Dec 4-7, 2007
Daytona Beach Florida

Reliability Leadership Workshop by Ron Moore, PE, MBA, Author, “Making Common Sense Common Practice: Models for Manufacturing Excellence”, and of “What Tool? When? Selecting the Right Manufacturing Improvement Tools”

What You Can Expect From This Workshop

Results-oriented companies have discovered the proven impact of manufacturing reliability – maximized uptime, minimized unplanned downtime, improved process control, enhanced quality, minimized maintenance costs, and improved supply-chain performance. Attend this seminar, and you can too.

You’ll learn how to apply the Reliability Process - design, buy, store, install, operate, and maintain for reliability. You’ll review your plant’s performance in light of best practices and benchmarks. And you’ll leave with the ability to develop a strategic reliability improvement plan for your plant.

Reliability practices will make you a low-cost producer by maximizing capacity while minimizing production and maintenance costs. And you can do it all without incremental capital investments.

Hotel and early bird conference discount available.

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The only conference with a 100% Satisfaction Guarantee or your money back!

Please call toll free (888) 575 1245 to register or…

Find out more about the 22nd International Maintenance Conference

Here is a simple tip to find resonance in a machine you are trying to diagnose.

If the problem is not obvious, try taking a coin from your pocket and running the coin along the equipment horizontally, vertically, and axially.

Sometimes you will find that you can feel the nodes and anti-nodes indicating that you may have a problem with resonance.

Reader tip provided by Luke Williams
Production Technician
Consolidated Edison of NY
New York NY USA

Thanks Luke - your diamond plate stainless steel Reliabilityweb.com coffee mug is on the way!

Send in your own tip and get a cap or a mug

Obtain alignment results in 3 Easy Steps:

1) Enter Dimensions

2) Measure with our patented Continuous Sweep Mode -start and stop at any position

3) View Results

LUDECA, INC.
305-591-8935
http://www.ludeca.com

Watch the OPTALIGN SMART VIDEO online

Rigorously defined engineering principles are used in every stage of manufacturing development: machine design, building design, machine installation, process measurement, process control, etc… Every facet, that is…, except machinery lubrication program development and control. There is not, to my knowledge, another area that is as important to overall plant productivity as lubrication (is), that is also as poorly controlled as lubrication (is).

This is a mystery. Personnel involved in the decision to specify, manage, and perform lubrication practices are in agreement that this function, when done poorly, can directly and significantly increase machine failure rates and repair requirements. At the same time, when it comes to making a decision to ‘quantify’ the practices and expectations, and then hold everyone (management, engineering and labor) accountable for the results, there is often a collective sigh and resignation over the difficulty of the task.

But it isn’t difficult. It just takes time and persistence.

• Performing the fundamental calculations is not difficult, particularly with Excel.

• Adjusting the calculated estimates for changes in production environments in not difficult

• Scheduling the work, and verifying completion of the work is not difficult but is time consuming.

• Modifying the machines to prevent ingression of contaminants is neither difficult or expensive

• Modifying machines to allow for fluid condition control is neither difficult or expensive

• Modifying machines to allow for highly controlled sampling and analysis is neither difficult or expensive

• Making reliability-centric test slate selections, and applying limit values, is time consuming, but again is not terribly difficult

• Making decisions for improvements based on the oil analysis data is challenging, but can be taught and learned

• Setting program expectations, goals and objectives, and supporting those decision is not difficult, but requires diligence and consistency

So, would anyone like to speculate as to why there is still a low level of order and definition for your plant lubrication practices? My theory is that we have a long-standing habit of accepting undefined practices, and we have not looked at the value of improvements long and hard enough to justify the time and energy to make the change.

This doesn’t mean that the value isn’t here. It just means that we looked for it yet.

Tip provided by Mike Johnson
AMMRI

Participate in a Lubricant Technical Selection Practices Self Assessment

Too often thermographers get stuck using the same image palette over and over again. While you’ll typically use one or two palettes, it is important to get to know ALL of the color palettes in your camera so you are able to use the one that best suits your application.

