The Frustrations of Reliability: From Strategy to Synergy with Bob Latino and Ken Latino

Welcome Bob and Ken Latino to the Podcast. Bob has been to this Podcast before discussing defect elimination and is an author involved with RCA and other reliability items. Briefly, Ken, can you introduce yourself.

I worked with Bob and my other brother at our family businesses called Reliability Centre for about 15 years. I later left for a small start up called Meridian being involved in reliability softwares.  I also worked as a reliability manager at a Paper Mill for 10 years then went to GE. Presently doing consulting work Prelical.

In this episode we covered:

• There is a lot of frustration in reliability. Where do you see it comin from?
• What do you think reliability means to any plant manager or operations manager out there?
• How do we break this cycle of frustrations?

There is a lot of frustration in reliability. Where do you see it comin from?

Everybody in the industry wants reliability but a lot of people do not understand what it takes to move from a reactive culture to being proactive.

When reliability is successful nothing happens in terms of breakdowns hence it is difficult to recognize the efforts of the department.

It doesn't matter which industry it is. It has always been about organisational culture.

It comes down to the decision making skills of the workforce. If you give the team bad tools they will make bad decisions. With good tools they will make good decisions. Every outcome stems from someone triggering it or taking inappropriate action.

Sometimes you set up RCM and after a month of practice it fails. We have to ask if we communicated the right expectations upfront; what it takes and how long it takes to get the results, the right culture.

I do not blame as much the people that do bad RCAs as much as the people that accept them because they are condoning it. The people in charge are considering the practices as routines to just get the minimum requirements.

Is the level of frustration similar for both the tradesman in maintenance and those in management?

It's  a different frustration for the line worker because they communicate potential points of breakdowns before they happen with no response from upper management. I believe the management hardly understands because they believe they have people for all departments who are supposed to respond to failures.

Earlier in the 1970s reliability was not being practised because so many people were focused on fixing failures and no resources were left for preventing them. Reliability was being considered subordinate to maintenance and that is one of the frustrations.

The job descriptions of those intended to support reliability maintenance such as planners are not clear even to superior staff. It becomes frustrating because they are meant to work for the same organisation.

Organisations adopted the idea of reliability by merely changing the title from Maintenance Engineer to Reliability Engineer without actually changing the function. This brings failure to the execution of reliability.

What is reliability?

It is the equipment, process, and human reliability with an emphasis on the human reliability side. Having the greatest tools does not help if you do not have the right mindsets to prevent failures. It is similar to safety when you communicate that you want zero harm and so people fail to report injuries to not mess the metric.

What do you think reliability means to any plant manager or operations manager out there?

They would say, my equipment doesn't fail.

Is it realistic?

No.

Most managers measure reliability by MTBF.

It is a terrible metric. It is important to trend it but it is not proper to make decisions solely on it.

The frustration then comes from the way we measure reliability. Managers assume that we will not have failures. Failures will still occur but it is a matter of how often. Are we eliminating certain types of failures?

From an FMEA curve standpoint people may start reporting the small issues rather than the more severe ones. You find that you are tracking it at risk level rather than at the consequence level.

Often people do not even know what failures are, much less what reliability is.

While working at the hospital, people rated fall with harm and without harm differently enough to not treat them with the same seriousness. The conditions for fall still existed but we didn’t have the right drivers to help us assess the near misses.

You have to have a certain group looking at potential breakdowns as you have others focused on the present ones.

How do we start reducing these frustrations?

Pick the smaller subgroups of equipment. Pick the critical equipment and apply the reliability principles. Having the subgroups brings success to build on. You also have to tell people what you are doing to make your successes visible.

You have to pick small areas to work on and communicate the right expectations upfront.

You have to be consistent in your reliability practices because it is very easy to fail if you are not. A lot of frustrations also stem from high turnover rates that prevents consistency. The remaining people do not have the right systems to sustain reliability.

You have to have the right systems that support skill transfer such as refresher training, and processes to institutionalise the practices rather than base it on one champion.

For a tool like RCA, you have to ensure that the newcomers understand perceptions from the more experienced team members on how systems work and people think. Otherwise they will slip back to their reactive culture.

How do we break this cycle of frustrations?

• Start small
• Build on success
• Educate
• Teach people how to make a proper business case.

There are several easy wins in highly reactive environments that can be pursued.

Find the best way to communicate what you do and your achievements. Reliability engineers can take sales and marketing courses.

• Show your people that they have value by listening to them.
• Proactively utilise RCA even without a breakdown to eliminate defects that hinder great performance

Why arent many reliability people  not doing these things?

The first question they need to ask is on practicality. Ask the people if the initiative is practical.

Eruditio Links:

• Eruditio
• HP Reliability
• James Kovacevic's LinkedIn
• Reliability Report

Bob Latino and Ken Latino Links:

• Bob Latino LinkedIn
• Ken Latino LinkedIn
• Prelical.com
• Root Cause Analysis: Improving Performance for Bottom-Line Results, Fifth Edition 5th Edition

Download RSS iTunesStitcher

Rooted In Reliability podcast is a proud member of Reliability.fm network. We encourage you to please rate and review this podcast on iTunes and Stitcher. It ensures the podcast stays relevant and is easy to find by like-minded professionals. It is only with your ratings and reviews that the Rooted In Reliability podcast can continue to grow. Thank you for providing the small but critical support for the Rooted In Reliability podcast!

The post 316-The Frustrations of Reliability: From Strategy to Synergy with Bob Latino and Ken Latino appeared first on Accendo Reliability.

Prioritizing Initiatives with Paul Daoust

Welcome Paul to the Podcast. Paul is the founder of Scio Asset Management. Although, briefly, tell us about yourself.

I have almost 30 years experience in engineering reliability maintenance and both strategic and holistic asset management. At Scio we are providing frameworks for leadership in asset management that is based on first principle decision making. Also launching Assetiers that is a platform for leaders to discuss the challenges that we have in asset management.

In this episode we covered:

• There are challenges in prioritising where to allocate resources in asset management. Have you seen this?
• How do we prioritise the initiatives that are already in place such as lean manufacturing, Six Sigma, 5S and reliability maintenance?
• There are diminishing returns in pursuing reliability best practice. Do we always have to be the best in class in these practices?

