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reliability engineering for maintenance

Hindsight - Taking Notice of the Telltale Signs

IMC-2017 Learning Session - 31:59
by Timothy Rice, Rio Tinto

Hindsight is the ability to understand an event or situation only after it has happened. How many times have you witnessed a catastrophic equipment failure and realized during the root cause analysis investigation that the little indicators you were seeing were the telltale signs that a catastrophic failure was about to occur?

Some significant equipment failure events which occurred recently showed just how much we need to take more notice of these “telltale” signs and prompted some questions. Have we become desensitized in our ability to recognize the telltale signs of failing equipment and are we accepting them as the new normal? How do we remove the complacency around these leading indicators?

To regain control we must introduce some chronic unease around the health of our assets and what we are accepting as a normalization of deviance.

Reliability Engineering for Maintenance

Reliability Rocks Capital Projects at Mosaic: Reliability in Capital Projects

IMC-2017 Learning Session - 39:37
by Perry Steele, The Mosaic Company, & Doug Plucknette, Allied Reliability

Have you even been on the receiving end of a large capital project that fell far short of expectations? One that required weeks, months or more to reach "subpar" operation, much less the "optimized" level of operation that justified the project in the first place?

This presentation will outline how Mosaic and Allied Reliability Group improved the Capital Project Management (CPM) Process at Mosaic and then applied those improvements on a major capital project. In 2015, a leadership team with representatives from both companies worked to identify gaps in the existing CPM Process with regard to Reliability and Asset Management Best Practices.

As the Process updates were being developed, a significant capital project for Mosaic was getting underway where these practices could be employed to ensure key project goals would be met or exceeded. The project plan was updated to include the targeted reliability activities, adding additional resources where justified, in an effort to ensure the project definition and execution delivered the expected results. As the project moved forward, subject matter experts from Engineering, Operations and Maintenance were brought in, where their working knowledge and experience would help to not only improve the design but also to ensure the equipment hit the ground running.

The outcome of this project met nearly every project measure in addition to having a "vertical launch" startup in terms of delivering expected production quickly. In addition, the company-wide CPM process has been updated to include the Reliability and Asset Management Best Practices that were identified at the onset. See for yourself the power of using proven tools and methods, as the team presents a look at the process enhancements and the associated project deliverables that helped make the project successful.

Reliability Engineering for Maintenance

Digital RCM: A Practical Overview of How Digital Enhances Reliability

IMC-2017 Learning Session - 44:37
by Kimberly Bass, Accenture

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT) can be overwhelming as many maintenance organizations struggle to see the practicality of applying digital technology to address classic maintenance challenges. Asset utilization is a primary value driver for maintenance and the adoption of equipment reliability programs has been a valuable means for strategically improving asset performance. Though Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) is proven to be an effective methodology for addressing equipment reliability and advancing asset utilization, many organizations have been slow to adopt this approach due to the perceived increase in maintenance cost by expanding predictive and preventative maintenance programs. The adoption of advanced digital technologies in maintenance face a similar resistance because of the perceived cost of applying digital without an understanding of how significantly these technologies impact maintenance value drivers.

This session will give a comparison of traditional to digital RCM and show how digital capabilities enhance the effectiveness of RCM programs, increasing maintenance value and accelerating continuous improvement. This presentation shows how the adoption of digital—connectivity, smart sensors and devices, advanced analytics of process and asset data, and real time visibility and performance monitoring—directly impacts the core elements of the RCM framework. Attendees will gain an understanding of how IIOT and the application of digital technology:

Allow for advanced analytics and new insights that derive more value from plant data

Create new predictive capabilities (and how they compare to traditional RCM predictive methods)

Reduce risk and impact your equipment criticality analysis

Drive more effective maintenance strategies and efficient execution of strategy tasks to reduce failures

The digital plant addresses many barriers to organizational excellence. Come learn how digital impacts the traditional RCM framework and drives top-tier reliability performance that supports overall maintenance excellence.

Reliability Engineering for Maintenance

Completing the Curve

Back in the June/July 2006 issue of Uptime, I authored an article entitled Expanding the Curve detailing why the traditional P-F curve was incomplete. While it was expected that the article might elicit both positive and negative comments, it came as a surprise how strong some of those opinions were.

Reliability Engineering for Maintenance

From a Different Angle: A Perspective - Defects, P-F and the Rest of the Story

Think about all the initiator causes of failure that are not really related to maintenance. Initiator causes are those events, possibly microscopic, that initiate decay shown by the P-F curve. Examples of initiator causes might include heat, dirt, or overloading.

Reliability Engineering for Maintenance

Strengthening the Fundamentals: CNS Y-12’s Journey to Asset Reliability Excellence

IMC-2017 Learning Session - 32:02
by Paul Durko, Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS) Y-12, & Jason Ballentine, ARMS Reliability

Many organizations are faced with trying to develop, document, and execute optimized maintenance strategies for their assets with limited resources. But imagine if this challenge was compounded by constant turnover of leadership, aged assets, and one other small thing – the maintenance budget had to be signed off by the President of the United States.

