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By Rolly Angeles
Every single industry has their own priorities and focus. The focus can either be on Safety, Quality and the not so popular one which is “Reliability”. For the latter, I say this is unpopular not because they do not know what it means but rather only a few and handful actually focus on it. Mining, oil and gas, refineries, metal industry, shipping, construction, all these industries will prioritize safety as their focus of discipline. On the other hand, manufacturing, automotive, pharmaceutical, food, beverages industries just to name a few will prioritize on satisfying customers needs and focus their discipline on the quality of their products. But if we come to think of it for a while, then which companies actually focus on “RELIABILITY”? Can you think of one? But isn’t it true that if we focus on reliability then the equipment is safe to operate and much more it is likely to produce good quality products? First, let us define what reliability is all about:
• It is a probability that a system will not fail • Reliability of an item is the probability that the item will perform its specified function under specified operational and environmental conditions under a given and specified time • Reliability is the probability that no failure will occur throughout a prescribed operating time or period. • According to Bazovsky, the modern concept of reliability in popular language is simply stated as the capability of equipment not to break down in operation. When equipment works well and performs to do its job for which it was designed and intended to use then such equipment is said to be reliable
In its simplest term, reliability is a survival probability. On the other hand those that do not reach its period had actually failed in the first place. When we speak about failures, it is the inability of any part to fulfill its designated function. With an adequate amount of samples, we can calculate a parts reliability performance.
As time passed by from one generation to another, equipment’s tends to become much more complex and sophisticated and as equipment becomes more complicated, the way we do maintenance still remain the same as it was 50 yrs ago or even to the day the caveman invented fire and that is, still firefighting? Am I right? The practice of allowing an equipment to fail will bear a different consequences today compared to 50 years ago when equipment were made much simpler in nature. Today, software's are now available to calculate critical parts reliability such as “Weibull” which was derived from the author himself Wallodi Weibull. So there is no need to calculate it manually and understand about exponential equations and mathematical formulas, although it is good to understand its principles first before applying it.
A friend of mine had installed a tool algo on all their tooling equipments to try and monitor the number of cycles the tool will eventually wear out. Since we all know that tooling will eventually degrade or wear out after n-number of cycles, an equipment attached to the tool algo will provide an alarm if the tooling is nearing its life and will automatically stop the machine from operating once it reached its calculated number of strokes and cycles. Pretty cool stuff.
My experience dictates me that there are cases when focusing too much on quality can at times conflict and probably jeopardize reliability itself. I mean no disrespect to the quality people, but somehow we need to understand reliability first before initiating any quality policy in our organization. Let me try to give an example on a manufacturing plant which was my source of bread and bother before. Every manufacturing plant have their own Quality Department, this department compose of several people assigned on different locations within the plant, from incoming, outgoing, QC inspectors, production inspectors or when a product will be moved from one department to another, quality is inspected, and almost anywhere in the plant, a group of quality people are deployed. They have quality audits and provides non-conformance tickets to those that simply do not comply and adhere with the process or specification that had been generated by the plant. Hence, if equipment is scheduled for a monthly Preventive Maintenance activity for some checks and replacement and had not been performed, a non-conformance ticket will be issued on PM, am I right here? Or worst, the Preventive Maintenance team will need to submit a formal report on why they missed their PM on one of their equipments even if the reason for not doing the replacement was because their Predictive Maintenance group found that the parts due for replacement are actually still fit to perform their function and so they decided not to replace it but to continue using it.
Another classic case, is when I was still employed in “Company X”, I recall teaching my first batch of Reliability-Centred Maintenance in 1998 to around 18 people, 2 groups from both the production line composing of operations and maintenance and one group from facilities/utilities section of the plant. This was around 6 people per group. After the training, the group was highly motivated and filled with enthusiasm as they had found out a better way to improve their equipment’s reliability by improving the way they maintain their equipment. We prepare a roadmap and all the three groups completed their documentation on the RCM Analysis. They submitted the final report to me, I checked them and they have actually absorbed the message from the training. One group had overall inspection lists of about 350 items in their equipment that needs to be done on a yearly basis; it was trimmed down to 150 items. So when I told them to change their current Preventive Maintenance program and adopt this new derived RCM lists, they were hesitant. Their leader said to me Rolly, you better talk to my boss, and when I talked to their supervisor, the supervisor told me he can’t decide on this matter and advise me to talked to their Department Manager, and when I talked to their department manager, he gave me an option and said, Rolly, we cannot just change our PM program to RCM, if you insists to comply with the RCM requirements, then we will do them both in which they will both perform their usual PM routine and the newly derived RCM analysis. As I was listening, I was just imagining some trash on the floor and sweeping it to keep the floor clean and after sweeping it again garbage is put back on the floor. I told them “NO”, and explained that your team had successfully reengineered your lists of items to be checked and “REMOVED”, all intrusive activities in the analysis. And the boss explained that the accumulation was a result of both the customer and Quality Group audits that added most of the items on the checklists, he said, if you really want to change it you better need to talk to them. Now, I understand now what he meant. Both 3 groups successfully finished their RCM documentation, but only one group had implemented the RCM process itself, it was from the facilities/utilities section of the plant.