There are challenges in prioritising where to allocate resources in asset management. Have you seen this?

That is a primary challenge. It goes to the strategic organisational goals in terms of delivering value from the available resources. Resources are both fast in that there is lots of money and people to invest and they are scarce in terms of budgetIng. It is the leadership's job to direct the resources to maximise value.

How do we prioritise the initiatives that are already in place such as lean manufacturing, Six Sigma, 5S and reliability maintenance? Do we go for easy wins or strictly focus on our strategic goals?

I think it is multifaceted in the sense that we can focus on things like lean manufacturing that improve people's capabilities but at the same time focus on business processes to have good, better, and best practices. Organisations need to assess the value in all their practices. And if there is value then what is the cost of going for the best practice?

There are diminishing returns in pursuing reliability best practice. Do we always have to be the best in class in these practices?

The Law of diminishing returns might manifest for people who are in production especially if you calculate cost per unit. However, when a company reaches maturity, there is always room for improvements. The Beauty Curve shows that improvement at maturity frees up resources to be utilised in other areas. It has a compounding effect.

This is why companies that carry out best practices deliver more value since they already have a culture of continuous improvement. This runs counter to what is believed as The Law of Diminishing Returns.

The challenge is whether going for those incremental values is worth it and how to prioritise the allocation of the freed up resources to continue problem solving.

There is also a question of where to start. The key is to pick a place where you believe there is need and work on it. The less mature and more reactive the organisation is the more the opportunities. The key for less mature organisations is to first focus on the people and free up capacity. They have to work hard to reduce reactive maintenance and reallocate the people to places where they can solve more problems that prevent recurrences.

Once we have freed up these resources, how do we prioritise their reallocations?

You need to focus on the strategic goals such that everything you do is aligned with the objectives. You have to test the alignment of the improvement initiatives to the strategic goals. Make sure that there is value in making the investment. You also need to ensure that you start initiatives in amounts that you can manage. Do not overload people because there are normal roles that they have to perform other than the initiatives.

There are alternatives that can bring improvements such as increasing work rate, improving business processes, bringing in new techniques but you need to be careful in making the choices.

Sometimes it’s not even a resource problem but a change problem where there are to many changes at a time.

People always seem aligned when they are assigned roles in these initiatives. But when you ask them whether they have the resources or time to prioritise the initiatives you will start to see the gaps.

If you examine all the tasks based on the strategic goals you will eliminate those that do not contribute to the expected deliverables including skunk works .

The freed up capacity needs to be allocated towards the goals so that the time and resources are not lost even as we drive innovations..

That is for the visibility of all the activities in the change initiatives. I like to use Hoshin Kanri because it shows the medium terms strategies which are the initiatives and measuring the practices towards the value that you want. It shows the dynamics in the initiatives and you can make changes in the business processes.

I also like to use FAST goal setting where we start high in the frequent discussions about the goals. We need to understand the dynamics of initiatives and how we are influencing or failing to influence things to take action..

When we reach a point where the expected value isn't being realised, do we pause or do we push through till the expected value is realised?

The answer is both. There is a time and place to put a stop to initiatives that are not working and the same for those that we need to push through with. You need to look at the business case and the underpinning assumptions. If the assumptions were wrong then that's a reason to stop the initiative.

The other issue is execution where if you can solve the challenges then you can push through. But if you cannot then there is a reason to stop.

There is also the sunk cost fallacy where organisations do not want to build a reputation for not completing the things they start. But there is also a question of the future value of the already sunk cost in a failing initiative and whether there is opportunity in redirecting the resources to other more productive areas or not. We need to both be brave in stopping initiatives or smart in reallocation.

There is a lot of uncertainty in our knowledge but we have to be honest with our organisations. Do not make false assumptions and focus on the few initiatives.

Eruditio Links:

• Eruditio
• HP Reliability
• James Kovacevic's LinkedIn
• Reliability Report

Paul Daoust Links:

• Paul Daoust LinkedIn
• Paul Daoust Past Episodes
• Scio Asset Management
• The Asseters.org
• Power Curve
• Is your strategy good enough to move you up on the power curve?
• Speed of Business

Download RSS iTunesStitcher

Rooted In Reliability podcast is a proud member of Reliability.fm network. We encourage you to please rate and review this podcast on iTunes and Stitcher. It ensures the podcast stays relevant and is easy to find by like-minded professionals. It is only with your ratings and reviews that the Rooted In Reliability podcast can continue to grow. Thank you for providing the small but critical support for the Rooted In Reliability podcast!

The post 315 – Prioritizing Initiatives with Paul Daoust appeared first on Accendo Reliability.

Clean Energy with Howard Penrose

Welcome back Howard to the Podcast. Howard is the founder of Motordoc and is heavily involved with IEEE and SMRP. Though, briefly, tell us about yourself.

My entire career has been about electric machines and systems from my time in the Navy. I later had short stints both in repair business and teaching at the University of Illinois. I also ran the energy resources at the University. I later went into the test equipment industry and afterwards started a repair shop named Motordoc. Currently involved in a lot of ESG projects and Utility works in solar energy and wind turbines. Also I am the vice chair of American Clean Power.

In this episode we covered:

• Do the utilities know what they need to ramp up for?
• What are the industrial facilities doing especially in degasifying their energy through electrification?
• How are we to take advantage of this clean power if the infrastructure cannot support it?

Our discussion today is about the impact of clean power on the grid, generation and supply. Any concerns?

None so far but the application of wind and solar energy has been ongoing since 1984 although initially at a smaller scale. In the 1990s the decommissioning of older coal power generation plants started because they were too expensive to run and maintain. There was an increased demand and supply for wind and solar equipment as the cost of fuel increased.

In the meantime, the grid itself hasn't significantly changed since the 1910s apart from the changes made in communications. So we have come up with some variations for voltage corrections but based on the same old technology. We have installed VFDs and computers onto the grid introducing new instabilities that affected the reliability of the grid and its bulk power.

The introduction of solar and wind energy onto the grid has faced challenges whereby the controls in the system that are supposed to correct voltages cause damages to the turbines.  The old method of building the distribution systems is causing resonance back to the turbines. This causes the generators to fail and wear and tear on the machines.

