by Bob Williamson, CMRP, CPMM, MIAM, Editor | Jan 17, 2021 | RAM Tools & Methods, Workforce Issues
What do COVID-19 recovery, robots, integrated automation systems, the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), RCM, re-shoring of jobs, and hiring talent have in common? Yes, they’re here, now, and they challenge many traditional ways of managing a business. But there’s...
by Drew Troyer, CRE, CMRP, Editor | Jan 16, 2021 | Asset Management, RAM Tools & Methods
The ultimate goal of the maintenance work management process is to ensure that the highest priorty jobs are executed effectively and on time to prevent functional failure of plant equipment. Achieving this goal requires that each of the serially connected...
by Ken Bannister, MEch (UK), CMRP, MLE, Editor | Jan 10, 2021 | Newsletter Column, RAM Tools & Methods
While driving my car several weeks ago, I felt a slight vibration in the steering wheel. I initially thought it might be due to snow buildup in one of the front wheels, but a visual check revealed clean wheels. During my next drive, though, the vibration became...
by Bob Williamson, CMRP, CPMM, MIAM, Editor | Jan 9, 2021 | Asset Management, RAM Tools & Methods
“Procedure-based maintenance” will be invaluable in this era of growing skills shortages and the need for greater machine reliability. Machine complexity, coupled with the impact of the skills crisis and business needs for improved performance, has created a situation...
by Ken Bannister, MEch (UK), CMRP, MLE, Editor | Jan 3, 2021 | Asset Management, RAM Tools & Methods
A little over a year ago (Nov. 18, 2019), I wrote a newsletter column titled, “The Most Wonderful Time of Year” (see link below). In it, I highlighted how maintenance departments often go on shopping sprees with unspent budget dollars at the end of the...
by Bob Williamson, CMRP, CPMM, MIAM, Editor | Jan 2, 2021 | Asset Management, RAM Tools & Methods
Many of the tens of thousands of preventive maintenance (PM) and repair work instructions I’ve reviewed over the decades have been sorely lacking in details. That means they’ve left a lot to the mechanics’ discretion. At the same time, many production...
by Bob Williamson, CMRP, CPMM, MIAM, Editor | Dec 20, 2020 | Newsletter Column, RAM Tools & Methods
Reliable equipment depends on an alignment of the right things: The right application, operating conditions, duty cycle, operation, maintenance, replacement parts, input/output, performance data, and people following detailed work instructions. This column begins a...
by Drew Troyer, CRE, CMRP, Editor | Dec 5, 2020 | Asset Management, RAM Tools & Methods
At its core, reliability engineering is an analytical process. We’re the actuaries for the manufacturing-process industries. We analyze data to determine failure rates and mean times between/to failure (MTBF/MTTF) or mean time to repair (MTTR). We employ Weibull...
by Heinz Bloch, P.E., Editor | Dec 5, 2020 | Asset Management, RAM Tools & Methods, The Bloch Files
The above title doesn’t really disclose what I wanted to capture here: If your company is still repair-focused in late 2020, it will be no match for competitors whose conversion to being fully reliability-focused began over a decade ago, and is now complete....
by Howard Penrose, Ph.D., CMRP | Dec 5, 2020 | RAM Tools & Methods
A number of products have come out of the National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST) Department of Commerce project on Manufacturing Machinery Maintenance. Among them is a set of software tools that provide the ability to benchmark. For this article we’ll...
