Are Your Reliability Efforts Haunted by the Lack of an Effective Plan?

So many facilities struggle with timely results and expected return on investments within their reliability improvement efforts. One of the demons that continuously shows it's face is the sequencing within the improvement plan.
Sites tend to want to pursue the exciting and fun things and forget many of the foundational elements that support the shiny stuff.  For example a site will purchase technology in the form of software or predictive tools before developing work flow process. Without understanding the work management process you don't have the data needed for the software to analyze nor the ability to execute the work identified with the predictive tools. This just leads to the exciting new tools being underutilized and then eventually put on a shelf to gather dust.
When you are looking at your initiative and planning your strategy, take a look at what is required to support the pieces that you desire. Be honest about your maturity in these support elements and build your base before your tower. Towers are great to look at and show others but foundations are where a smart man spends his time.
Some of the common issues I see include:

1. Scheduling work without planning first. How can you have an accurate schedule when you have not had a planner break down the job into small enough parts to accurately estimate time required?
2. Predictive tools applied without work process to execute the findings prior to point F on the P-F curve.
3. Software such as EAM and CMMS without standard work process to make them work.
4. Software for engineering analysis without data from FRACAS or failure coding to input for analysis. 
5. Initiatives like lean and six sigma applied before with maintenance induced variation and waste is reduced. 
6. Reliability engineering tools applied before maintenance engineering tools. When you have a pure reliability engineer working on the future in a fully reactive facility it becomes a lot like rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. You need the maintenance engineer to introduce procedures, precision maintenance and failure mode based maintenance to stop the the sinking and then we can focus on the next cruise. 

If you want to keep the gremlins out of your improvement strategy then focus on the processes first then apply the tools, software and shiny stuff.

Don’t Start Up In a Bad Way: Five Ways to Limit the Creation of a Reactive Culture in New Facility Startup.

New facilities by nature can be reactive. Reactive behavior when it comes to reliability and maintenance is expensive. Our goal should be to be proactive in identifying risk and mitigating or eliminating it before we have to react. When you bring a new plant online there are many things that can drive the culture to be reactive. I have listed a few below:

•          Poor start up planning and procedures
•          The presence of excessive amounts of infant mortality type failure modes
•          Equipment delivery delays
•          Stocking of incorrect spare parts
•          EPC contractor ineffectiveness
•          EPC contract language that does not insure correct function of the assets
•          No existing culture in the new facility while there is an influx of new employees from different cultures including other highly reactive companies.

With all of these reasons as well as others, it is no wonder that green field sites find themselves working to overcome a reactive culture, low production rates, and high cost. In order to limit the creation of this situation I have listed five way to turn the tide in favor of a proactive culture.

1. Start early creating the business processes which will help to create the new culture. When you on board new associates being able to show them how work will be done and train them in the use of proactive tools is critical. This will allow them to change their existing paradigms where required and give you a head start on the culture that is required for maximum return on investment.
2. Build the business processes based off of the best facilities in the world not just the best facilities in your division or company. Reach out with your early hire team and benchmark with an eye on being the best in the world within the constraints of your facilities business case.
3. Create failure mode based maintenance strategies using the equipment vendors, EPC, associates as they are brought onboard, the operating context specific to your facility, and tools like RAM, RCM, and FMEA. If this step is done correctly then it will reduce spare parts stocking levels, equipment failures, and poor procedures which will increase early production and profitability.
4. Budget for new associates to visit sister plants if they exist. The goal here is to ensure that they can have open dialogue with others who live with the assets on a daily basis. They should be looking to get hands on training, learn common problems, identify changes that have been made since start-up of the assets as well as other tidbits that will facilitate their site producing record tonnage the first year.
5. Fully populate your EAM or CMMS from the start with all of the assets, spare parts, drawings, and failure codes as provided by the vendors per your contractual request.

I hope these five items offer some help on new plant or new asset start up and if you would like to learn more about the elements of a good start up then reach out to me via email and I will provide you with a look at our R5 launch methodology for new facilities.

Heinz Bloch Failure Codes as a Simple Start to Failure Coding

I get quite a few request for these simple failure codes for use in Enterprise Asset Management Systems (EAMS) and Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS) so I thought I would post them up for easy retrieval.