Have you seen a challenge in getting access to the grid for clean energy by companies that are going for degasification of their energy sources?

Yes. Emerald and Berkeley National Labs faced a challenge of introducing 1.4tW worth of data to the grid that was broken. It also happened in Texas where they have islanded their grid. So when they had a breakdown it became difficult to supply power to them. There are 246 deaths attributed to this failure in Texas.

The current grid is not able to move power from remote  to local locations. Smart grid was introduced for its flexibility and resilience  to be adjusted to changing conditions. The main issue is to ensure that the distribution systems can support the power generated. We are currently witnessing through electrical signature analysis that the power generated exceeds the bulk power of distribution systems is too soft.

How are we to take advantage of this clean power if the infrastructure cannot support it?

The utilities have struggled with it too. But a solution that we are seeing is that a lot of companies have developed their own power generation. The smart grid systems are also being used to direct power through relays to where it can. A more significant solution is the bipartisan infrastructure build-through. This has converted some localised grid systems to national grid towards the end of 2021. We also just launched the department of energy study portion which partly is meant to provide loans for utilities to be able to build out and repair the grid since some of the equipment is so old. Firstly, the initial corrections have to be put in place and then an  increase of 60% in US grid size by 2035 to maintain where we are. By 2050 we have to be thrice the present size.

There are several challenges including; technology changes that have to be made, NIMBY( not in my backyard) also causing a pushback to expansion. There is also a challenge of islanding the distribution systems where the supply is local, especially in remote areas.

The pushback to infrastructure expansion in Canada is similar and causes a ripple effect in the sense that local businesses end up facing challenges in power supply.

It’s because of the lack of  an understanding of the requirements to avail power by the general public.

Do the utilities know what they need to ramp up for?

No. The traditional methods of forecasting demand for electrification has failed because we

did not have a history of utility scale green energy until 2002. The technology and policy surrounding this issue is facing challenges because it is relatively new (20years of age).

What are the industrial facilities doing especially in degasifying their energy through electrification? Are the utilities looking at the impact it will have on the grid?

There are models in places like Quebec where everything has been electrified. The companies have to monitor the grid and supply sources of the areas that they build their facilities to be able to harness the energy.

There is a push for changes through public policy and the general public but it will take time to execute electrification. Mistakes will be made along the way because the changes face multiple challenges such as power distribution timings, capacity and laws.

There are challenges in forecasting demand as well.

Companies need to match the plant degasification targets, forecasting, and practices with the corporate and public policy objectives. Because the company’s needs fluctuate.

We have to look at the impact each consumer or facility consumption will have on the grid and other users.

Eruditio Links:

• Eruditio
• HP Reliability
• James Kovacevic's LinkedIn
• Reliability Report

Howard Penrose Links:

• Howard Penrose LinkedIn
• American Clean Power Association
• SMRP.org
• Motordoc.com
• Past episodes with Howard Penrose

Download RSS iTunesStitcher

Rooted In Reliability podcast is a proud member of Reliability.fm network. We encourage you to please rate and review this podcast on iTunes and Stitcher. It ensures the podcast stays relevant and is easy to find by like-minded professionals. It is only with your ratings and reviews that the Rooted In Reliability podcast can continue to grow. Thank you for providing the small but critical support for the Rooted In Reliability podcast!

The post 314 – Clean Energy with Howard Penrose appeared first on Accendo Reliability.

Decarbonization and the Impact on Maintenance with Steven Dobie

Welcome Steven to the podcast. Steven is a co-host of another podcast called Maintenance Disrupted. However briefly, tell us more about yourself.

I am a maintenance and reliability engineer in the mining industry who has been in tech for a couple of years. Presently working with a centralised maintenance group focused on keeping equipment and trucks running longer.

In this episode we covered:

• Are you being impacted a lot by sustainability i.e decarbonization, electrification?
• How does this impact people from a maintenance person's perspective?
• What are the other ways to produce power?

Within your industry you are being impacted a lot by sustainability i.e decarbonization, electrification and such, aren't you?

Yes. Presently we have aggressive targets regarding decarbonization such as by 2030 we have to reduce our GHE by 33%. And by 2050 we should be a net zero company. It is a big challenge because it is not only our equipment that contributes to our carbon footprint at the mine site. There are other sources within our operations.

How does this impact people from a maintenance person's perspective?

The biggest issue is skill set. There  is a challenge in taking the existing workforce and training them to handle a new decarbonization program and later maintain the equipment.

It is a huge challenge. Take for instance a changing a traditional boiler that is gas fired or coal powered to an electric one. Their operation and maintenance will be different.

Exactly. The challenge is also a shortage in electrical infrastructure. Electrification will require addition of these infrastructure and that needs to be factored in the decarbonization process.

The challenge is if the existing electrical infrastructure can support an additional load coming on to the grid. We have to assess the amount of upgrade needed during the decarbonization process to avoid redoing it just shortly after an upgrade. There are so many unknowns to be prioritised especially in determining what is realistic.

Looking at the future we need to make a lot of changes on the infrastructure that haven’t been done in a long time. The equipment is old. However, currently there doesn’t seem to be a plan in place given that 2030 is only 8 years away. That is a short time to plan for the infrastructure changes needed to achieve the decarbonization goal.

The Canadian Government just announced that no internal combustion engines shall be sold for passenger vehicles after 2035. But what does that look like for the charging infrastructure in place. Most towns and neighbourhoods are unable to support multiple vehicle charging at the same time.

The power generation is also low.

We have been shutting down our coal power plants but the smart grids aren't generating as much. The maintenance technicians are also not centralised and have to drive around maintaining distributed infrastructure on the smart grid. Managing the team has also changed.

There are alternative ways to produce power such as wind and solar that we can generate for ourselves.

Mines already do that. They have built dams, gas and coal powered plants for power generation. Handling a dam however is a challenge. Solar power can only reliably work for a year. There are mu;tiple problems to solve.

Power generation for electrification affects maintenance programs in a significant way. Be it using power from the main utility supply or microgeneration. How are you preparing for it?

