprise asset management (EAM) systems just touch upon the safety aspect by registering hazards involved or precautions to be taken while working in a risky environment. But, how do they enforce work safety? There are still so many accidents and incidents in the industry and all investigation findings point to missing safety measures, ignorance, or bypassing safety rules or procedures. What can be done to ensure a safe work environment for everyone? How can a company enforce control of work? One single accident is enough to do away with all financial benefits received through optimized asset management or predictive maintenance to increase asset availability. Asset availability is important, but not at the cost of safety!