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Improving reliability cannot be achieved by cutting costs on maintenance but rather reducing maintenance costs can be achieved by improving reliability. . . Rolly Angeles |
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Our RCM Analysis led us to understand that the activities we are performing on our regular monthly and quarterly PM on our AHU and sub-stations were not really meant to prevent the failures and those activities which must be performed to address the failure were not even included in our PM activities . . . . . By Arman Jusay (Standing Left)
It was my first RCM case study. Two had failed but one pushed through. It is not my intent to blame quality for this. In fact blaming itself will not help at all but rather tried to reflect and figure out what mistakes I made in the past and I think one of them was to exclude quality group in the RCM training. Or perhaps if only they know our intentions and the need to adopt a more robust process in our current PM structure, perhaps they will leave the maintenance alone and stop issuing any non-conforming tickets.
Reliability as a Business Strategy
How I wish industries understand that improving reliability affects the way they do business. Last night as I was watching the news on TV, around 1500 people were lay off on a semiconductor firm I used to worked with and the reason stated by their spokesperson had something to do with Global Financial Crisis. A not so unique excuse. As you see, in semiconductor industries there is a period of peak demand and fall-out as well, when the demand is low, they use skeletal force and there were mass lay-offs as well. When I was still employed I seen it happen a couple of times, the only difference is that we do not call it Global Financial Crisis. When I try to knock on some industry doors if they have some needs on maintenance training, I get the same answer, sorry Rolly; we are cutting cost due to Global Financial Crisis. Every time they say no, the reason is the same and when matters get worst it is all because of Global Financial Crisis. Industries have now an easy excuse and way to explain to people regarding lay-offs and cost reduction schemes. I hope you recall the “Gorilla Story” in my December 2008 reliability newsletter issue. If you want to read it Click here but be sure to come back here in this page and finish reading this article. You are almost halfway through.
But on the other hand, industries that take reliability seriously by improving the way they do their maintenance and adopt proven best practices such as Reliability-Centered Maintenance, Total Productive Maintenance, Condition-Based Maintenance, Oil Contamination Control and other strategies have a better chance of truly surviving this crisis. Although, I have said this many times that trying to cut cost on maintenance is not the way to improve reliability.
Maintenance people have a common sentiment; they always feel that they are under staff, why because of too much crisis work. Hence, a company initiating cost cutting as their ultimate arsenal will have its downfall and perhaps cut maintenance overtime, only to realize that nothing changed and matters just gets worst. On the other hand, one industry had been able to reduce their overtime rate simply because their RCM analysis led them to eliminate many intrusive replacements, overhauls and inspection on their equipment that were deemed unnecessary.
Traditional Belief on Maintenance
When I am conducting training’s outside my country, my sponsor booked me on a hotel and I need to adjust in the change of time from my country to their country. When you are in a hotel, you can either place a “Do Not Disturb or Clean My Room” sign at the door. If you place a do not disturb sign in your door, they know that you don’t want to be bothered simply because you want to rest or sleep and if you place a do not disturb sign and people come knocking at your door, just imagine how irritating this will be to the you. I recall placing a do not disturb sign and fall asleep easily since it is late and someone kept on knocking only to ask if I feel comfortable in my room. I arrived at this hotel at 12:00 am (2:30 am in my country) went to my room, and have no time to change and just slept, 30 minutes after, I woke up because of a knock on my door only to ask me if my room was ok, just imagine how I felt, and yet I hide my feelings and just said the room was ok. This is no different with our assets, there are parts and items in our equipment that is better off undisturbed because trying to replace the part or overhaul it will likely to cause infant mortality failures.