Companies are not ready for the huge impact. The good thing is that there are wind and solar power generation schools coming up. On the other hand, the skill sets needed are just the same as those required for the old electrical equipment. So we just need to expand on those. The electrical infrastructure is the same but at a different scale.

The key is bringing in the right training program early enough to bridge that skill gap needed to support a large scale infrastructure.

There are also issues with the supply chain since multiple companies are ordering for these parts and equipment needed to upscale the infrastructure. This affects lead time and therefore early planning is needed

There is a mismatch in what is available and what we need in the decarbonization process. How do we improve the manufacturing of the equipment and parts needed or even do it locally?

The process is tough and the capital is intensive to purchase parts as simple as semiconductors.

The supply chain issues forces us to look farther ahead in the decarbonization process but we aren’t sure if the technology will even be available by then.

Whichever means we use to bring the parts and equipment from overseas need to be decarbonized as well. Making the supply chain shorter will definitely reduce the carbon footprint towards net zero.

There is also a question of a more targeted supply from smaller facilities rather than one big facility and this impacts the number of technicians and infrastructure needed for those facilities.

We are waiting to see a demand increase and a shortage of the workforce supply.

What do you recommend to help people get ahead of this?

Attend training courses on decarbonization.

Eruditio Links:

• Eruditio
• HP Reliability
• James Kovacevic's LinkedIn
• Reliability Report

Steven Dobie Links:

• Steven Dobie LinkedIn
• Maintenance Disrupted Linkedin
• Maintenance Disrupted

Download RSS iTunesStitcher

Rooted In Reliability podcast is a proud member of Reliability.fm network. We encourage you to please rate and review this podcast on iTunes and Stitcher. It ensures the podcast stays relevant and is easy to find by like-minded professionals. It is only with your ratings and reviews that the Rooted In Reliability podcast can continue to grow. Thank you for providing the small but critical support for the Rooted In Reliability podcast!

The post 313 – Decarbonization and the Impact on Maintenance with Steven Dobie appeared first on Accendo Reliability.

Cost vs Benefit of Inspection with Dane Boers

Welcome Dane back to the podcast. We last talked about asset modelling and factors that influence those assets. Today we will talk about optimising strategies; how we determine cost vs benefit of strategies. But first, give a brief introduction of yourself and Modla.

Modla is an asset knowledge and analytic platform. The vision is to capture subject matter expertise and knowledge around an asset and business processes. It then combines that with data for continuous improvement. We have worked in the utility industry; particularly water and electricity.

In this episode we covered:

• How do we determine the probability of finding a defect to establish inspection frequency?
• Are organisations looking to optimise inspections to ensure the benefits are worth the costs?
• Can you borrow a task in an FMEA from another organisation?

You were a reliability engineer, right?

Yes. I started out in mining and transitioned to reliability and asset management. I was interested in the combination of engineering principles and the business side in reliability.

A lot of organisations are looking to optimise inspections to ensure the benefits are worth the costs. Is this something they should be concerned about?

A recommended approach would be to start from ground zero; activities such as inspections and condition monitoring are inherently information gathering as they do not interfere with the asset's operation. The key is to determine the information you are looking for and the expected value it should add.

This determination will be affected by the monitoring frequency, operation factors such as timing, and detection probability.  You need to prove that the task will add value before performing it.

I do not recommend adding default tasks out of perhaps an OEM manual to the system without determining its value.

You can't just borrow a task in an FMEA from another organisation because the operational contexts vary.

The consequences of it failing are going to be different. However, it is also dependent on the business maturity. Sometimes an organisation lacks the capability to do a detailed analysis of expected outcomes and so copy pasting from another is an approach.

Although, it is risky to blindly trust it.

How do we determine the probability of finding a defect to establish inspection frequency?

Both inspecting at a high frequency and spacing out the intervals can yield the same results because failure modes happen when they happen. The probability of finding a defect is almost 100% for obvious defects such as corrosion. It gets more complex when technologies that distance the operator from the underlying defect need to be analysed. At such a point, you might need to ballpark everything and adjust the frequency based on your operational context to improve on it.

We look to understand how a failure occurred in between our inspections without detection. For instance, changes in vibration indicate a misalignment that wasn't picked during inspection or failure to carry out lubrication by the operator. How do we isolate such events to prevent them from skewing the data we collect on defect detection?

You have to use all the different tools together i.e combine SMEs and data analysis to confirm or deny hypotheses.  None in isolation.

Lessons from machine learning are clear that you cannot just let statisticians build models independently from SMEs. Also you cannot have SMEs isolated from staticians. They need to be interdependent.

Even in failure analysis, you need to confirm whether the data you are seeing makes sense. You need the technical side to understand what is happening in the real world.

But you need data sets to make a business case for the changes you need to make.

Management is using data-driven decision making but it is important to include the SMEs in the justification of the changes. The justification given by an SME is as equally important if not more valid than the data.. This is because the data has issues, assumptions, and non adjusted parameters.

When optimising maintenance tasks we should use liable analysis based on a single failure mode and not mixed failure mode.

The condition monitoring techniques that you might use may not pick up those multiple failure modes and this complicates the justification.

To justify an inspection, look at what would happen if it is not done. Compare that with the suggested inspection intervals, probability of detection of failure modes then link them to the failure modes.

Definitely, interventions will be needed and these need to be planned in terms of overall cost. Compare all these activities to absence of the inspection. The difference yields the value added.

The cost is built up from labour rates, supplies, periods of technology use. To link these, should they have a list of failure modes?

The more you understand the assets and its failure modes the more accurate your answer will be. But if you do not have the failure level information you can use the estimates. Let the SME estimate the costs and benefits of doing or not doing the inspections.

The analysis does not need to go down to details; it can be basic as long as the logic is sound and documented then improve on it.

The key is to learn, do an RCA and find out why the inspections did not catch the failure modes or were they just random.

When critical assets fail and an RCA is done, there are failure detection probabilities that need to be picked during the exercise. There is ofcourse a tradeoff between overinspection and lack thereof. However, do not be quick to write off your logic because it did not detect multiple failures. Instead, work on improving the logic.

