Articles

Is Your Equipment Telling You When It Needs PM?

When it comes to preventative maintenance (PM), which scenario best describes your plant: Clipboards hanging from the side of machines for logging equipment failures and line downtime, or vendor-provided maintenance schedules? Both are actually a good start! But unfortunately, operator-collected data carries the intrinsic risk of bias and error, and maintenance schedules can't possibly correlate directly to a plant's unique production cycles. The best way to create a PM schedule that minimizes downtime is to base it on actual historical data.

Doing It “Right” in Maintenance

Lately, it seems strong, single-minded commitments to beliefs have just about everywhere in the world in some kind of struggling situation. All kinds of groups, on all kinds of issues, taking the absolute position that they're right, the other side is just wrong and there's no common ground where some kind of agreement can be reached. Agreement where there actually might be some work done together to make things better for all.

Equipment Reliability Assessment by Sampling Standard Information from Operations

Amtrak operates and maintains over 5,000 units of rolling stock that make up or support trains moving passengers mainly on the Northeast coast of the United States, while, also connecting the most populated regions. To improve business results, Amtrak tracks reliability performance of its locomotives and cars by analyzing standard information generated from its operations and maintenance.

Asset Condition Management

A Sustainable & Effective Approach to Vibration Analysis

The approach to vibration analysis is likely the most varied practice in the industry. This is partially due to the lack of standardization, combined with an explosion of new knowledge and technologies over the last two decades. Guidelines for creating a world-class vibration program will differ immensely depending on the source of information. When designing a new policy or optimizing an existing program, it is vital to have a good understanding of the shortcomings that can be found in almost every network in operation. A lack of buy-in, priority, provability, the uncertainty of diagnostics, false alarms, missed opportunities, time and dedication, improper settings and lack of resources are common reasons for a less than fully successful vibration program. In short, the issue is not one thing that's 100 percent wrong, but rather 100 things that are one percent wrong. At the Chevron Phillips Chemical Company's (CPChem's) Sweeny complex, a small amount of unique improvements made a significant difference in the program's success.

Reliability Engineering for Maintenance

Criticality Analysis Made Simple

Understanding criticality and where it fits in your reliability engineering plans is, well, critical to the success of your asset management program. But there are some commonly held myths and misperceptions about criticality. These top myths and pitfalls often prevent organizations from performing a comprehensive criticality analysis.

Asset Management

As Advancements in Big Data, the Cloud and IoT Transform APM, Who Will Own the Data?

Without a doubt, advancing tech trends, like the Internet of Things (IoT), big data and cloud capabilities, are transforming the way we approach asset performance management (APM). The amount of process and equipment data available to aid in condition-based maintenance (CBM) activities and support reliability centered maintenance (RCM) programs is almost doubling annually, on track with overall big data growth rates. And as the Cloud and IoT provide more and more information about the current health and process conditions of the physical assets used to operate businesses, the better the decisions made about how to care for those assets.

Leadership for Reliability

A Reliable Plant – Good for Personal and Process Safety

Do you believe in safety? There is always a unanimous and resounding "Yes!" when this question is asked, particularly from executives. If you, particularly you executives, believe in safety, then you must believe in reliability and, more importantly, have the appropriate policies, systems, practices and measures to support reliability. You must walk the talk about safety.

Work Execution Management

The Right Resources: Start Designing a Planning & Scheduling Program

If you need to implement a new planning and scheduling program, you’re probably discovering that the task can be rather daunting. You need the right resources, the right organizational support, the right data, the right business practices, the right amount of time, the right change management approach, and the list goes on. This high level generic stuff may seem like implementing planning and scheduling just isn’t within your grasp. But there are ways to achieve an environment that will support a planning and scheduling program that works with what you already have in place and takes into account what your team is able to manage throughout implementation and beyond. If you take a closer look at what you already have, putting the final touches on a successful planning and scheduling program may not really be that big a beast to tackle.

Invariance of Vector Factors in the Direct Solution for Two-Plane Field Balancing

This article examines the invariant character of the vector factors in the direct static/couple solution for the two-plane field balancing with the orientation of the overhung rigid rotor. The aim of the article is to establish the correct application of the formulas involved to a practical case, which also has been particularized for the fixed scale convention.