reliability engineering

Reliability Improvement Initiatives: Proven, Rapid,
and Sustainable Results

Paul Lanthier

By Ray Beebe

We recently learned about Monash University and its distance education programs for Maintenance and Reliability. We asked Ray Beebe to put together some details so we could bring that story to you. Here is what Ray sent us:

What is Reliability Engineering?

No one disputes the need for articles to be reliable. The average consumer is acutely aware of the problem of less than perfect reliability in domestic products such as TV sets and automobiles. Organizations such as airlines, the military and public utilities are aware of the costs of unreliability. Manufacturers often suffer high costs of failure under warranty. Argument and misunderstanding begin when we try to quantify reliability values, or try to assign financial or other benefit values to levels of reliability.

By Noah P. Bethel

What's worse than a slip ring flashover on a critical wound rotor motor? A slip ring flashover on a critical wound rotor motor. . . on a Saturday!!! Yes, the dreaded Saturday phone call came to Flanders Electric from a local mine when a coal conveyor motor blew the slip rings. Unfortunately, the motor was not repairable in the field. However, the mine was in luck. They had a spare motor in place and ready for exactly this type of situation. The mine personnel were thinking the problem was behind them and couldn't get any worse, at least not until they pushed the start button.

By Ross Ignall, Director of Product Management, Dranetz

Industrial facilities are finding new respect for power quality issues as a result of proliferating non-linear loads and other factors. As a result, sales are up for power quality monitoring and analysis instruments for identifying and characterizing PQ problems as a first step to applying the fix.

The increased demand for productivity improvements in the global economy has clearly resulted in an escalating need for the reliable operation of electronic and electrical equipment. Unfortunately, the grid's aging and often overloaded electrical infrastructure, along with that of many facilities, makes operations more vulnerable than ever to power system disturbances.

By Matt Parks, John Cox, and Bill Butterworth, NiSource Gas Transmission & Storage and Winston P. Ledet, The Manufacturing Game

System Reliability at NiSource Gas Transmission & Storage: Integrating Engineering Strategies and Defect Elimination to Achieve Organizational Reliability

It is estimated that natural gas transmission companies in the U.S. own and operate over 300,000 miles of interstate and intrastate natural gas pipelines and over one thousand compressor stations integrated with numerous strategic underground storage systems. Natural gas is a major fuel for multiple end uses: electricity generation, heating, industry, and other increasingly innovative options. The unconventional gas resource of shale formations in the U.S. alone is massive with current mean projections of recoverable gas estimated to be approximately 650 Tcf (trillion cubic feet).