Search Results for planning and scheduling

How to Detect Pump Valve Failures in Positive Displacement Pumps: Case Study

This case study describes a proven method for detecting failures in the suction or discharge valves inside positive displacement pumps using a unique method of vibration analysis. The determination to find a reliable method of detection led to a greater understanding of equipment and processes, from working with the vendor to implementing a design change. This case study describes a journey from repeated failures to improved equipment reliability and lower maintenance costs.

New Technologies for Predictive Tools

by Paul Berberian

Manufacturing and industrial facilities rely on rotating assets, such as pumps, compressors, fans, motors and turbines. Maintaining these critical assets is crucial to uptime and performance. It is estimated that less than 20 percent of these critical assets are proactively monitored to detect problems and determine their mechanical health.

Assessing Transitions to Benchmark Performance - A Multi-Level Perspective

Daniël A. Lachman and Roy Tjoen A Choy

This article provides a different perspective on the difficulties experienced by companies that try to achieve business excellence.

Companies are seen as socio-technical entities that have ruling regimes that are path dependent (in their routines, beliefs, infrastructures, strategies, etc.) and thus hamper the adoption of practices that propagate efficiency, reliability, productivity, etc. A "heuristic device," such as the multi-level perspective originating from science and technology studies, is presented as a tool for managers, consultants and other analysts to decipher sociotechnical entities in order to identify landscape factors, regimes and niches (the locus for innovation). This will enable them to discover bottlenecks and opportunities for transitions of companies towards viable alternatives.

Asset Condition Management

10 Steps to Pump Reliability - Part 2

by Tom Dabbs and Dan Pereira

Hopefully you read Part 1 of “Ten Steps to Pump Reliability” and have been anxiously awaiting to read Part 2 of the article. You may get the impression that implementing these steps will be costly and very difficult to achieve. The thing you need to bear in mind is: “You are already spending the money.” The only question is: “Are you getting the result from your pumping systems that you are looking for?”

If you can create an environment that allows your entire team to become engaged in implementing these concepts, it will be the best investment you ever made. Deming said it best:

“Your system is perfectly designed to give you the results you are getting.”

MCR!RCM - Looking at RCM in a Mirror

It is understood that RCM is the correct tool to apply to high risk assets. RCM is also applicable to assets that you have tried to develop maintenance programs for but failed. Quoting the current head of aladon RCM is applicable to approximately 15% of assets in 50% of industries. This would correlate to 7.5% of all assets require RCM. RCM is a powerful effort intensive tool that if applied properly will have high level results that if implemented, executed and followed up will insure cost effective maintenance. Even hard core RCM purists will not apply it to all assets. So if the 7.5% is correct then what should be applied to 92.5% of the remaining assets?

Focusing RCM on Equipment Critical to Electrical Safety

H. Landis Floyd, PE, CSP, CMRP, Fellow IEEE

Business and commerce are totally dependent on electrical equipment and systems for energy, control and communications. These systems can be complex and the task to analyze failure consequences can be equally complex. Unrecognized consequence of failure, especially if the failure impacts personnel safety, can have unacceptable moral and legal implications as well as significant financial costs. Recent trends in workplace electrical safety shed new light on reliability needs for certain equipment in electric power and control systems. One trend is the increasing attention given to mitigating arc flash hazards in electric power systems.

Creating A Sustainable Operator Driven Lubrication Program

The position of 'oiler' or 'lubricator' has been all but eliminated in most companies. There has been a number of responses to this change however one of the most effective is to create a documented and well defined Operation Driven Lubrication program.

This presentation provides details and case studies of successful Operator Driven Lubrication programs (ODR) and how it can fit into a more comprehensive Performance Management Program that breaks down silos and aligns people toward the aim of the organization.

Work Execution Management

ERP and EAM: Partners, Not Competitors

The debate over which software platform is best suited to manage physical assets continues. There are two main contenders: enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems offering a consolidated approach to tracking the organization’s activities and enterprise asset management (EAM) systems offering best-in-class functionality.

by Tracy Smith

asset management

Asset Management Technology Vendors Create Market Disruption at IMC-2022

The aim of the Asset Management technology domain is to assure that IT/OT systems are focused on creating the value from the assets and that the business can deliver to achieve organizational objectives as informed by risk.

Asset Management

How to Proactively Run What You Have Now: 5 Things to Improve Plant Reliability

By Paul Dufresne

Recently I had a conversation with the members of our leadership group concerning steps we need to take to improve the reliability posture of our business. I was charged with, of all the initiatives that are out there, the critical few we need to focus on to improve our competitive position for our business. With that in mind, I did some data mining and looked at our recent unplanned events and came to a not so unique conclusion.

Measuring plant performance - The need for metrics standardization

By: Walter Nijsen
Asst. Maintenance and Reliability Leader
Cargill Grain and Oilseeds Europe

Understanding how our plants perform and how well we perform in relation to others often reveals opportunities for improvement, at least in principle. The key question first raised is often “Are we comparing apples with apples?” If not (as in many cases), the whole exercise of comparison and to some extend measurement becomes somewhat (or completely) meaningless.

On top of that, a question that really should be answered first is WHY should we measure? Along with, WHAT should be measured and HOW?