Articles

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.

Asset Management

Bottom Line: Consumers Prefer Companies That Care

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.

Work Execution Management

Is Wrench Time Worth Measuring?

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!

Asset Condition Management

Varnish Mitigation: Effective Fluid Analysis and Varnish Removal Options

One of the most difficult aspects of dealing with lubrication systems is that you can’t see what is happening inside of them. Taking an oil sample allows you to gather information about the trace amounts of wear metals, oxidation deposits, additive chemicals and other contaminants that tell you about the system. Just like blood tests don’t always tell a doctor the whole story, traditional oil analysis testing doesn’t give the entire story when it comes to varnish.

Asset Condition Management

7 Ways to Ensure Better Maintenance of Electric Motors

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.

Reliability Engineering for Maintenance

How to Optimize Big Data in Factory Maintenance

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.

Asset Management

Why Is ISO27001 Security Standard Certification So Important?

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.

Asset Condition Management

Will IIoT Technologies Replace Factory Maintenance Workers?

The idea that smart factory technology will displace humans has generated considerable discussion. In a July 2016 report, McKinsey & Company estimates that “59 percent of all manufacturing activities could be automated.”¹ In an article that can be applied to the field of industrial analytics, the MIT Technology Review² suggests that unlike past experience, technologies are providing solutions that are more humanlike and could, therefore, eliminate jobs that so far have withstood automation.

Reliability Engineering for Maintenance

Utilizing Process Dynamics to Increase Machinery Reliability

Plant and refinery problems require accurate measurements to assess plant productivity and reliability. In fact, as management guru Peter Drucker stated, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure,” forms the basis to many real-world problems, from engineering optimization studies to troubleshooting plant machinery and equipment. Drucker’s statement also alludes to the fact that you cannot know whether or not you are successful unless success is defined and tracked.

Leadership for Reliability

The Human Factor in Asset Management

Many companies have started, are in the middle of, or have already finished an operational excellence exercise. Although these companies are in different industries, the strategy for optimizing their technical departments (e.g., maintenance, engineering, utilities, facilities) is about 90 percent the same. So, the approach does not change much in the different industries or in the different departments.

Leadership for Reliability

Common Sense: Is It Common?

The phrase, “It’s just common sense,” is used quite often to describe conclusions or circumstances that are obvious to most people, at least those within earshot. However, W. Edwards Deming, a well-respected management guru and quality expert, famously said, “There’s no such thing as common sense. If there were, it would be common.” So, at least from Deming’s perspective, you have the answer to this article’s question. Moreover, you’ve probably seen any number of instances where common sense just doesn’t seem to have been applied, each instance lending credibility to Deming’s opinion. That said, let’s explore this further and perhaps try to begin to understand why he said this and why so often there are instances where common sense is not applied. Maybe it’s just not as common as it should be.

Work Execution Management

No Part Left Behind: 4 Simple Rules for Efficient Inventory Management

Managing your inventory levels correctly can mean the difference between machinery that has broken down and is slowing down the assembly line or a smoothly running machine that is boosting productivity.

In today’s competitive industry, no company can afford downtimes and delays in production due to missing parts. With increased competition, companies depend on their supply chain to be leaner, healthier and faster than the competition.