Perfection? An impossible dream? Why or why not should we be pursuing 100% reliability? Think about it. Simply stated, 100% reliability means that equipment is doing what it is supposed to do. And yes, there is a price to pay for it. But, the cost of un-reliability can be penalizing to business goals and stakeholders.
Sometimes, there’s confusion when we talk about this topic. Let’s nip that confusion in the bud: Be careful not to confuse “100% reliability” with “100% availability,” or “100% utilization.” Here’s a brief look—from the plant-floor perspective—at definitions of and the differences (and relationships) among reliability, availability, and utilization.
Reliability: The asset performs as intended, for a stated period of time, in a specified operating environment.
Per MIL-HDBK-338: Reliability- 1) The duration or probability of failure-free performance under stated conditions. 2) The probability that an item can perform its intended function for a specified interval under stated conditions.
Reliability is defined as the ability of an item to perform as required, without failure, for a given time interval, under given conditions.
Paul Barringer offered this definition in one of his conference presentations several years ago: “Reliability is concerned with avoiding failures of equipment and processes by proper design and careful operation of the equipment by trained personnel in a specified environment for a given time interval. The ultimate aim of reliability is a failure free environment. Reliability measures the capacity of equipment or processes to operate without failure for a time interval when put into service and operated correctly.”
Availability: The time when an asset is capable of performing as intended; able to run. (Sometimes, the term availability is referred to as “uptime.”) Also, the calendar time minus scheduled and unscheduled downtime; the committable state; mission ready or operational readiness.
Utilization: The time the asset is actually running as scheduled; in service. Equipment usage, operating time, running time, machine-run hours. Time spent on productive efforts. The proportion of the available time (expressed usually as a percentage) that a piece of equipment or a system is operating. (Formula: Operating hours x 100 ÷ available hours.)
SEVERAL EXAMPLES
A fire pump is only intended to be used when there is a fire. Availability: The fire pump must be available to run 24 hours, seven days a week, every week of the year, and beyond. Utilization: The only pump runs when there is a fire or when it is being tested. Reliability: The fire pump must run as intended (predetermined pressure, flow, duration).
A smart phone is intended to manage most (if not all in some cases) of our personal digital information. Availability: Your smart phone must be available to store, receive and send information whenever it is online (contacts, photos, emails, social media, messages, calendar, time, applications, private account identification/passwords, etc.). Utilization: The smart phone must allow secure user to access information when needed. Reliability: Your smart phone must power on, retrieve and send the intended accurate information at the stated speed, whenever you choose.
A racecar is intended to be used for scheduled races. Availability: A specific racecar must be available to run at a specific type of racetrack. (Note: Racecars are specifically designed to run on short circle tracks, flat tracks, super speedways, and road courses). Utilization: The selected racecar runs for scheduled testing days and on race days. Reliability: The selected racecar operates as intended in terms of speed, fuel mileage, tire wear, handling, pit-stop times, etc.
ANYTHING LESS THAN 100%
What happens when the fire pump fails? Buildings (and contents) are destroyed. Fire damage is worse than if the fire pump worked as intended. The flow was only 50-percent. The pressure only lasted 10 minutes before vibrations in the pump broke the shaft. Anything less than 100-percent reliability is unacceptable. The company’s insurance premiums increase, and recovery time after the fire is prolonged leading to higher expenses and revenue loss.
How frustrating is it when your smart phone doesn’t operate as intended? Calls are dropped. Photos are lost in cyberspace. Voicemail messages go missing. Cellular networks are not available. Data becomes corrupted. Anything less than 100% reliability is unacceptable. And, more important, the lack of timely response to clients, associates, co-workers, family, and/or friends damages your business and relationships.
Imagine the racecar that runs faster than any other car on the track but has to make twice the number of pit stops due to extreme tire wear resulting from misalignment, terrible fuel mileage, and difficult pit stops. Anything less than 100% reliability is unacceptable. And, more important, the revenues generated by owners, sponsors/advertisers, winnings, and bonuses all suffer. Financial targets are not met.
IMPROVING THE FLOW OF BUSINESS
Think of any type of business as having value streams and flow: the flow of information; flow of work in process; flow of the receiving supply chain; flow of the shipping supply chain. Anything that interrupts those flows detracts from the business and its financial goals, including on-time/in-full delivery, expenses, revenues, sales, services, etc.
Most business value streams have constraints or bottlenecks that prevent the flow from achieving the planned and scheduled rates. Targeting the most unreliable and most penalizing constraint equipment in the most critical business value streams will improve flow. By improving the reliability of the weakest link (constraint), the whole value stream is improved.
