Reducing Maintenance Cost is Possible with Reliability
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Maintenance cost reduction may be overwhelming. Where to start? What tasks should be eliminated? Is time-based maintenance making more harm than good? All these questions can be answered by implementing a maintenance strategy focused on elimination of failure modes.
When assessment is done to understand how the equipment fails and a specific maintenance strategy is developed based on real data, you can determine what type of maintenance is the most appropriate, in what frequency, and which machinery's maintenance should be prioritized due to its critical nature to the overall plant's performance.
Here we share some articles about reliability strategies and how we can help: |
| Optimizing Lubrication PMs |
| Drew Troyer | Machinery Lubrication |
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| Source: Machinery Lubrication |
[...] In my consulting experience, when a manager or engineer is asked why a lubrication PM is performed at a particular interval or in a particular way, the answer is usually "I don't know, "the OEM manual says to do it that way" or the universal "we have always done it that way." In today's global market, these answers aren't good enough. Today's industry requires precision reliability and maximized return on net assets (RONA), which in turn demands precision maintenance, including lubrication. The low cost producer in a given market segment will not have the luxury to carry out lubrication PMs in the casual manner in which they been performed in the past. They must be optimized with respect to cost and benefit.
Continue reading.
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| Why Is Criticality Analysis Important? |
Donald Ray | RxToday June 2010 via Life Cycle Engineering
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Have you ever wasted time and money replacing one electrical component after another on your car, only to find a loose ground wire? The problem would have been located sooner with less cost by using the recommended code analysis tool and information. Not utilizing analysis tools and information to manage plant assets also results in wasted time and money. Criticality analysis is the tool to use if you want to improve reliability and manage plant assets based on risk instead of perception.
The asset criticality ranking is used to help prioritize maintenance work and to identify the most critical assets -- the top 10 or 20% -- for further analysis using Simplified Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (SFMEA). Criticality analysis can be used for more than just ranking each asset. By identifying the characteristics that make each asset critical, the analysis will also provide valuable information to decide what actions will reduce risk for all plant assets. Continue reading.
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Douglas Plucknette | Reliability Web
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It's been nearly 20 years since I first learned about reliability centered maintenance (RCM). As part of the Kodak Park Maintenance and Reliability Team, I was one of a few people who volunteered to take a few courses in RCM and report back to the team on the viability of the tool. I had no idea at the time that two decades later, I would be facilitating and instructing RCM at companies in nearly every country around the world. It's strange sometimes how quickly things change; one minute you're a maintenance team leader and the next you're facilitating reliability centered maintenance for a living.
One thing that hasn't changed in 20 years is that RCM is a very hard tool to sell. While I could list a dozen things that scare people away from starting an RCM effort, they all roll back under the same cause or fact: very few people really understand RCM. As a result, there are several misconceptions that come with RCM, as well.
Continue reading.
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Making FMEA the Heart of an Equipment Maintenance Plan
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Michael W. Blanchard | Plant Services
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The primary purpose of an equipment maintenance plan (EMP) in a manufacturing facility is to minimize the impact of unplanned events on safety, the environment, and business profitability. The reliability tool best serving as a vehicle to achieve and sustain EMP goals is the failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA). Optimum long-term cost of ownership is typically a result of an effectively facilitated and thoroughly implemented FMEA.
Laying the Groundwork
The first step in laying the groundwork for an FMEA-based reliability improvement effort is to identify candidate equipment. The preferred method is by criticality analysis, a tool used to evaluate how equipment failures impact organizational performance in order to systematically rank plant assets for the purpose of work prioritization, material classification, preventative maintenance / predictive maintenance (PM/PdM) development, and reliability improvement initiatives.
Continue reading.
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Drew Troyer | Reliable Plant
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[...] The business of RCA is to remove problems altogether by addressing them at their roots.
Unfortunately, when a reliability problem arises, most organizations either address it at the symptomatic level, seek immediately to lay blame on a person or group, or, regrettably in many instances, both. Root cause analysis is a systematic process enabling you to understand and address the underlying causes of a problem. There are many techniques and approaches to root cause analysis, but they share many similarities. I'd like to share some of my thoughts and philosophies about this important reliability improvement tool.
Continue reading.
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VIBRA Reliability Engineering Services
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VIBRA can help you improve your equipment maintenance plan through the following reliability and value-focused services:
- Preventive Maintenance Optimization (PMO) Services
- Failure Mode Effects (FMEA) Analysis
- Criticality Analysis (Risk Assessment)
- Root Cause Analysis
- Reliability-Centered Maintenance Development and Implementation (RCM)
As part of a risk-based asset management strategy, effective Equipment Maintenance Plans (EMP) and associated tasks will help eliminate your current bad actor problems, and improve asset availability while decreasing total cost of ownership.
Our services adjust to your specific needs. Contact us for more information.
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FEATURED PRODUCT
The iReliability™ Asset Health Matrix/Equipment Maintenance Plan
This tool provides a starting point for FMA by utilizing the most common failure modes in asset components and parts to identify which mitigating actions or defect identification strategies could apply to the asset and establish a baseline. It further assists in the ongoing implementation of a failure mode-driven maintenance strategy by validating the current program for the balance of the plant - those assets not included in RCM analysis based on criticality.
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March 15-17
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1,096/p.p.
This course establishes the fundamentals of reliability engineering, discusses the P-F curve of RCM, the Book of Knowledge of the Society for Maintenance and Reliability Professionals (SMRP), the main predictive technologies, proactive maintenance, precision maintenance, and reliability centered design.
Students will also have the option to take the Certified Maintenance and Reliability Professional (CMRP) exam for an additional cost of $455/p.p. It includes a 1-year membership for the SMRP and access to the Body of Knowledge.
Details and registration here.
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April 4-8 in San Juan, PR
$1,995/p.p. includes certification exam
The Level I Infrared Thermography Training Course is geared to the new infrared camera user and focuses on its use for a variety of condition monitoring/predictive maintenance applications. The course is based on the requirements outlined by ANSI/ASNT CP-105 and CP-189 of the American Society for Non-Destructive Testing and will be conducted in Spanish.
Details and registration here.
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