Featured Articles on Reliability and Asset Management

The Need for Rapid Change for the Responsible Asset Manager

posted 13 hours ago
- by Katriona Lord-Levins and Michael Salvato -  As the world has proven its need for rapid change, here in the U.S., the president is calling for a build back better framework. And the country’s communities, organizations and even its people can play an important role in building back better. Critical to the build back better effort is the integration of infrastructure, digital technologies and sustainable development. The vision for a digital built America is an America that is smarter, more sustainable and resilient. As the world emerges ...

Maintenance Rebuild Decision: Reuse or Replace

posted 14 hours ago
- By​ Randy Riddell - An often debated subject on maintenance rebuilds is exactly which parts or components should be replaced. There are two extremes when making this decision. The low-risk option is to replace everything with new each time, however, the extreme high cost is not justified in most business models. Some sort of condition-based maintenance inspection would be more ideal for replacing components or signaling major rebuilds. Infant mortality of installing new parts may even make that option high risk. The high-risk option for maintenance ...

Data-Driven Decision-Making for Predictable Production

posted 2 days ago
- By Sandra DiMatteo -  How to Gain Timely and Accurate Data Insights to Optimize Asset Performance and Reliability  Data-driven decisions are those backed up by hard evidence; reliable and trustworthy data, rather than intuition, gut instinct, or guesswork. However, the abundance of data that is generated from Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) devices and multiple siloed sources makes it difficult to analyze. The worst thing that can happen is that critical data is missing, remains hidden, or is incorrect. So, how do you know you have ...

The Latest Technology for Asset Management in Oil & Gas

posted 2 days ago
- By Malcolm J. Werner / Dave Maguire / Richard Fish - Combining Mechanical Integrity and RCM for Time, Cost Savings For owner-operators of oil, gas and chemical companies, mechanical integrity (MI) and reliability-centered maintenance (RCM) are pivotal components of any comprehensive asset management (AM) program. However, most companies tend to treat MI and RCM as separate programs, utilizing different tools for each – where MI is administered by the engineering organization and RCM is administered under maintenance. Yet, with the advancement ...

Managing the Risk of the Schedule Using Monte Carlo Simulations

posted 2 days ago
- By Luiz Alberto Verri -  Consider this scenario: You are finalizing the planning of your company’s next major maintenance outage or capital project and are concerned the timeline is too tight and your team is small. You communicate this to management and recommend increasing the size of the contracted teams by 20 percent to secure the deadline. The manager then asks, “But what is the real chance of delay? And what will be the chance of delay after the change? If I invest in increasing the team, what will my return really be?” Instead of answering ...

The Disease in Manufacturing No One Is Talking About

posted 2 days ago
- By Joe Kuhn - In one recent reliability trade magazine, there were 34 advertisements for new and improved tools or training for improving your reliability program. The tools included software, new condition monitoring gadgets, and training and certifications on best practices. Further, the magazine included eight articles on such topics. However, there were zero articles and zero advertisements on the biggest lever by far for rapidly and sustainably improving equipment reliability, cost, quality, safety and throughput – shop floor observation. ...

Operations-Led Reliability Effort: 10 Years Later

posted 2 days ago
- by Brett Stephens and Joe Mikes - "Over the decade, the facility has learned that it has two main sources of production losses. One is process related and the other is incident related"   In 2009, Cameco Corporation's Port Hope Uranium Conversion Facility in Port Hope, Canada, launched a new approach to continuous improvement. It was documented and presented in the Aug/Sept 2012 issue of  Uptime  magazine titled, “ Operations-Led Reliability. ” Ten years later, here is an update on how it has evolved through multiple improvements. ...

Using Asset Management Tools to Ensure Reconditioning Accuracy and Reliability

posted 3 days ago
- By Ron Brook - If you are responsible for maintaining motors, you may have sent units off to be reconditioned, only to see them demonstrate unreliable performance once put back in service. The job of customer in-house reliability technicians is to insure the reliability of any and all assets.  Any asset that is returned to service and does not meet OEM specifications will be flagged and removed from service. If they have documented their work, the repair facility will have data from all final testing that should prove the asset met ...

How to Best Study for the Certified Maintenance Manager Course and Exam

posted 6 days ago
Learn the best study tips for the CMM Certification Exam from CMM Workshop facilitator Michael Meehan. Are you unsure about how to best prepare for the Certified Maintenance Manager (CMM) exam? Experienced CMM workshop instructor Michael Meehan explains how to get the most out of your study sessions, so you can pass the text with flying colors.  By Michael Meehan How to Best Study for the Certified Maintenance Manager Course and Exam As an instructor/facilitator for the Reliabilityweb.com Certified Maintenance Manager (CMM) ...

The importance of digital twins in industrial maintenance and asset management

posted 20 days ago
You may certainly have heard about this many times: the impact of digitalization on asset management, the advantages of the 4.0 Industry on Reliability, the impulse of the latest digital technologies on productivity, efficiency and profitability, and other similar aspects. Indeed, the implementation of digitalization on the industrial scene has drastically changed the way of working, producing and being present in the market. At the Association of Asset Management Professionals , we like to share and dive into these aspects that positively ...

