by Drew Troyer, CRE, CMRP, T.A. Cook/Accenture, Editor | Dec 12, 2020 | Cut the FLAB, The Sustainable Plant
Over the years, I’ve written extensively about what I call “managing FLAB” in the plant. FLAB is both an acronym and a play on words. As an acronym, it stands for fasteners, lubrication, alignment and balance, the foundational mechanical and electrical elements...
by Drew Troyer, CRE, CMRP, T.A. Cook/Accenture, Editor | Feb 14, 2020 | Cut the FLAB, RAM Tools & Methods
We’ve all heard that “what gets measured gets done.” That’s because metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) drive behaviors. Unfortunately, most of our maintenance and reliability KPIs are lagging in nature. While they reveal where we’ve been—which is...
by Drew Troyer, CRE, CMRP, T.A. Cook/Accenture, Editor | Feb 1, 2020 | Cut the FLAB, Maintenance Management
Several of the optimum reference states (ORS) that I defined for precision maintenance in a Dec. 22, 2019, article relate to getting threaded fasteners, i.e., nuts and bolts, tight without stripping them. Proper tensioning of threaded fasteners is critical to our...
by Drew Troyer, CRE, CMRP, T.A. Cook/Accenture, Editor | Jan 4, 2020 | Cut the FLAB, Maintenance Management, Plant Reliability in Dollars and $ense, RAM Tools & Methods, The Sustainable Plant
Happy New Year! It’s the time when we tend to reflect on the past year and resolve to make changes that will make this year even better. It’s particularly beguiling that this is the year “2020”—which is the term that optometrists and ophthalmologists use...
by Drew Troyer, CRE, CMRP, T.A. Cook/Accenture, Editor | Dec 22, 2019 | Cut the FLAB, Maintenance Management, RAM Tools & Methods
Of all the various strategies associated with the maintenance and reliability of production equipment in the manufacturing and process industries, none is more salient than precision maintenance when it comes to increasing production availability and reducing...
by Drew Troyer, CRE, CMRP, T.A. Cook/Accenture, Editor | Dec 7, 2019 | Cut the FLAB, Maintenance Management
In many plants, the maintenance instructions provided with work orders can be terribly vague. Details on the proper tightening of threaded fasteners, however, is essential in avoiding looseness-related vibration in rotating equipment and leakage in piping flanges....
by Drew Troyer, CRE, CMRP, T.A. Cook/Accenture, Editor | Nov 4, 2019 | Cut the FLAB, Newsletter Column
Have you and/or your team included threaded-fastener management in your proactive maintenance and plant-reliability goals? You should. And sooner than later. The reasons for doing so are clear. In the most basic of terms, poor threaded-fastener connections create...
