Articles

How Cushman & Wakefield Services Is Leading Its Customers Into the Future of Reliability

To reduce unplanned downtime for a leading Fortune 500 pharmaceutical client, Cushman & Wakefield (C&W) Services moved from a traditional route based condition monitoring program to a wireless and artificial intelligence (AI) based predictive maintenance (PdM) program. The shift in technology not only led to reduced unplanned downtime, but also a better utilization of resources and a deeper understanding of asset condition. Here’s how C&W Services approached the challenges and arrived at solutions.

Why Online Oil Quality Monitoring is a Best Practice for Reliability Programs

Fluid monitoring programs have long been a challenge within the reliability and operations community. For example, oil samples provide a significant amount of value in diagnosing root causes, the presence of contaminants and the measurement of oil quality. Yet, for these programs to be implemented properly, the samples must be taken at intervals more frequently than assets or personnel are available. This leads to a reliability program lacking the information required to meet reliability targets. Best in class reliability programs have found success addressing this challenge by implementing online fluid or oil monitoring programs.

Work Execution Management

Don’t Get Stuck in Reverse: Is It Time to Evaluate Your Reverse Logistics Practices?

Reverse logistics is becoming an integral part of operations for manufacturers, distributors and service providers so they can minimize lost revenue when moving products, parts and subcomponents back into inventory. Recent Statista research shows that returned goods cost $246.3 billion per year in North America and span customers, service organizations, supply chains, receiving departments, and even repair depot operations or subcontractors. For organizations to minimize this lost revenue, they must assess their approach to reverse logistics.

Leadership for Reliability

Using Quantitative Fault Tree Analysis Based on Method of Cut Sets to Predict Failure

Originally, the intent of fault tree analysis (FTA) was to assess equipment reliability in the space industry. Nowadays, FTA is being widely used in any type of study that requires quantifying frequency or probability, or just for deductive representation of events that, when triggered, result in an occurrence of a top event. This article summarizes FTA quantification using the method of cut sets (MOCUS) and describes the methods of Birnbaum, criticality and Fussell-Vesely.

Asset Management

Work Safety

The safety of workers should be part of the mission of your organization. If it isn’t, do something about it!

The fact is, shop safety in the U.S. and Europe has dramatically improved over the past few decades. Many unsafe acts accepted in the past are forbidden today. The idea of working without fall protection or lockout-tagout (LOTO) procedures is widely condemned by workers, management and supervision. Still, too many people get grievously hurt or even killed at work.

Maintenance Safety Certification: Transforming Safety Training For Technicians

Cintas Corporation, which operates more than 400 facilities in North America, including six manufacturing companies and eight distribution centers, embarked on a mission to improve safety strategy, execution and results. This article follows the corporation’s journey to make safety part of its culture and a foundational part to everything it does.

Reliability Engineering for Maintenance

Taking Notice of the Telltale Signs

Hindsight is the ability to understand an event or situation only after it has happened. How many times have you witnessed an asset failure and realized during the root cause analysis (RCA) investigation that there were indicators that a catastrophic failure was about to occur? Have we, as maintenance reliability practitioners, become desensitized in their ability to recognize the telltale signs of a failing asset? Is this being accepted as the new normal?

10 Things Your Management Needs to Know Now

There is a widespread misunderstanding of what preventive maintenance (PM) does and does not do. PM does not put iron into an inadequate machine. PM does not work on junk. Initiating a PM program rarely effects your breakdown rate for a year or more unless you commit to this one thing. PM and predictive maintenance (PdM) inspection detect deterioration, damage and defects that will lead to failures, but does not stop them! You stop these incipient failures by doing the corrective tasks, which include correcting the damage, deterioration, or defect in a timely way before the failure.

Leadership for Reliability

The State of America’s Transit Infrastructure

Earlier this year, there appeared to be a moment when Democrats and Republicans could agree on increased infrastructure funding. In his State of the Union address in early 2018, President Trump called on the United States Congress to produce a bill that generates at least $1.5 trillion in new infrastructure development.

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.