OEE: How Do You Use It?

posted 06-21-2024
By Ron Moore Overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) is an often touted tool for managing a manufacturing operation. In its basic form, it is intended to identify production losses, primarily so they can be managed, for example, planned and unplanned downtime, rate, and quality losses, and perhaps other losses. It is simple in concept, but much more difficult in practice. For example, do you measure availability during no demand times? Where do you measure – on all machines or processes, or just one? How do you measure? What specifically do you ...

Hero or Goat? The Difference Is Knowing the Difference

posted 06-21-2024
Asset management is concerned with the total cost of ownership and a corresponding long view. Many decision-makers do not think this way nor do they allocate resources in this manner. Trusted advisers must understand what is meant by a decision, the different types of decisions, and the external influences on decision-making in the presence of complexity and uncertainty. Asset managers must properly evaluate their problem-solving and communication approaches if they are to be successful. The Anatomy of a Decision Let’s take a look at a not ...

Maintenance Costs as a Percent of Asset Replacement Value: A Useful Measure?

posted 06-21-2024
By Ron Moore Someone recently asked for a benchmark for maintenance costs (MC) as a percent of asset replacement value (ARV) for chemical plants, or MC/ARV%. They also seemed curious about the usefulness of the measure. These questions led to a series of other questions, the result of which is this article. Before addressing these questions, remember these two points: You must understand and apply the processes for achieving benchmark performance for it to be sustainable . You cannot apply the numbers arbitrarily; Do NOT focus on any one ...

Assume the Decision Maker Is Not Stupid to Make Your Communication More Powerful

posted 06-21-2024
By JD Solomon Many make allowances for decision makers, saying some are “faking it until they make it.” However, this is the wrong default position to take when communicating with decision makers. Instead, the probabilities will be on your side if you assume they are more qualified than you. Take, for example, the Board of Mount Pleasant Waterworks in South Carolina. It is comprised of several successful business owners, a member with expertise in risk management and financial management, an environmental consultant with a PhD, a former, long-time ...

Making Asset Management Decisions: Caught Between the Push and the Pull

posted 06-21-2024
By JD Solomon The chief executive of a large state port authority had the reputation of being erratic. His inner circle was a revolving door of who was on “the list.” The line of “dead” consulting firms went out the door and into the parking lot. When it was another consulting firm’s turn to step into the limelight of a big capital renewal and replacement program, the consultant did not have a good answer when one of its executive leaders asked, “Is this a good thing or a bad thing?” The consultant quickly studied the recent major capital investment ...

Turning the Oil Tanker

posted 06-21-2024
By Daniel A. Lachman and Roy Tjoen A Choy Don’t Get Locked into Your Performance Management System This article highlights the hidden trap of performance management systems. Though the idea behind such systems is usually sound, getting bogged down in those systems can cause an organization to be slow in responding to driving factors from the environment that require it to change. This article draws parallels with concepts and theories from thermodynamics and recent insights from economics and applies them to the organizational setting. Performance ...

Seven Chakras of Asset Management

posted 06-20-2024
By Terrence O’Hanlon Disclaimer: I make no claim to have knowledge beyond a basic wikipedia level of "Chakras", a five thousand year study of energy and the human body. This article simply uses the basic analogy of chakras as a lens to view the culture and practice of asset management and the resulting asset management system. - Terrence O'Hanlon In Sanskrit, the word “chakra” means “disk” or “wheel” and refers to the energy centers in your body. These wheels or disks of spinning energy each correspond to certain nerve bundles and major organs. ...

Confessions of a Risk Matrix Zealot

posted 06-20-2024
Merriam-Webster's Dictionary defines  risk  as the “possibility of loss or injury.” The International Organization for Standardization’s ISO31000 defines a  risk matrix  as “a tool for ranking and displaying risks by defining ranges of consequences and likelihood.” With these two definitions, you can simply define a risk matrix like the example in Figure 1. Figure 1: Risk matrix example The problem with this simple approach is context. Can it really be said with confidence that a rare but catastrophic event is as low a risk as a negligible ...

Asset Reliability or System Reliability?

posted 06-20-2024
By Armando Vittorangeli When explaining reliability, I usually ask this question: Where is an airplane naturally located — in the air or on the ground? Some people pick the first, because an airplane is made for flying, whereas others, influenced by the law of gravity, opt for the second. There are large graveyards of airplanes in the Mojave Desert, and I haven’t seen any of them in the sky yet. That’s because the airplane is naturally on the ground, and if it flies, it’s only because everything is working properly. Then, I ask the second question: ...

Data Analytics, Machine Learning and Root Cause Analysis — A Practical Path to Continuous Improvement

posted 06-20-2024
By Umeet Bhachu Continuous improvement is a key theme in many operating plants, and a lot of money is often spent to understand the key gaps in facilities to help optimize maintenance and/or operational goals, with the ultimate intent being the production of a commodity in the most cost-effective, safe, and reliable way. The customer is ultimately paying for the commodity, and the plant has to ensure that it is able to provide this by keeping operating and other secondary costs in check in order to maximize profits and keep expenses and waste ...