Eruditio Links:

• Eruditio
• HP Reliability
• James Kovacevic's LinkedIn
• Reliability Report

Dane Boers Links:

• Dane Boers Linkedin
• Modla Linkedin
• Modla – Collaboration and Asset Analytics
• Past episodes with Dane Boers

Download RSS iTunesStitcher

Rooted In Reliability podcast is a proud member of Reliability.fm network. We encourage you to please rate and review this podcast on iTunes and Stitcher. It ensures the podcast stays relevant and is easy to find by like-minded professionals. It is only with your ratings and reviews that the Rooted In Reliability podcast can continue to grow. Thank you for providing the small but critical support for the Rooted In Reliability podcast!

The post 312 – Cost vs Benefit of Inspection with Dane Boers appeared first on Accendo Reliability.

Defect Elimination with Doug Plucknette

Welcome Doug back to the podcast. Doug is the Author, President and Owner of Reliability Solutions Inc. Though briefly, give an introduction of yourself.

I started my reliability consultancy career back in 1999 after serving in several capacities at different organisations. Although currently semi-retired, I still respond to past clients who need help in streamlining their processes.

In this episode we covered:

• How do we start moving defect elimination from smaller  to a little more advanced problems?
• How long does it take to move from simpler problems such as leaks to dealing with more advanced asset problems?
• How do you prioritise the problems to be worked on?

It must be interesting being able to choose only the jobs that you want to do, isn’t it?

It helps in being brutally honest with the clients which is necessary during defect elimination. While consulting for a client facing multiple problems, it is essential to step back and start with the simple basics. You can start from a single point such as repairing a leak or improving the team's understanding of the process.

An approach in understanding the process is by reaching out to the most experienced team members to explain how it worked before the defects set in. The defects will be highlighted during such conversations. This exercise can be done across all the departments e.g Quality, Safety, Maintenance, and Purchasing. Sometimes it is hardly a leadership issue as it is a cultural one.

Sometimes an organisation wants to implement RCM but is too busy being reactive to its many problems.

The secret is to first identify a simple defect and completely deal with it. Make use  of the team to identify the defects by letting them suggest what they believe is the problem. Amongst the team you will identify leaders who are willing to routinely work on the problems and are good at them. The leaders will inspire others to get involved.

How do you prioritise the problems to be worked on?

Again, you have to engage the team in pinpointing the problems they would like to first address. By involving them you will create motivation and synergy as they will see that their input is valued.

If the problem is about a leak from up, you have to start from the top and stop it before cleaning the bottom. When the team sees a change at the bottom it encourages them.

What people can see makes a big difference, doesn’t it?

l worked at a plant where we decided with the cleaning team to weigh the rubbish after cleaning. We tracked and posted the results after every rectification made. The result was tremendous.

For instance, fixing air leaks can save an organisation's energy consumption and tons of money.

Once you repair the leaks you will notice a difference in:

• EHS reportable leakage incidences
• Improved OEE
• Improved worker engagement

How do we start moving defect elimination from smaller  to a little more advanced problems?

After involving the team in defect identification and finding solutions, bring In OEE. However, start by measuring OEE at the asset level but not at the line level. Identify the asset that is really struggling on the line and pinpoint why it is struggling. Here is where tools such as RCA, RCM, statistical process control and kaizen are used.

How long does it take to move from simpler problems such as leaks to dealing with more advanced asset problems?

It can take a long time because being reactive does not immediately go away. Good people management skills are required to recognize those involved in making the changes. The recognitions need to be public.

Measure with OEE to determine how much reactive maintenance is happening. Also measure the adherence to scheduled PMs and PDMs. This tracking is under the control of the operations manager and not the maintenance manager.

PM compliance is the operations manager's role because they own the equipment.

Even when a part of the  team is dealing with a breakdown, the others can utilise the time to perform PMs on other equipment. Always look for windows of opportunities to conduct PMs such as during changeovers,

The operations and maintenance managers need to meet in identifying these windows to conduct PM.

How can one get a work order system to do some basic planning of activities?

Its about getting the different parts of the system to work together. Different tools should also be streamlined to work together.

That's when you apply defect elimination right?

Especially when different parts of the system and the tools fail to communicate. For instance, you can find a plant facing a challenge in tying a document to an asset in order to trend it on their CMMS. Such is a defect that needs to be rectified.

Some organisations collect data but fail to trend it to recognize whether there is an improvement or regression

They may fail to recognize the changes because they may be tracking it month by month and not on a daily basis.

The  most significant side of defect elimination seems to be engineering. How does it apply to new equipment design and installation, storage of spares etc?

When working electronics and controls you need the drawings to be accurate. Otherwise you need to find the defects in the process to achieve accurate drawings and eliminate them. Defect elimination is more essential than any other goal in the process. Create goals for defect elimination.

Eruditio Links:

• Eruditio
• HP Reliability
• James Kovacevic's LinkedIn
• Reliability Report

Links:

• RCMBlitz.com
• Doug Plucknette LinkedIn
• Past episodes with Doug

Download RSS iTunesStitcher

Rooted In Reliability podcast is a proud member of Reliability.fm network. We encourage you to please rate and review this podcast on iTunes and Stitcher. It ensures the podcast stays relevant and is easy to find by like-minded professionals. It is only with your ratings and reviews that the Rooted In Reliability podcast can continue to grow. Thank you for providing the small but critical support for the Rooted In Reliability podcast!

The post 311 – Defect Elimination with Doug Plucknette appeared first on Accendo Reliability.

310 – Name Your Spare Parts Correctly with Conrad Greer

It is my pleasure to welcome Conrad Greer to the podcast, the founder of SPCResults.

In this episode we covered:

• What is data cleansing?
• Why do we want to standardize our material information?
• Is MPN a saving grace?

Why do we want to standardize our material information, our material, masters, our taxonomy, all those different things?

It makes work flow. It cuts down on mistakes. Most companies on their strategic goals want to operate better and safer.

We have this problem of these inaccurate material, masters, or spare parts information. How do we go about cleaning that or fixing that?

You need to put all the materials into a taxonomy. So, you’re structuring them against a common standard. M concept is an identity taxonomy. I use the word identity because it’s not just the descriptions, it’s the most common concept that I run into and particularly to non-warehouse maintenance people. All these things have a manufacturer’s part number.

