by Al Poling, CMRP | Mar 26, 2022 | Plant Operations, Professional Development, RAM's Human Factor
My father worked for the same company for 42 years before retiring on his 65th birthday. He provided wise counsel to me from adolescence through adulthood, although I was never comfortable with his blind loyalty to his employer. Listening to him, you would have...
by Bob Williamson, CMRP, CPMM, MIAM, Editor | Feb 7, 2022 | Newsletter Column, RAM's Human Factor
My Jan. 31, 2022, newsletter column, “Can We Get Maintenance Staffing Levels Right?” (see link below), responded to an age-old question: “How can I determine the optimum maintenance-technician staffing levels for my plant?” I argued that there’s no reliable...
by Bob Williamson, CMRP, CPMM, MIAM, Editor | Jan 31, 2022 | Newsletter Column, RAM's Human Factor
There is a recurring, age-old question that one would think easy to answer. “How can I determine the optimum maintenance- technician staffing levels for my plant?” Some would say it’s easy. But I would argue there is no reliable international standard for...
by Ken Bannister, MEch (UK), CMRP, MLE, Editor | Dec 5, 2021 | Newsletter Column, RAM's Human Factor
As a young design engineer, I worked under the tutelage of my mentor Tedeus (Ted) Monkiewicz. Within this arrangement, I often accompanied him on visits to customer operations that were experiencing machine warranty issues/problems. At each sites, I was not to speak,...
by Ken Bannister, MEch (UK), CMRP, MLE, Editor | Nov 21, 2021 | RAM's Human Factor
Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, “People only see what they are prepared to see.” That holds trues in the RAM arena. To be specific, when a problem is reported to the Maintenance department, it’s the job of the Planner to interpret the maintenance request...
by Bob Williamson, CMRP, CPMM, MIAM, Editor | Nov 15, 2021 | Newsletter Column, RAM's Human Factor
“Asset management” took on a whole new meaning in the RAM world when ISO-55001:2014 finally hit the streets. We were informed, taught, coached, and critiqued when we tried to understand it. And no wonder: The new Standard wasn’t so much about direct...
by Heinz Bloch, P.E., Editor | Sep 25, 2021 | Professional Development, RAM's Human Factor, The Bloch Files
On several occasions, I’ve engaged in litigation support. For me, litigation support means occasionally choosing to work for law firms that pay engineers to relate how and why machines function and/or malfunction. While it is my obligation to do the explaining,...
by Bob Williamson, CMRP, CPMM, MIAM, Editor | Sep 20, 2021 | Newsletter Column, RAM's Human Factor
What members of our plant-floor workforces do and how they do it directly impacts equipment performance and reliability. Traditionally, machine operators operate; maintainers maintain; engineers engineer; planner/schedulers plan and schedule; supervisors supervise;...
by Drew Troyer, CRE, CMRP, T.A. Cook/Accenture, Editor | Apr 25, 2021 | Asset Management, Newsletter Column, RAM's Human Factor
I suspect that a large majority of readers of The RAM Review’s columns and articles are reliability engineers like me. But I also suspect many may actually be functioning, albeit unknowingly, as “unreliability engineers.” Has unreliability become an...
by Drew Troyer, CRE, CMRP, T.A. Cook/Accenture, Editor | Apr 18, 2021 | Plant Operations, RAM Tools & Methods, RAM's Human Factor
We’ve all heard it, again and again: “What gets measured gets done.” That’s not entirely true, however. In reality, what gets measured tends to get rewarded or punished, which, in turn, results in things getting done. In last week’s issue of The RAM Review, I...
