Terry Wireman's Blog

Progress – Slow and Steady –

A site that should be periodically visited by all maintenance and reliability professionals is http://www.uspc251tag.org   This site is where you can get the latest news on the proposed ISO-55000 standards. 

Most companies have heard about the PAS-55 standard- which is the UK’s Publically Available Standard for asset management.  The proposed ISO-55000 standard is the first attempt to have an asset management standard. 

Why is this important?  Most companies are evaluated by their investors, based on their profit compared to the investment in the assets.  Properly managed assets will help companies lower the denominator in this calculation.  So the company’s financial standing  and perception on Wall Street can be impacted. 

In addition, a company’s safety, environmental, and quality process can all be impacted by well-managed or poorly managed assets.  Since assets are key to business performance, wouldn’t it be beneficial to have standard processes?  Why not stop by the above web site and check out what is going on in this area?  Better yet, why not get involved – Information on how to be involved is also on this site.  You might find it rewarding, both for you and your company.

English 101 and Maintenance

A grammar website (http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/adjectives.htm) offers this information on adjectives:

Adjectives are words that describe or modify another person or thing in the sentence. Examples are:

the tall professor

a solid commitment

a six-year-old child

the unhappiest, richest man

  Now, to avoid having everyone go to sleep reading this blog (like I used to do in English class), let’s get to the maintenance application.  Let’s take the example of “reliability-centered maintenance”.  The noun in the sentence would be “maintenance”.  The adjective that describes or modifies “maintenance” is “reliability-centered”.  So we end up with a phrase that really means maintenance that is centered on reliability.

 As I have discussed in a previous blog, reliability is a design function.  This means that when we commission the equipment, we begin the operation and maintenance phase of the equipment’s life cycle.  The reliability and maintainability are already specified in the design of the equipment.  Why is this important? 

 It is important because companies today are wasting considerable resources trying to have their maintenance departments that are “centered on reliability” make up for design flaws that impact their equipment performance.  Since the problems are design flaws, they cannot be corrected by typical maintenance tools and techniques. 

 One author stated we need to “…Reverse the present trend of spending over 90% of the reliability, maintainability, and quality costs in industry to correct reliability, maintainability, and design inadequacies and defects after they have occurred, while spending less that 10% to design and make them correctly in the first place”. 

 So while we may argue that we need maintenance that focuses on making our equipment more reliable (maintenance centered on reliability), perhaps what we really need is true design reliability engineers that give us better assets to maintain in the first place.

 More on the author mentioned above and his focus on Maintainability, Availability and Operational readiness next week…

 

Things You Learn on Airplanes

Since the first of this year, I have observed at least a dozen incidents where passengers were e-mailing, making phone calls, or using electronic devices during take-offs and landings on airplanes.  If you speak up and remind them that this is against FAA regulations, you are told to mind your own business (the most polite thing that was said) or you may be told things that are basically unprintable.  These infractions are not the fault of the flight attendants, since the passengers are deliberately hiding their electronic usage from the flight attendants.  The passengers are doing this despite the fact that if caught by an FAA representative, they will be fined $1,000.00.  It must be that they feel they are above the law or that their chance of actually being caught is negligible.

Why does this matter?  For the most part the observed offenders appear to be business professionals (mid 40’s to mid 60’s).  If they are business managers, consider how this attitude could carry over to their business activities.  What if they were a plant manager?  A corporate executive?  A front line manager?  Suppose they were faced with an inconvenience due to an OSHA, EPA, FDA, or NRC regulation?  Would they have the same attitude that they display on an airplane?  Would they disregard the regulations thereby threatening their employees with injury or death because it is not likely to happen?  Would they feel that it won’t matter because nothing will happen just this once? 

How many incidents do we hear about in the news, read about in the paper, or see in the Federal Register where individuals have violated written regulations (or even accepted Best Practices) to the detriment of their companies or employees? 

It would be interesting as part of the hiring process if key job candidates would have to travel with some company executives for a week. Maybe they would learn how their executives would behave in their companies.  Maybe they would re-think whether or not they wanted to be a part of a company with negligent leadership.