Can you tell us about SPCResults and how people can get in touch with you to help understand the scope and magnitude of this problem and how to solve it?

What I found as the root cause was this lack of a consistent identity taxonomy. I did my own research collected several hundreds of thousands of material masters and their roots. How do I consolidate them? I came up with my own taxonomy. If you apply this taxonomy and you have the classes and the attributes and the items are mapped to the classes, the offshore data cleanse is a very effective tool.

What is data cleansing?

Say we've got a million old records that we map to, and, and it can even be called machine learning and artificial intelligence. We’ve gone back and reviewed but what they haven’t done is consolidated, how many actual classes there should be – that is very significant. Having that consistency across these classes is the first fundamental thing. Get the classes; it’s around the order of 500 classes. Largely finding the materials that they need to execute that plan in the system is key.

Is MPN a saving grace?

An empirical observation is that MPN is not the key to the D to these materials. What I have observed is it’s because it’s been collected. This step of how to put together these MRO materials in a consistent, useful basis nobody solved that problem is not a rocket side problem. There is management consulting expertise with inventory, and it comes from direct materials and manufacturing.

If you take a material master and you populate; a class, so you put together, if you have a second material that has the same attributes in that class, you know it maps to the same class and has all the same attributes. That is an effective duplicate. The first thing is making it rational. You need to take the universe of industrial MRO materials and you know, that is relatively common across industries.

As you go through these records and you plan at what class to put it in, you need a way of finding these synonyms and mapping them together. And that's something that is a missing thing in a lot of systems. Now they’re based on data cleanses.

How do you get the new capital data?

There’s a number of roads there. What I offer is the taxonomy, the analysis up front. I want to be your guide to get you to this quality MRO identities and set you up so that you’ve got the governance so that it stays that way. And so that, that is my objective. The other two sort of associated things with it is the life cycle, the capital projects, getting that whole building across the board from what we built, getting the asset strategy, linking it up to the asset strategies, then the stocking and sparing strategies. And then creating the records. There’s a flow across there of getting that new capital project data.

Eruditio Links:

• Eruditio
• HP Reliability
• James Kovacevic's LinkedIn
• Reliability Report

Conrad Greer Links:

• Conrad Greer LinkedIn
• SPCResults LinkedIn
• SPCResults.com

Download RSS iTunesStitcher

Rooted In Reliability podcast is a proud member of Reliability.fm network. We encourage you to please rate and review this podcast on iTunes and Stitcher. It ensures the podcast stays relevant and is easy to find by like-minded professionals. It is only with your ratings and reviews that the Rooted In Reliability podcast can continue to grow. Thank you for providing the small but critical support for the Rooted In Reliability podcast!

The post 310 – Name Your Spare Parts Correctly with Conrad Greer appeared first on Accendo Reliability.

Optimizing Energy Efficiency of Rotating Equipment with Simon Jagers

It is my pleasure to welcome back Simon Jagers, one of the founders of Samotics, an industrial analytics company that helps clients improve reliability and sustainability, particularly of their rotating equipment.

In this episode we covered:

• Why is energy efficiency so important for organizations?
• What can we do to address these problems with energy efficiency?
• What do we do about all these energy wasting assets?

Why is energy efficient so important for organizations?

Climate change is the defining challenge of our generation. The fact that there is global warming and that if it exceeds, we’re basically in for lots of challenges when it comes to the ecology; with it comes to nature with drops with food. We really need to work together on multiple forms to make sure that we achieve those sustainability goals. We need to start focusing on shifting from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. We need to mitigate effects of CO2 emissions, but we also need to start using energy more efficiently, reduce energy consumption and use AC motors more efficiently.

What can we do to address these problems with energy efficiency?

If we can reduce energy consumption, we also reduce the problems we have in the other fields. If we use less energy, we need to make less energy. If we use less energy, we create less CO2. The second part really is that if we use energy consumption, most technologies to do that effectively are already available and typically somewhat lower costs than other alternatives here. It really makes sense to start to focus on using energy more efficiently, particularly when it comes to electrical motors pumps, fans conveyors, and more so that’s really where we can start improving the efficiency of those rotating assets.

You mentioned that 70 to 80% of the energy in our facility is typically used for powering pumps, fans motors, rotating equipment. How are motors wasting this energy?

When we look at our own data, first, we see that a typical piece of rotating equipment, let’s say a pump is, can be 20 to 40% more energy efficiently. Mechanical or electrical issues contribute to energy losses. You need to detect these early. Another way to look at it is how they’re being used sometimes inefficiently. Detecting that your conveyor is running without moving a load is another example of how sometimes effort are being used inefficiently. And a third reason for energy losses is over under sizing.

What do we do about all these energy wasting assets?

It starts with understanding where energy is used on an asset level. If we want to take mitigating actions against energy waste, it really starts by monitoring energy consumption and performance of the same assets. And so that gives you sort of a high-level insight as to where you probably can save energy. It starts by understanding where you are consuming energy and where energy is wasted. Electrical signature analysis really is an excellent tool to do this. It measures high frequency current and voltages waves. The key to unlocking energy savings is looking at the electrical patterns or by extension current and voltage sign waves.

If you have a mechanical problem in your pump, you want to detect that early. By measuring those ripples and analyzing them, you can understand what the problem is, and you can estimate the remaining useful lifetime. The second category is how that assets are sometimes used inefficiently. If you look at that same centrifugal pump you probably want to understand how it operates relative to the best efficiency point. The third element is if you look at over under sizing, it comes from that same data. If you monitor that pump for an extended period, you will learn to understand what the maximum sort of required power is and the lowest required power.

As we continue to get more insights from the technology, and as this technology evolves, what are we expecting to see in the future?

We are going to get much more specific energy saving opportunities. What we’ll continue to see is invest in technologies that help us to become more sustainable, that help us to become more energy efficient. The most focus has been on the big Systems. How we make energy will shift towards sustainable renewable energy sources. We will also see investments in monitoring technologies moving forward. On the software side, we’re seeing that these insights are being integrated into backend systems. It becomes easier to extract data from various sources.

