by Bob Williamson, CMRP, CPMM, MIAM, Editor | May 29, 2020 | Asset Management, Plant Operations
Taking care of your machinery, equipment systems, and facilities is more than good maintenance. It’s basically good medicine for better health and freedom from injury or illness. The physical assets in our businesses must be healthy to perform as intended. That’s what...
by Ken Bannister, MEch (UK), CMRP, MLE, Editor | May 22, 2020 | Asset Management, Lubrication Corner
Throughout their working life, lubricants are subjected to a variety of negative influences that can include load induced shear stress, thermal degradation, water contamination, aeration, wear metal catalyzing, and contamination from dirt, chemicals, and mixing with...
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 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 Drew Troyer, CRE, CMRP, Editor | May 15, 2020 | Asset Management, RAM's Human Factors
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” to...
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 Drew Troyer, CRE, CMRP, 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 Drew Troyer, CRE, CMRP, Editor | Apr 26, 2020 | Asset Management, RAM Tools & Methods, Workforce Issues
Over the past few months, I’ve devoted a great deal of my attention and energy to the topic of creating a “defect-avoidance culture” in the plant. Culture isn’t an easy thing to change. It’s even harder to sustain because of a phenomenon referred to as psychological...
by Ken Bannister, MEch (UK), CMRP, MLE, Editor | Apr 18, 2020 | Asset Management, Planning & Scheduling
Have you ever wondered what decision-making process drove previous maintenance administrations to set up your site’s asset-management program in the way that it currently runs? Program architects, in all realms of business, are notorious for poorly documenting...