Remember failure codes are only as good as the understanding the user has of each code, so make sure to create training for your team and test for understanding prior to implementation.

If you use these examples as a failure coding system then please understand this is a first step and as your organization matures with failure reporting you may chose to go to a more in-depth  failure code structure that is based off of the Failure Modes Effects Analysis (FMEA) that you complete. This will provide a new level of detail for reliability engineers and maintenance engineers to use in there quest to investigate,eliminate, and mitigate failures.

These definitions are drawn from the Heinz Bloch Machinery Failure Analysis and Troubleshooting book third edition. We have taken them and added examples. They can be a good first step on the way to Failure Reporting Analysis and Corrective Action System (FRACAS) within your EAM or  CMMS.

Faulty Design (FD)
Faulty design is when the equipment is not adequate for the intended service. Generally this results in conditions (i.e. temperature, force, pressure, vibration, etc.) which were not expected from the design and exceed the equipment capabilities.

“In excess of 95 percent of fluid handling problems were either designed in or the result of a process change that did not account for its effects on all equipment.” Charles M. Boyles, Editor, Pumping Technology Magazine


Material Defects (MatD)
A material defect is a flaw in the material itself, such as a casting defect, or a non-uniform material (i.e. metal, elastomer, etc.) which results in a material property (i.e. strength, hardness, elasticity, chemical resistance, etc.) different than those expected.

The material defect category should not be used when the wrong material is used in a particular service. This would be the result of a faulty design if the material was designed to be used or a fabrication error if the correct material was called for, but not used.

Fabrication or Processing Errors (FPE)
A fabrication / processing error indicates that the equipment and / or parts are not made correctly (as designed) during initial fabrication or are improperly re-conditioned during a repair. These errors can be identified by verifying whether the components adhere to the original design (i.e. proper dimensions, fits and clearances, proper material, correct component balance, etc.).


Assembly or Installation Defects (AID)
An assembly / installation defect generally means that the equipment and/or parts may have been made correctly, but were not put together or installed correctly. This would include the assembly or repair of the equipment as well as field installation, which may result from improper or inadequate procedures or techniques. Assembly problems may include items such as improper bearing installation / handling procedures, incorrect orientation of grease shields, improper torque sequences, etc. Field installation problems may include items such as shaft misalignment, inadequate grouting, piping strain, etc.


Off-design or Unintended Service Conditions (USC)
An off-design / unintended service condition usually means that the design was adequate for the original service, but changes to the service have now made the design inadequate for the new service conditions. This can occur when changes have been made intentionally to the operating (service) conditions creating an unintended effect on the equipment (condition the equipment was not designed for). Examples may include a throughput change that causes cavitation or a temperature change that affects a material strength.

This failure category can occur when plant capacity is increased without a sufficient review of the effect on equipment. “We have found that a large percentage, 27%, of chronic machine and system problems is the direct result of operating production systems outside their acceptable design range.” - Keith Mobley, President, Integrated Systems, Inc

Examples: Equipment damage due to external acts such as lightning and other acts of nature as well as damage due to mobile equipment operator carelessness and intentional management changes to the SOPs.


Maintenance Deficiencies (MD)
A maintenance deficiency indicates that the equipment is not maintained correctly after it is designed and installed. This may include not replenishing / changing lubricants, not changing filters when they plug, allowing contamination to go untended (i.e. water or dirt in oil), or using inadequate procedures to perform such tasks (i.e. not removing the drain plug when re-greasing bearings).

The maintenance deficiency category would not normally be used to classify a problem that results from an improper repair. That type of defect would normally be the result of either a fabrication / processing error or an assembly / installation defect.



Improper Operation (IO)
As the name implies, improper operation results when the equipment is not operated correctly. This usually occurs with unintended changes to the equipment operating conditions. Examples would include such things as running a pump dry, deadheading a pump for prolonged periods of time, operating in a critical frequency for prolonged periods, as well as improper operating procedures (i.e. not venting a seal chamber to remove gas prior to commissioning).

Improper operation is often associated with upset conditions in the system or transient type conditions such as start-up and shutdown.

Examples: Incorrect or poorly written SOPs