Eruditio Links:

• Eruditio
• HP Reliability
• James Kovacevic's LinkedIn
• Reliability Report

Simon Jagers Links:

• Simon Jagers LinkedIn
• Samotics
• Past Episodes with Simon
• [email protected]
• Energy efficiency guru Amory Lovins: It's the largest, cheapest, safest, cleanest way to address the crisis Article

Download RSS iTunesStitcher

Rooted In Reliability podcast is a proud member of Reliability.fm network. We encourage you to please rate and review this podcast on iTunes and Stitcher. It ensures the podcast stays relevant and is easy to find by like-minded professionals. It is only with your ratings and reviews that the Rooted In Reliability podcast can continue to grow. Thank you for providing the small but critical support for the Rooted In Reliability podcast!

The post 309 – Optimizing Energy Efficiency of Rotating Equipment with Simon Jagers appeared first on Accendo Reliability.

Determining Training ROI with Lucas Marino

It is my pleasure, to welcome back Lucas Marino to the podcast, working at The East Partnership dealing with submarine logistics.

In this episode we covered:

• Why do you need training?
• How do we calculate that ROI?
• Why are organizations hesitant to invest in training?

There are a lot of organizations that are hesitant to invest in training for a lot of different reasons. Why is that?

They're trying to determine if the value in the investment is sufficient. If you're tying the training to something that really means something to them and they feel like training is a suitable solution to that problem set that they have, they’re more willing to invest in it. I think a lot of it is just awareness; not being aware of how much there is to benefit from getting your team trained. Training doesn’t feel like an immediate solution, but it can really turn things around quickly.

Why do you need training?

There’s two parts to it. Some issue training is identified as a suitable solution and it’s a more worthy investment than alternatives are. The ROI must be aligned with the drivers and the business goals for sure. Sometimes they are high, like pie in the sky, high level; they strategic level who make the business decisions. And other times they’re lower, closer to the department or the division level. Part of the struggle with running a training business is making sure you’re talking to the right people.

How do we calculate that ROI?

The reason ROI gets with training is that people are looking for the wrong return. There are some very tangible, easy to capture metrics that you could put in place. You could look at targeted training for things that are specific. If you can cut down on that time, spend time to prepare for executing and buttoning up the maintenance, then you just get a significant return on your investment because it stabilizes maintenance, and it makes it more efficient across all the fronts. You must be intentional. You're going to invest, and then you're going to measure it on the back end.

People appreciate investments in their development. And if you can invest in the development of your staff and show them that you care enough about them doing their job, that you want to help them improve their job, their environment, their skills, their confidence, their cap abilities, then it’s more than just an immediate return on the program. If you don’t know what you’re trying to improve with this training, you can’t calculate the return on investment and why you need to do it.

How do we convince people that I need to learn more about say maintenance management, not a specific thing like RCA, but more the general overview, leading teams?

You can look at related metrics. There's no direct metric for a lot of that. You can look at things that are influential to buy those elements of your organization; retention rates, recruiting rates, doing internal surveys on employees, satisfaction and all these things. You can start to measure retention. Measure the strength of recruiting. Look at whether people progress through your organization or not. You can sweeten the pot on opportunities within the organization. Use the training apparatus to provide them with valuable skills and knowledge that meets needs.

How do people get your training?

On eastpartnership.org. Or you can just grab a hold of me on LinkedIn. I've got some resources I could send to you that might be good options or help you find someone. We also help companies launch their own training businesses. If you’re an entrepreneur, a small business and you want to take your expertise and share it with the world and you don’t want to necessarily try and figure out for yourself; all the stuff that comes with it, like running a learning management system and all the business decisions that come along with shifting to a training model, then we can help you with that as well.

Eruditio Links:

• Eruditio
• HP Reliability
• James Kovacevic's LinkedIn
• Reliability Report

Lucas Marino Links:

• The East Partnership
• Lucas Marino LinkedIn
• Past episodes with Lucas

Download RSS iTunesStitcher

Rooted In Reliability podcast is a proud member of Reliability.fm network. We encourage you to please rate and review this podcast on iTunes and Stitcher. It ensures the podcast stays relevant and is easy to find by like-minded professionals. It is only with your ratings and reviews that the Rooted In Reliability podcast can continue to grow. Thank you for providing the small but critical support for the Rooted In Reliability podcast!

The post 308 – Determining Training ROI with Lucas Marino appeared first on Accendo Reliability.

The Evil Ways of MTBF with Fred Schenkelberg

It’s my pleasure to welcome Fred Schenkelberg back to the podcast. He is a reliability engineer and management consultant.

In this episode we covered:

• What is MTBF?
• Why would people want to calculate what that average time between failure is or where did this come about?
• What do you think about using MTBF to monitor a complex systems reliability, and using that to pro proactively look at reviewing the maintenance program to it?

What is MTBF?

It’s short for meantime between failures. Fundamentally it’s just an average of a failure rate over some duration inverted.

Why would people want to calculate what that average time between failure is or where did this come about?

It came from this early need to do calculations and estimates that were otherwise very tedious to do using the tools of the day. Over the years MTBF and MTTF is propagated because it’s dirt simple to do.

What do you think about using MTBF to monitor a complex systems reliability, and using that to pro proactively look at reviewing the maintenance program to it?

If you’ve got something that’s got early life failures, don’t replace it on schedule. If you got something that’s going to wear out, replace it before that risk of its failure gets too high. If you have something that has a relatively flat or a constant failure rate, you just wait till it fails and you replace it.

So, we end up with this MTBF for 10 years. Does that mean we’re going to go in and change all these bearings at year 10 or year nine and a half? What about the ones that we’re not installing correctly?

Stop using MTBF. It is just not useful. MTTF only fails once we have complex systems repair. There are so many other tools out there. If you have a system that has a spade of early failures, once you fix that and the system starts running well, the MTBF will get lower. If you’re counting on MTBF and you’re getting what appears to be worse, although you’re making progress, that’s frustrating to start with. And so, you will stop fixing early failures because the more of those you have, the lower your slope and the further out your end.

What is the goal of measuring MTBF?

It's not the tool for everything. Do a histogram. Get your data and make a histogram which is much more informative than doing the average. My first step is just plot. Create a plot. Histogram is a great place to start. Learn a little bit more, go to the next page on the stats book that you put down years ago.  We’ve got great tools out there. We got great software packages and there’s enough people out there who have got webinars and podcasts and articles on these topics, you can learn how to do this.

