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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.

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.

Leadership for Reliability

Best Overall Reliability Program (Uptime Award Winner) - Jacobs NASA

In the era of “constrained budgets,” strategies to decrease maintenance program costs yet increase critical system reliability and availability are more important than ever. A robust Preventive Maintenance (PM) approach is required to maintain the assets and deliver a meaningful level of reliability. However, performing too much PM can be costly beyond their direct costs (labor, materials, equipment, etc.) as many are highly invasive procedures which can disrupt and disturb stable systems resulting in unplanned downtime.

In 2012, Jacobs took the initiative to develop key maintenance strategies for NASA Langley Research Center (NASA LaRC) – a 788-acre campus of over 270 buildings and other national assets including several large wind tunnels which provide subsonic to hypersonic speed aeronautic testing. Finding our proposal compelling, NASA provided strategic investment funding for three consecutive years to implement real-time condition based monitoring (CBM) of critical assets and systems. In addition to physical asset monitoring, our comprehensive solution included everything from applying fundamental RCM principles and processes to designing and operating a 24/7/365 Integrated Operations Center. Our Jacobs holistic approach enabled early identification and prevention of catastrophic failures; increased the useful life of plant equipment; optimized maintenance intervals; increased worker safety; and lowered disruptions to normal operations by performing CBM. In fact, we have enhanced system reliability to the point that NASA LaRC has not experienced a single, unplanned asset failure on CBM monitored assets since 2015!

After implementation, the overall cost of maintenance also decreased significantly – a savings of $5.3M over three years.

Speaker: Michael Stites, JTOG Director of Maintenance, Jacobs Engineering

Leadership for Reliability

The 5 Habits of Great Reliability Engineers

Editor’s Note:

The author’s fascination with technology dates back to his youth. His father was a blacksmith, an engineer of metal work, and was instrumental in helping the author discover his love of creation through construction. He also passed on his passion for airplanes, which led the author to a career in aeronautical engineering, where he first encountered aspects of reliability. A subsequent career in reliability guided him along a path of confusion, frustration, curiosity, learning and change. Although still going through those stages constantly, they taught the author the five habits presented in this article. Now, those five habits make achieving meaningful change that much easier. They have been so effective, in fact, that it prompted the author to pass them on to Uptime readers.

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.

Leadership for Reliability

RSES Provides Easy CEH Opps with New Courses, Webinars

RSES augments its CEH Corner with two courses in the online store. This program provides a quick, convenient opportunity to earn one continuing education hour (CEH) per course by simply reading an article in RSES Journal and answering a few questions online.

Leadership for Reliability

Combined Augmented & Virtual Realities Bridge the Gaps between Manufacturing, Training & Maintenance

DIOTA, leading software provider of Industry 4.0 solutions integrating Augmented Reality and automated control, and ESI Group (Paris:ESI), leading innovator in Virtual Prototyping software and services for manufacturing industries, formalize their partnership to develop solutions bringing previously disparate engineering, manufacturing and maintenance processes into integrated end-to-end workflows.

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.

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

Q&A with Industry Leader – Athena Rhae Bisnar

Working for one of the world’s largest terminal operators, continuous improvement is… continual. Uptime magazine had the opportunity to speak with Athena Rhae Bisnar, Engineering Planning and Control Manager for Asian Terminals, Inc. Athena is a catalyst of continuous process improvement, a leader in quality, and an asset management implementer.

Leadership for Reliability

Executive Sponsorship: The #1 Reason Why Change Initiatives Fail

IMC-2017 Learning Session - 39:06
by Bill Wilder, Life Cycle Engineering

As our senior leaders move into positions of increasing responsibility, they learn to delegate more projects and tasks to others. Out of necessity they move beyond the “if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself” mentality and realize that by enabling employees to excel and succeed, leaders will excel and succeed.

When faced with a major change initiative that will result in transformation within the company, leaders establish a project management group to handle the project. Tasks are subsequently divided and delegated. Resources are allocated and a utilization plan created. Knowing that change requires leadership, we assign someone with the title of “Project Sponsor”. Yet our major change initiatives still fail. So what is the problem? What exactly is a sponsor and what is their role?

The title of this presentation is “Executive Sponsorship” and will discuss exactly what an executive sponsor is and what they do. We will also explore the meaning of the word “sponsor”, the various types of sponsorship, and the roles of sponsors using the ABC’s of sponsorship.

Leadership for Reliability

Building a Championship Organization

IMC-2017 Learning Session - 31:49
by Bryan Debshaw, POLARIS Laboratories

A program champion is the catalyst for change within an organization, and their influence can guide an oil analysis program from reactive maintenance to predictive maintenance. Adopting oil analysis into a maintenance program and integrating it into the company culture is never easy, but it can have a profound effect on maintenance costs and equipment reliability.

