Asset Management
Another conspiracy theory debunked. Your business has various insurance coverages including business continuity. You pay quite a hefty premium for that coverage so you believe you are covered. But are you really? Read more “Insurance: are you really covered?”
Asset Management
Like Surfside, are you “inspecting to failure”?
In June 2021, we learned about the partial collapse of a condominium in Surfside Florida, with devastating results – only a few survivors, and many fatalities. The building had actually been inspected in 2018 by a qualified engineer, and parts of it were deemed to be “structurally unsound”. Read more “Surfside – Inspecting to failure!”
Executive
If you believe that reliable operations will result if you just follow your maintenance program, then you might also believe a few falsehoods about reliability and maintenance. First is the falsehood that maintenance is all you need to achieve reliability. Read more “Conspiracy theory debunked – Maintenance leads to reliability”
Management
Proactive maintenance requires fewer people and is more suited to physical distancing, yet cost-savings measures are driving more reactive work and workplace crowding than necessary. Proactive maintenance is more “Covid”. You have laid-off workers, contractors, and reduced spending on maintenance and parts. In fact, Covid-19 presented you with a great savings opportunity! Have you done anything to make sure those costs stay down though? Short term maintenance cost savings are easy to achieve. but they bite hard later! Read more “Proactive maintenance is more Covid, how “covid” is yours?”
Asset Management
Here’s a case where they didn’t know how to keep the boss out of jail! In Jan 2019, a mine tailing dam (the structure used to contain waste from mining operations) collapsed. The video below shows the event. 259 people were confirmed dead and 11 declared missing. Cause – liquefaction – a commonly occurring phenomenon, and one that this particular mine had been warned about. Outcome – fatalities and associated human cost, suspended operations (for a brief period), company reputation, criminal charges (executives and engineering consultants). Risk management is an often neglected part of our job. Read more “How to keep the boss out of jail”
Management
Online training is actually a pretty good way to go! For me, that’s a revelation. The isolation and distancing measures being imposed due to the Corona Virus pandemic have been a game-changer in our business and personally. In the process of shifting training content to online formats, I’ve learned a lot.
My conclusion is that online training isn’t just an alternative to the “real thing”, it can actually be a better experience. Read more “What I’m learning about Online Training”
Condition Monitoring
Understanding conditional probability is key to determining the right maintenance and how it impacts your reliability. This article is to address the difference in the conditional probability of failure patterns, and the impact on how best to maintain assets based upon those differences.
Definition: Conditional probability of failure is defined as the likelihood an item will fail in the next period, assuming it has not yet failed. Editor’s note: for a bit more information on Conditional Probability of Failure and Hazard rates, please refer to this article by our colleague, Mr. Murray Wiseman. Read more “Understanding Conditional Probability is Key”
Asset Management
Maintenance and reliability maturity provides an understanding of both how well we do maintenance and how good is our maintenance program. One delivers a major business result, the other is a big part of how you get there. Doing maintenance with precision and care, so the job is done once and done well by the right people and without delay is what maintenance organizations strive for. Some achieve it, some struggle to do so. If they can achieve that, then they are being efficient.
That achievement pays for itself in completed work at the lowest cost to the organization in terms of spending and time to execute. On the graph below, that takes them up the vertical scale. Read more “Maintenance and Reliability Maturity – 1”
Business case
Emerging stronger from crisis – that’s our current challenge. We know we can do it. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. Our businesses can emerge stronger too, but that won’t happen without leadership and choice.
Capital asset-intensive industries that have had a chance to pause have been wise if they used the opportunity to catch up on deferred maintenance and review their proactive maintenance programs for effectiveness. Read more “Emerging Stronger from Crisis”
Management
You can wait for something to break, then fix it, or you can be proactive and manage the failure before it causes you problems. Being proactive is all about managing failures and their consequences before they occur. The failure itself, in some cases, is unavoidable, but how you manage consequences is entirely within your control.
You can reduce or eliminate the consequences of failure by forecasting what is likely to happen and deciding in advance about what to do about it. Major business impacts are the consequences of risks and those are manageable. Read more “Uptime Insights – 8 – Asset Reliability”