Any other partying on MTBF?

Don't use it. It’s useless. if you don’t believe me, go to no mtbf.com and there’s all kinds of fun stuff there to support this. It is not a good metric.

Anything you got coming up in terms of webinars?

Chris Jackson and I are putting him out about one every two weeks roughly. Chris will be talking about capability analysis, last month he talked about SPC and kind of the fundamentals of how and why that works. We search 30 to 40 different sites that do reliability related webinars, and we send out an email. If you can get on that list and you get one email, you get the summary of all the events that are going on in 30 different organizations.

Eruditio Links:

• Eruditio
• HP Reliability
• James Kovacevic's LinkedIn
• Reliability Report

Fred Schenkelberg Links:

• Fred Schenkelberg LinkedIn
• Reliability.FM
• NoMTBF.com
• Use the Maintenance Data eBook
• Reliability Engineering in a Maintenance Environment

Download RSS iTunesStitcher

Rooted In Reliability podcast is a proud member of Reliability.fm network. We encourage you to please rate and review this podcast on iTunes and Stitcher. It ensures the podcast stays relevant and is easy to find by like-minded professionals. It is only with your ratings and reviews that the Rooted In Reliability podcast can continue to grow. Thank you for providing the small but critical support for the Rooted In Reliability podcast!

The post 307 – The Evil Ways of MTBF with Fred Schenkelberg appeared first on Accendo Reliability.

RCM Implementation with Nancy Regan

It is my pleasure to welcome back Nancy Regan to the podcast, the founder of RCMtrainingonline.com.

In this episode we covered:

• What is an RCM implementation?
• What challenges do you see within organizations as they go to implement the findings from their analysis?
• What do you believe is the most important outcome from an RCM implementation at the end of it all?

What is an RCM implementation?

Carrying through with instituting the results of an analysis. Reliability Centered Maintenance is getting everyone involved from the outset explaining why we’re going to do reliability centered maintenance, its benefits, and why it’s so important that everyone is involved.

How does that differ from an RCM analysis?

With RCM analysis, the implementation comes in where the validation team has to go through recommendations and approve which ones are going to be implemented. That’s often when RCM falls short, where a great analysis is done, but the results are not implemented for a bunch of different reasons, e.g. not everyone was brought on board to begin with. Implementing to us means editing the proactive maintenance plan, putting in the new tasks, making all the changes and implementing any of those default strategies that may need to be done because really we could do the best RCM analysis in the world. But if it sits on a shelf and doesn’t make its way to the people who need those results, then it really was a waste of time.

Now why do we have to start that implementation before we even start the analysis?

One of the misconceptions is that you have to do it on all of your equipment, you don’t. So you can choose a piece of equipment. We all hear the term reliability culture and really fostering a culture of reliability is making sure people understand what reliability even is. RCM usually starts with upper management. If we don’t educate and bring in everyone, who’s involved, they’re left out, then implementation is going to suffer. It could start from a few different places, but it’s important to get everyone involved. Highlight what the process could do for them.

What challenges do you see within organizations as they go to implement the findings from their analysis?

The biggest roadblock I see is if people don’t understand why the changes are being made. Another issue is I think from a budget perspective and from a time perspective. Budget the planners time and their workload and make the space available to get this new stuff implemented.

Why do organizations fail to budget for all this extra stuff?

I would say it’s a maintenance, unreliability philosophy that is rooted in the reality of failure. I think making sure people within an organization really understand the basics of maintenance and reliability is one of the most important pieces of the puzzle. Starting from the outset where we don’t necessarily just train people who are going to do the analysis.

You said we start small, grow it, we train people, engage stakeholders, anything else we need to ensure a successful implementation?

RCM is common sense applied to physical assets, it can be done relatively quickly and relatively easily. It’s not easy to carry out because people often don’t go about it the right way with making sure people are trained. Have a firm understanding about how it’s implemented, don’t go it alone.

What do you believe is the most important outcome from an RCM implementation at the end of it all?

The most impactful outcome I have seen is how much an organization learns about their equipment. Do an FMEA – Failure Mode and Effects Analysis and formally document it so that you've got that knowledge. I would absolutely recommend a facilitated working group approach and not just one person sitting behind a computer screen doing it.

How does equipment fail? How can we detect these warning signs?

Talk about random failures, you can potentially do condition-based maintenance by detecting potential failure conditions. It’s very important that people understand the basics because that’s what RCM implementation really is all about. So it’s very important that we promulgate that knowledge within an organization.

What is the one action you want our listeners to take away from what we’ve talked about today?

Don’t be biased with what you’ve heard about it. Learn what reliability centered maintenance really is for yourself from a reputable place, and then decide for yourself. Don’t think that you have to do RCM on everything. Don’t get overwhelmed that you have to start an RCM program. Just start off small, but keep taking those steps.

Where can people find out more about you, your training events and activities?

They can just go to RCM training online.com. And if you want to take my free course just go to RCM training, online.com/training. I’m also really active on LinkedIn.

Do you have any resources that you want to share with our listeners?

One of my favorite books is Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon hill. Embodied in that book is a formula that if we do it pretty much as human beings, we can achieve anything we want to do.

Eruditio Links:

• Eruditio
• HP Reliability
• James Kovacevic's LinkedIn
• Reliability Report

Nancy Regan Links

• Past Nancy Regan episodes
• Nancy Regan Linkedin
• RCMTrainingOnline.com
• RCM (Nowlan & Heap)
• RCM2 by John Moubray
• The RCM Solution: A Practical Guide to Starting and Maintaining a Successful RCM Program by Nancy Regan
• Think & Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

Download RSS iTunesStitcher

Rooted In Reliability podcast is a proud member of Reliability.fm network. We encourage you to please rate and review this podcast on iTunes and Stitcher. It ensures the podcast stays relevant and is easy to find by like-minded professionals. It is only with your ratings and reviews that the Rooted In Reliability podcast can continue to grow. Thank you for providing the small but critical support for the Rooted In Reliability podcast!

The post 306 – RCM Implementation with Nancy Regan appeared first on Accendo Reliability.