From triaging equipment breakdowns to adjusting sump capacity based off of data trends, this presentation covers the challenges, setbacks and successes associated over the first few years of integrating fluid analysis into a company. One size never fits all, but there are common techniques to organize the people, processes, and technology in order to generate longer equipment life and maintenance savings.

Leadership for Reliability

Challenging the Status Quo

Driving operational excellence is one key goal for every asset industry site. Manufacturers want to meet customer expectations and have sustainable improvements in the performance of their assets. In order for companies to achieve optimum performance, they create vision statements and mission statements supported by goals and objectives.

Leadership for Reliability

Uptime Award Winner Best Green Reliability Program - Malaysia Airports

IMC-2017 Learning Session - 50:00
by Mohd Hakimi Usa Ahmad and Bibi Sabrena Sakandar Khan, Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad

Malaysia has come a long way since the country recorded its first flight more than a century ago with five international airports in Malaysia and one in turkey, 16 domestic airports and 18 short take-off and landing ports, Malaysia Airports is now the second largest airport group in the world in terms of number of passengers handled. Malaysia Airports’ Engineering Division is responsible for the maintenance of the group’s airport infrastructure to ensure we continue to offer the most efficient and secure service to our airline partners, as well as to the passengers who use our facilities. The Engineering assets that worth billions of Ringgit shall be managed in highest levels of efficiency for ensuring public safety and excellent passenger/user experience.

In line with our green commitments, and our support for the national goal of reducing 45% of carbon emissions by 2030, we are working to reduce energy consumption and ensure more of our power is derived from renewable sources. Already, we have been able to reduce electricity consumption by 9,510,583kWh/year – equivalent to 1,463 homes electrified per year. The installation of light emitted diode (LED) masts has created a significant energy saving of69% or 782,784 kWh/year, and also reduced carbon emissions at KLIA by 1,951 tonnes CO2e per year. The e-Energy Management System (EnMS), a globally accepted framework for managing energy, has been in use since and allows us to monitor and adjust the energy performance, profile and building energy index of each facility.

Engineering Division Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad (MAHB) has continuously and rigorously strive on improving the business and service by leveraging on the latest technologies on Energy Management. Malaysia Airport energy policy was established in 9th January 2012 with the main objective of this policy are to improve energy consumption efficiency, reduce utility cost, optimize capital expenditure for energy efficiency and strive to become a world-class energy management in airports industry. One of Malaysia Airports’ core values is to take great concern care on the environmental sustainability, with the elements of energy and carbon reduction through the establishment of Carbon Management Plan (CMP) by reducing total direct emission by 10% in 2020.

Leadership for Reliability

Best Leadership for Reliability Program (Uptime Award Winner) - Mercedes-Benz USA

IMC-2017 Learning Session - 49:46
by Kenneth Hayes & Justin McCarthy, Mercedes-Benz U.S. Intl, Inc.

This presentation highlights how the Maintenance department at Mercedes-Benz U.S. International Inc. (MBUSI) has managed to change their culture through evolution not revolution. After benchmarking plants across many industries, they realized it’s not “what you do” that’s important, it’s “how you do it.” We share the lessons learned that have enabled our team to change our organization’s culture with involvement from all levels of the organization.

Work Execution Management

Argo Consulting

Argo is an operations improvement consulting firm that breaks through the traditional barriers of the consultant-client relationship. We are hands-on consultants who deliver real results and no excuses.

leadership for reliability

Don’t Tell Me… Show Me

The State of America’s Transit Infrastructure

Best Overall Reliability Program (Uptime Award Winner) - Jacobs NASA

August - September 2018

The 5 Habits of Great Reliability Engineers

Back to Leadership Basics

RSES Provides Easy CEH Opps with New Courses, Webinars

Combined Augmented & Virtual Realities Bridge the Gaps between Manufacturing, Training & Maintenance

June - July 2018

Common Sense: Is It Common?

The Human Factor in Asset Management

Q&A with Industry Leader – Athena Rhae Bisnar

Executive Sponsorship: The #1 Reason Why Change Initiatives Fail

Building a Championship Organization

Challenging the Status Quo

Uptime Award Winner Best Green Reliability Program - Malaysia Airports

Best Leadership for Reliability Program (Uptime Award Winner) - Mercedes-Benz USA

Argo Consulting

Why 90 Percent of Reliability Programs Fail to Sustain, and How to Beat These Odds

What’s in Your DNA?