Articles

Continuous Predictive Maintenance Is the Way Forward

Over the last few years, the continuous improvement of maintenance strategies is taking place at an incredible pace. The rapid influx of accessible data has the industrial world living in exciting times. As the industry just begins to scratch the surface of what the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) can deliver, there is a tremendous opportunity to displace antiquated ways of carrying out asset management.

Internet of Things Digitalization (IoT)

How to Implement IIoT Predictive Analytics Solutions Without Hiring Big Data Scientists

Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) predictive maintenance is firmly on the radar of most executives. At the same time, there are serious concerns about the lack of internal resources to analyze, visualize and interpret the big data generated by industrial machines. This article proposes an alternative: Implementing a big data predictive analytics solution without hiring a big data scientist.

Asset Condition Management

On-Site Fluid Intelligence: A Revolution to Advance Machinery Reliability

Using in-service oil analysis to improve machinery reliability has a long history. The first oil analysis was performed over half a century ago on a locomotive engine. Just as a human blood test provides important information about your health, the information provided by in-service oil analysis about machinery health, especially for a piece of complex machinery with many moving parts, such as a diesel engine, is unmatched by any other technologies on the market.

Work Execution Management

Worthington Industries’ Journey from Firefighting to First-Class Maintenance

Worthington Industries, a global diversified metals manufacturer, recently finished a complete transformation of the maintenance department at its Columbus, Ohio, steel processing facility. In 2012, with maintenance accounting for the highest percentage of facility downtime at 7.2 percent and a growing open order backlog topping 280, the team decided it was time for change.

Leadership for Reliability

Don’t Tell Me… Show Me

As a reliability engineer in an oil and gas facility, one of the main goals is to minimize reactive work, as well as increase reliability and availability of the physical assets. But another important task is to get the reliability growth noticed by all the people, including leaders and managers. A problem solved is a great chance for a “sales” presentation.

Asset Condition Management

Do You Trust Your In-Plant or Outsourced Rebuild Facility?

Let’s face it, people make mistakes – and some mistakes can be quite expensive. Mistakes made in a gearbox rebuild, for example, can cost a plant hundreds of thousands of dollars due to unplanned downtime and even workplace injuries resulting from a bad rebuild. Have you ever taken the time to audit your in-plant or outsourced rebuild facility? Do you require acceptance testing of the components that have been rebuilt to verify they are service ready?

asset management

Return of Investment In Advanced Asset Management: The 10 to 1 Ratio

Recently, a question was forwarded from Lhoist’s National Maintenance Manager Mauricio Arroyo to Reliabilityweb.com’s Global Relationship Leader and Director of Women in Reliability and Asset Management Maura Abad. The question was prompted after Mauricio read the Asset Condition Monitoring Project Manager’s Guide (Guide) to which Maura had provided a download link. The question was:

“In their [the Guide’s coauthors] experience across the industries, what is the average Cost Avoidance that they have found?”

Work Execution Management

New York City Housing Authority Tackles New Technology

How does the largest public housing authority in the nation document and address its hundreds of thousands of work orders effectively and efficiently? Technology, that’s how. The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) is utilizing cutting-edge technology to communicate with frontline staff and its residents in real time.

Leadership for Reliability

Back to Leadership Basics

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.

Reliability Engineering for Maintenance

A Strong Approach to Reliability in the Refinery & Petrochemical Industry

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.