But, reliability improvement doesn’t stay with the same equipment. The flow constraint moves when the reliability of the initially targeted equipment improves to the point it ceases to be the bottleneck.
LESSONS FROM NASCAR RACE TEAMS
For the past three decades (or more) I’ve studied how NASCAR’s top race teams have honed their approach to 100% reliability. Their pursuit of it never ends: Technology changes, rules change, team members change, i.e., retire, quit, leave. Then add in the variables of reliability, including track condition, weather, i.e., temperature, atmospheric pressure, humidity. Pursuing 100% reliability has become a way of life for top NASCAR teams and the others striving to win. And for good reason.
Here are examples of why the pursuit of 100% reliability was essential for competing in the 2019 Monster Cup Race Series:
- The top-10 fastest qualifying cars at the New Hampshire track were all within 1/10th of a second of qualification-lap times.
- The margin of victory in the October 2019 race at Talladega was .007 seconds (that’s 7/1000th of a second).
- All top-10 teams completed a season of 36 races, with 93% to 99% of all 10,255 laps completed.
- Racecars that did not finish (DNF) races during the season lost out for three primary reasons: Accidents, Equipment Failures, Human failures.
Keep in mind that a race team’s journey to 100% reliability is just that: a journey. Money alone cannot buy reliability. But it is an enabling factor if used properly.
The journey begins with “preparation.” Preparing to compete involves the right engineering/design, the right equipment, the right people with the right skill sets and a mindset for problem identification and elimination. Preparing a racecar to conform to rules and specifications begins and ends at the race shop, before the car ever leaves for the track. Next comes “showing up” with a properly prepared racecar, on time, ready to pass inspection, i.e., mission ready.
While attention to detail on a racecar is important paying attention to “schedule compliance” is most important. Race teams quickly realize that the green flag waves at one o’clock, whether they’re ready or not. Flawless planning and scheduling is a requirement to be competitive. Think of this as “planning and scheduling reliability.”
But it’s more than racing that counts. It’s “finishing” a race or two and learning from those experiences where the racecar did not perform as expected. And there’s one more thing: learning from the successes. Why did the racecar finish better than might have been expected? Let’s call that a “root cause success analysis.”
It’s an axiom in racing: “If you can’t finish you can’t win.” While finishing races is a huge goal it’s finishing on the same lap as the race leader that demonstrates that 100% reliability is crucial to winning.
The next step in the journey is to “compete” and finish in the top 10. After all, a top-10 finish not only demonstrates the acecar is reliable, but that the team is ratcheting up its performance and that of the racecar.
Nothing is more motivating and rewarding to a team than winning a race. A win is a testament to their capabilities and the racecar’s reliability. Again, here’s where a “root cause success analysis” comes in to play. Was it fuel mileage, suspension adjustments, handling, pit stops, engine cooling, driver’s communications? The point is to learn from the win and replicate what worked as much as possible in the next race.
Teams compete with and against each other race after race for the entire season. They quickly learn from each other by observation. Top-performers learn more from other race teams than from themselves. Competitive teams also “think outside the box” to learn from others in the field and outside the industry. They also reach out to other types of racing, different engineering-based operations, sports and athletics, aerospace design, and human-performance improvement. As I learned from one of the winningest NASCAR team owners ever, “you can only learn so much by looking in the mirror.”
NASCAR-racing pit stops have improved over the years because teams have learned it’s easier to gain track position in the pits than on the track. Three-minute pit-stop times in the 1950s plummeted to 23 seconds in the 1990s. The business need for continuous improvement, though, has since led to pit stops that are 11 seconds or better.
THE BOTTOM LINE
What I’ve learned about the quest for 100% reliability is that it takes a team. Reliability improvement is more about people and work processes than equipment and tools. Pit stops could not have improved without the drivers’ skills and communications, design engineering components for quick change, creation of new and faster tools, development of crew-members’ athletic abilities and eye-hand coordination, and emphasis on strategic planning for flawless execution of timely pit stops.
It’s the same for other asset-dependent operations. When all is said and done, it’s important to note that the pursuit of 100% equipment reliability in our plants and facilities is a business necessity. Those of us in the RAM community should expect equipment to perform as intended. Anything less than 100% is, sadly, unreliable.TRR
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bob Williamson is a long-time contributor to the people-side of the world-class-maintenance and manufacturing body of knowledge across dozens of industry types. His background in maintenance, machine and tool design, and teaching has positioned his work with over 500 companies and plants, facilities, and equipment-oriented organizations. Contact him directly at 512-800-6031 or [email protected].
Tags: reliability, availability, utilization, maintenance, NASCAR, Paul Barringer, workforce issues