CNS Y-12, a government entity that maintains the U.S. nuclear stockpile, has certainly had its challenges breaking free from reactive maintenance mode. When it came time to commence a maintenance strategy optimization project it was important for them to do it as effectively and efficiently as possible.

This presentation covers the approach that CNS Y-12 chose to follow to review their strategy, identify gaps, and develop optimized maintenance strategies that can be immediately implemented and easily deployed to their CMMS for execution.

CNS Y-12 is now shifting from a reactive, as-needed maintenance plan to a proactive plan with strategies that will be applicable to all existing and future managed facilities. They can now meet their goal of controlling their assets verses the assets controlling their behavior. Other results include increased safety, decrease risk of unplanned events, efficiency gains, and an improvement in KPIs around maintenance and reliability metrics. CNS Y-12 will also be able to create a maintenance budget that is justified with a sound reliability foundation to present to the United States Government and show the risk/benefit of any additional funding.

Reliability Engineering for Maintenance

How To Achieve An Uptime Elements Black Belt

Do or do not – there is no try ~ Yoda

Are you one of those people who will not start a project until planning is close to perfect?

The Uptime Elements Black Belt program is designed

...

Reliability Engineering for Maintenance

Seeking the P-F Interval

IMC-2017 Learning Session - 40:25
by Alejandro Erives & Jason Zielinski, Stepan Company

Stepan is a chemical company producing specialty and intermediate chemicals such as surfactants, polymers, and other specialty products. A broad description of our goals include improving asset utilization, reducing cost, and improving efficiencies.

The P-F Interval is a widely known term / concept in maintenance and reliability circles. The time it takes for a defect to grow from a detectable size to a functional failure (i.e. “the P-F Interval”) is critical in determining condition based monitoring frequencies. Additionally, an understanding of the P-F interval is helpful in determining maintenance planning / scheduling priorities for corrective actions, once a defect is discovered.

Except for special studies or applications, the P-F interval is widely seen as highly subjective. However, through careful analysis of several years of condition monitoring data we have been able to quantify this time interval in our facility. We will show that being armed with a better understanding of the P-F interval at our facility can improve maintenance and planning efficiencies, especially as they relate to work generated from our predictive maintenance (PdM) programs.

Reliability Engineering for Maintenance

Maintenance as a Profit Center

Times and thinking in the Industrial World have changed dramatically in the past three decades. Traditions that have literally been sacred cows in those post WWII years have been forgotten; witness that the “Greatest Generation” is almost a “Vanished Generation”. Technically speaking, some of this has been good and necessary – some maybe not.

Reliability Engineering for Maintenance

Some Plain Talk About Nuts and Bolts: Part 1 of 2

When you look over the list of projects you’ve worked on in the last 20 or so years, it’s amazing how many involve fastener problems. Some are relatively easy to solve, especially where careless practices have resulted in fatigue failures. Other problems are much more sophisticated, such as aluminum rivets clamping aluminum sheet metal that failed from galvanic corrosion! In Part 1 of this series, a Q&A addresses some of the important points connected with common bolting practices.

Reliability Engineering for Maintenance

A Strategic Approach to Optimizing Proactive Maintenance Using Classical RCM

The RELIABILITY Conference Learning Session 37:29
by Neil Meyer and Clint Shima, Central Contra Costa Sanitary District

This session relates a SUCCESS story at the Central Contra Costa Sanitary District (Central San) on the use of Classical RCM to optimize our Treatment Plant Proactive Maintenance. This plant, originally created in 1946, today services 500,000 customers and treats 55 million gallons of wastewater daily with a 24/7 operation. Our mission to protect public health and promote environmental stewardship is supported by efforts to continuously improve overall maintenance effectiveness and asset reliability over the life cycle of the asset. The Classical RCM process is a natural path to pursue in this regard because it initially uses the 80/20 rule to identify the "bad actor" critical systems. It then systematically defines their system functions and the specific equipment failure modes that require proactive PM tasks to avoid high consequence safety, environmental and outage functional failure issues. The project discussed herein is part of an asset management program at Central San that focuses on establishing a framework for Central San to improve maintenance efficiency and functional reliability of assets that is a repeatable program with documented processes and procedures. How this is achieved is described in detail.

reliability engineering for maintenance

Hindsight - Taking Notice of the Telltale Signs

Reliability Rocks Capital Projects at Mosaic: Reliability in Capital Projects

Digital RCM: A Practical Overview of How Digital Enhances Reliability

April - May 2018

Completing the Curve

From a Different Angle: A Perspective - Defects, P-F and the Rest of the Story

Strengthening the Fundamentals: CNS Y-12’s Journey to Asset Reliability Excellence

Uptime® Magazine Announces Solution Awards Winners for 2018!

How To Achieve An Uptime Elements Black Belt

Seeking the P-F Interval

Maintenance as a Profit Center

February - March 2018

2017 Uptime Awards - Recognizing the Best of the Best!

Some Plain Talk About Nuts and Bolts: Part 1 of 2

RELMAR™ To Launch Marine Reliability-Centred Maintenance Platform for Pilot Study

A Strategic Approach to Optimizing Proactive Maintenance Using Classical RCM

Optimizing Costs Through RCM-Based O&M

Walking the Dog Again

Steps to Performing RCM Analysis

December - January 2018