by Ken Bannister, MEch (UK), CMRP, MLE, Editor | May 17, 2020 | Asset Management, Newsletter Column
It’s hard to dispute the level of adversity experienced by people and businesses during the extraordinary COVID-19 “lockdown” period. The good news, at least in the RAM arena, is that adversity also breeds opportunity. Thus, many maintenance departments...
by Heinz Bloch, P.E., Editor | May 16, 2020 | Plant Operations, The Bloch Files
A retired reliability professional and I have received a contract for a book with the tentative title “New Approaches to Compressor Technology.” Our mandate is to alert readers to notable cost-effectiveness and reliability-improvement trends that have...
by Howard Penrose, Ph.D., CMRP | May 16, 2020 | Asset Management, Electrical Reliability
A recently published 2-year study of wind-generator and powertrain failures was initiated when types of detected faults in such equipment didn’t match expected statistics or findings from a previous repair-facility study, as shown in Fig. 1. That first...
by Bob Williamson, CMRP, CPMM, MIAM, Editor | May 15, 2020 | RAM Tools & Methods, Workforce Issues
Over the past few months, I’ve been modernizing my home office. In the course of my rigorous spring cleaning, sorting, and pitching, I couldn’t help but be amazed by the amount of “stuff” that had accumulated during my four decades of consulting and...
by Drew Troyer, CRE, CMRP, T.A. Cook/Accenture, Editor | May 15, 2020 | Asset Management, RAM's Human Factor
In 1963, the USS Thresher, the jewel in the crown of the U.S. Navy’s nuclear-submarine fleet, sank during a sea trial after its first shipyard overhaul. We lost 129 brave sailors in that accident. The investigation concluded that relying on “skill-of-the-craft” ...
by Randall Noon, P.E. | May 14, 2020 | Asset Management, Learning from Mistakes
The Second Law of Thermodynamics is the one about entropy tending to increase in a system as it moves toward equilibrium. A corollary of the Second Law relating to maintenance engineering is that all operating machinery eventually fails if left alone. It’s only...
by Jane Alexander, Managing Editor | May 3, 2020 | Solution of the Week, Solution Showcase
According to Rockford Systems, Rockford, IL, its recently introduced GermBlock shields can help prevent airborne droplets caused by coughing, sneezing, or speaking from reaching a nearby person. This, in turn, can help mitigate the possible spread of COVID-19...
by Drew Troyer, CRE, CMRP, T.A. Cook/Accenture, Editor | May 3, 2020 | Asset Management, Newsletter Column, Plant Operations
Is your organization implementing solutions that seem to be looking for problems? It’s a fair question. There’s plenty of talk in asset-management circles these days about Digital Transformation, Digital Manufacturing, the Internet of Things (IoT), Industry 4.0,...
by Ken Bannister, MEch (UK), CMRP, MLE, Editor | May 2, 2020 | Asset Management, RAM Tools & Methods
During a recent COVID-19-compelled social-distancing phone call with a colleague, our discussion turned to the topic of asset-management practices and their overall effect on equipment care and the maintenance workforce. My colleague then challenged me to identify the...
by Howard Penrose, Ph.D., CMRP | May 2, 2020 | Electrical Reliability, Motors & Drives
This article is the latest installment of a multi-part discussion on research conducted by EPRI (Electric Power Research Institute) and IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). As we dig deeper into those studies, some intriguing patterns begin to...