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BDO stands for Breakdown Occurrences
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You are receiving this newsletter and email because at some point in time you opted to be included in our Monthly Reliability Newsletter mailing list from our site.
Our newsletter will be sent out ones a month and provide you with quality issues and resources on our most common link which is all about reliability and maintenance, as well as regular updates on our articles. I would like to personally invite you to regularly visit our website and check out updates on our articles and training courses. |
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Issue No. 21 - January 2009 |
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Since establishing this website last May of 2007, I have made many efforts to improve this site and provide some useful insights about our common link which is all about improving our equipment reliability and the way we do maintenance.
Finally should you be interested to contribute to our articles section or share any feedback, I encourage you to email me at rollyangeles@rsareliability.com. If for any reason you wish to unsubscribe from our newsletter, kindly send my a blank email with unsubscribe as the heading and we shall remove you from our mailing lists. Once again welcome to our January 2009 edition of our Monthly Reliability Newsletter for this year 2009 and I hope that you enjoy reading. Happy New Year !
My Warm Regards,
Website : www.rsareliaiblity.com Email : rollyangeles@rsareliability.com |
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RELIABILITY & MAINTENANCE CONSULTANCY FIRM
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Where the learning just never stops . . .
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RELIABILITY NEWSLETTER |
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Inspired by change |
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Although I have discussed this issue several times in my recent newsletter, let me reiterate it once again, so we can determine some senses in our current PM activities. This is a curve which Preventive Maintenance believes, the y-axis is the conditional probability of failure and the x-axis represents the age or period. X is the amount of period it will run or probably designated as the part’s useful life. The red portion indicates that the part is on the wear out age or period.
Maintenance people believe that “ALL” parts after consistent use will reach a point of wear and tear, hence, overhauling or replacing the part before it fails on a specific fix schedule will ensure the reliability of the equipment, therefore the concept of Preventive Maintenance is good and will solve the problem of unexpected failures, RIGHT or WRONG ? Meaning if point A is the assumed life and the start of the wear out mode, this is actually the period when maintenance intervenes on the asset to perform PM.
Wrong!!! There are many cases when schedule overhauls or even Preventive Maintenance increases overall failures by introducing Infant Mortality failure into otherwise stable system. If you want to know more about this, you can read my previous newsletter on this titled: An Inconvenient Truth about Preventive Maintenance. In my humble opinion, reliability is not just a mere numbers game. Reliability is something that we can definitely improve. Not only maintenance people should know about this but rather decision makers must also take part in the reliability improvement strategy in their plant. This is something that needs not just a simple support from them but more importantly making it as a commitment from them. In fact, the truth is simply stated that the reliability of our equipment has a lot to do on how we maintain it and we must look into this matter very seriously.
Many times, I had been denied of training merely because it have something to do with the color of my skin or country I belong and as a human being it makes me feel sad, but it does not stop me from preaching what I know and I thank people from other countries for vesting their trust and allowing me to share these knowledge with them. I thank them from the bottom of my heart for judging the book “NOT” by its cover, but rather its contents. Like reliability, it is not just merely a numbers game, in fact anyone from whatever race, color, country and industry can improve their equipment’s reliability by understanding its principles and concept since as always a reliability based culture will always start with its basic foundation and that is through education. And I think that’s all I have to say about that and until our next issue, always remember that whatever we do with our lives the learning just never stops . . .
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• Gallery: New pictures for 2011 added from the gallery portion. • Newsletter: Aug. 2011 Edition finally released to our subscribers. Email me if you want to subscribe to our Newsletter. • 2012 Training Schedule: If you are interested to attend in any of our public workshop and master class for 2012. Send us an email or register online. • WCM Book: If you’re interested in buying the book on World Class Maintenance, The 12 Disciplines. Send me an email to reserve. WCM Book is now available. Get your copy now. • In-house Training :Should your industry be interested for in-house trainings we are now accepting regular schedules for in-house training for both local and international countries on courses that we currently offered. Contact us |
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World Class Maintenance Management - The Twelve Disciplines Book is now available here. This is not only about the technical jargon on reliability and maintenance, it is a book that makes every single maintenance proud that they belong to the maintenance function. If you have been living through the day to day pressures of doing maintenance then this is your story. If you are interested in this book, send me an email. Click Here ! |
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