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reliability engineering

Introduction to Reliability Engineering

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.

Reliability Engineering for Maintenance

Understanding the Difference Between Reliability and Availability

People often confuse reliability and availability. Simply put availability is a measure of the % of time the equipment is in an operable state while reliability is a measure of how long the item

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The Dreaded Saturday Phone Call

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.

Don’t Underestimate PQ’s Impact on Reliability and Process Uptime

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.

Cooking Reliability with Gas

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).

reliability engineering for maintenance

Deriving Task Periodicities Within Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM)

This article does not present original theorems in mathematics or RCM, but is an attempt to consolidate some existing but distinct concepts relating to maintenance periodicity selection, and to provide some guidance on the best way to apply them.

Reliability Engineering for Maintenance

Criticality – Part 2

Last month, my Maintenance tip was on Criticality and finding that sweet spot of the correct number of critical machines. This month, continuing with Criticality in mind, I wanted to discuss who

... Rod Acklin, CMRP - General Manager +1 865-588-2946

Reliability Engineering for Maintenance

Solving an Inherent Problem of FMEA

An 8 minute iPresentation by Paul Lanthier of Ivara

Paul Lanthier, Director of The Aladon Network & Ivara Reliability Services, shares his insights on an inherent problem of FMEA. To learn how to avoid falling into this common trap, watch this 8 minute video.

Reliability Engineering for Maintenance

Criticality

At a recent conference, I was asked for the "Cut Off" value for critical machines. Not having a good idea of the intent of the question, I had to ask for clarification and the response was What The question got me thinking about Criticality Assessments and how unique they are to each process and facility. If you do an honest assessment of your equipment and you see a high number of critical machines, defined as failures of assets that will cause harm to your people, harm to the environment, or harm to quality and / or throughput, and you have a very high percentage of these as critical, you might want to evaluate if you can sustain a meaningful maintenance strategy. Simply put, critical assets need attention and if you do not have the resources to attend to this equipment, it might be time to build some redundancy around the critical machines.

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Reliability Engineering for Maintenance

Definition: Availability - Reliability Basis

As used in reliability calculations, the probability than an item or system is operating satisfactorily, at any point in time, when used under stated conditions.

Expressed by the formula Availability = MTBF (MTBF + MTTR). Synonymous with inherent availability

Tip excerpted from: The

Reliability Engineering for Maintenance

It’s All About the FAILURE MODES “Keeping it Simple”

An hour long Webinar On Demand Led by Ricky Smith CMRP, Principle Reliability Advisor, GPAllied

If there is one thing a maintenance and reliability professional should know it's that their maintenance strategies should be focused on specific failure modes and how they can prevent or identify those failure modes. This is where most of maintenance work should be extracted from, not from breakdowns or reactive work.

Now get off the couch and make things happen. This webinar on failure modes will not make you an expert, but it will begin the conversation. You will love it, I promise.

Participate to learn:

1) What a Failure Mode is

2) How Failure Modes drive a company to be reactive or proactive and what to do about it

3) Steps to develop an organization into a Failure Modes Driven Org.

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Reliability Engineering for Maintenance

Analyzing past failures for a more successful future

A 50 minute recorded webinar on demand by Steve Murray, Director, ABB Reliability Services.

Failure analysis requires technical ability, time and an established reliability and maintenance system. While it's a struggle for many plants to complete these both timely and accurately, if done correctly, it can minimize equipment failures and provide a direct solution to equipment performance improvement. In this webinar, we will examine major historical failures and look at requirements, various analysis methods and pitfalls of failure analysis.

Participate to learn:

1) How to recognize common causes of equipment failure

2) Learn how increased reliability leads to higher profitability

3) Understand the basics of Root Cause Failure Analysis and Failure Modes & Effects Analysis to identify and correct causes of failure

The Critical Role of the Reliability Engineer

Introduction

Swagelok has been in business for over 60 years, manufacturing the highest quality valves and tube fittings. We are also a privately held company with sales distributors and warehouses throughout the world that supply excellent support and service. Swagelok has been a successful company as viewed by its end-customers, having the highest quality products on the market.

Tools for Improving Maintenance strategies and failure analysis processes

A tool is anything used as a means of accomplishing a task or purpose. The purpose of this research is to review the tools available that could be used as a means to improve maintenance strategies and failure analysis processes. The tools reviewed basically fall into one of two categories, these being "Prediction" or "Problem solving". The predictive and problem solving tools reviewed are generic tools that are not specifically aligned to any software package or vendor. In many cases software has been developed to fit these tools or in some cases a generic tool or process has developed from a software package.

Reliability Engineering for Maintenance

Integrating FRACAS with Maintenance Strategy Development

iPresentation - 1:10:17
By Steve Turner at OMCS International

Failure Reporting and Corrective Action Systems (FRACAS) are amongst the most valuable yet most poorly managed process in industrial maintenance. With good intent, most organizations have FRACAS systems, however many end up with unfinished or unimplemented analyses only to find the problems repeating again.

reliability engineering

Education In Maintenance & Reliability Engineering

Introduction to Reliability Engineering

Understanding the Difference Between Reliability and Availability

The Dreaded Saturday Phone Call

Eliminating the Sources of Poor Reliability: Defects

Don’t Underestimate PQ’s Impact on Reliability and Process Uptime

Cooking Reliability with Gas

Deriving Task Periodicities Within Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM)

Criticality – Part 2

Solving an Inherent Problem of FMEA

Criticality

Definition: Availability - Reliability Basis

It’s All About the FAILURE MODES “Keeping it Simple”

Undetected Failure

Analyzing past failures for a more successful future

The Critical Role of the Reliability Engineer

Definition: Failure Finding Task

A Detailed Rolling Element Bearing Failure Analysis Procedure

Tools for Improving Maintenance strategies and failure analysis processes

Integrating FRACAS with Maintenance Strategy Development