A black and white or monochromatic palette (examples are “Grayscale”, “Iron Bow” or “Hot Metal") can be interpreted easily by thermographers of any skill level. Rainbow palettes have a powerful impact when used for reports or during presentations but are more difficult to work in and may also be more difficult to interpret.

Sharp focus, which is critical, may best be first adjusted using either a grayscale or monochromatic type palette.
Saturation palettes or isotherms are useful on a black and white image to show an object over or under an alarm temperature such as when inspecting a refractory. Inverted palettes, where “white” represents cold and “black” hot, can be useful when showing smaller areas of warm temperature, but note it carefully as this palette is not normally used.

The bottom line? Palette choice is a personal decision. Use the one which enables you to capture and display the best possible images.

Tip provided by John Snell
Snell Infrared
http://www.snellinfrared.com

Attend Thermal Solutions...the conference for professional thermographers

At AssetPoint, we have 5 distinctive qualities that sets us apart from the crowd:

1. Satisfied Customers. Our clients are loyal and stay with us for many years.

2. Certified Professionals. Certifications include CMRP, PMP, MSCP and others.

3. Certified Products. TabWare is certified by Microsoft Corporation for their Windows platform and Vista Operating System.

4. Proven Methodology. Our methodology has been proven in hundreds of projects.

5. Relationships That Work. We partner with you to bring effective solutions to your maintenance, inventory and procurement operations long after the sale.

Find out more about AssetPoint

There are troubling factors that people frequently question which give rise to some of the confusions over the “Preventive Maintenance (PM) or Corrective Maintenance (CM)” discussions.

One of these involves the games that people play with the terminology. These games can be driven by such diverse nontechnical factors as accounting practices or political (regulatory) pressures. For example, some plants, in addition to planned outages and forced outages, have a third category known as a maintenance outage (MO).

The MO occurs as a result of an unexpected equipment problem which hasn’t quite yet reached the full failure state but will do so very soon. So the plant management will delay the shutdown until some off-peak period when the plant outage is more tolerable, and hope that the equipment will hold out until then.

Now from an operational point of view, this is a very smart thing to do — but, as a rule, MOs are not counted when it comes to reporting the plant forced outage rate. Somehow they seem to wind up in the preplanned category ("after all, we planned to fix it next Saturday!"). Make no mistake about it, an MO is a forced outage and should be labeled as such when measurements are made. You are only kidding yourself to do otherwise.

Tip provided by Anthony “Mac” Smith, Author, RCM - Gateway to World Class Maintenance, Butterworth-Heinemann, ISBN-10: 075067461X

Learn to develop effective PMs from Mac Smith’s RCM Workshop on DVD

When presenting RCA recommendations, we must take into consideration who we will be presenting to. Creating a “boilerplate” presentation to give to all audiences may not be advisable.

When we are pitching our final results, our objectives are to get the resources and funding that we need to implement our recommendations. In order to accomplish that, we must strategize about how best to present our findings.

Part of this strategy involves researching how the decision-makers are compensated (provided incentives). Why? We must demonstrate a benefit that will interest the decision makers in order for our recommendations to be considered seriously.

For instance, if my analysis concludes a need for the purchase of new laser alignment equipment and associated training, then I do not just want to present that this package will require funding of $10,000. If I know that the decision makers are compensated based on throughput performance, then I will express my savings in those units. So instead of asking for $10,000 for new testing equipment and training, we will say that if we are able to stop failures due to misalignment, our analyses show that we will cut downtime back by 15% which equates to an increase in production of 20,000 units over the year. The net increase to corporation would be about $750,000/year.

So Mr. Decision Maker our request for these funds is minimal compared to the projected returns based on increased throughput

Tip provided by Mark Latino
Reliability Center Inc.
http://www.reliability.com

Visit the new and improved Reliability Center web site