April 02, 2009 Audio - 3 Minute Maintenance Tip - What Should A Maintenance Planner Do?
April 02, 2009 Maintenance & Reliability Best Practices - a new book by Ramesh Gulati, CMRP
To manufacture quality products or provide services at competitive prices is essential to survive in today’s business climate. We are forced to look for better ways of doing things on continual basis. To meet customer’s needs – on their schedule – requires (high) availability and reliability of equipment and systems when they are needed. But it is not as simple as putting something into effect. To truly realize a best practice requires learning, re-learning, benchmarking and implementing better ways of ensuring high reliability and availability of equipment and systems.
Maintenance & Reliability Best Practices is designed to support that learning process. Written by professionals with 60 plus years of shop floor and management experience in a variety of industries, this practical resource will help seasoned professionals and novices understand the basic principles of maintenance and reliability. Written in an easy-to-read format, each chapter discusses the concepts with specific questions and answers. Each topic answers the what, why or how of the topic being presented. Understanding and implementing Maintenance & Reliability practices in a cost-effective way is essential. This is perfect book for all in the work force of an organization who need to have a solid understanding of Maintenance & Reliability.
April 02, 2009 A Little More Effort … A Lot More Results
Think you have to make huge changes and expend a ton of extra energy to achieve bigger and better results? Think again! And consider this …
At 211 degrees, water is hot. At 212 degrees, it boils. And with boiling water comes steam. And with steam, you can power a train. Applying just one extra degree of temperature to water means the difference between something that is simply very hot and something that generates enough force to power a large machine. The message of this simple yet powerful metaphor should be clear to all:
Seemingly small things can make tremendous differences. The key learning is equally powerful: The application of additional heat (effort) to whatever task or activity you undertake will not only help you achieve the primary objective you seek, but also reap exponential rewards that are possible by applying one extra degree of effort.
Imagine the possibilities …
Add just a few hours each month to your professional development outside of the work and you will have invested the equivalent of a full work
Make just one extra contact each day …a sales call … a customer … a brief discussion with a colleague … an encouraging talk with a member of your team. With contact comes opportunity. At the end of the year you’ll have opened more than 200 additional doors of possibility.
Eliminate one half hour of television watching each day and you’ll gain 182.5 hours each year to use elsewhere (equivalent to four and a half weeks of work).
Imagine YOUR possibilities. Where can you give a little more effort? What small changes can you make that will add up over time? As a leader, what can you do – what will you do – to enjoy the rewards that come from “turning up the heat” one extra degree? Find those opportunities … and seize them!
Today’s Tip is from 212° – The Extra Degree by S. L. Parker
April 02, 2009 MARCON 2009
May 4-7, 2009
Knoxville, Tennessee
Now in the 13th year of presenting an annual conference in the vital area of maintenance and reliability, the University of Tennessee Maintenance and Reliability Center, together with Reliabilityweb.com, is again providing an opportunity to interact with attendees from both industry and academia; from both the private and the public sectors; from organizations just starting in maintenance and reliability to those well along in their journey.
This conference will allow the attendees to immerse themselves in ideas—some new, some reinforcing already known truths—to help them better prepare for meeting and beating the competition. In addition to the excellent papers, panel discussions and other formal exchanges, there will be plenty of time for networking and sharing with both old and new acquaintances. MARCON 2009 also includes an outstanding Exhibit Area of leading solution providers to give attendees a fully integrated view of what’s happening today in reliability and maintenance.
April 02, 2009 Maintenance Tip - Skip the Morning Meeting
Skip the Morning Meeting – Many Maintenance Supervisors and Foremen spend the first few hours of their day either preparing for the morning meeting or trying to figure out what happened on the previous shift (or maybe the day or week before).
If your maintenance people seem to spend too much time either preparing or completing their shift, then it’s time to look at a how you can improve the way that you do things. Most morning meetings could either be eliminated or reduced by implementing both process and technology to manage the turnover, assignment of work, completion, and pass-over to the next guy.
Tip provided by Dave Koelzer
Vice President, Process Improvement
Dimension Technology Solutions, Inc.
April 02, 2009 Motor Testing Tip - Concentric Wound Motors and Eccentricity
Concentric Wound Motors and Eccentricity
Only a few years ago many low voltage NEMA frame motors that were less than 50 HP were concentric wound. Concentric wound motors are machine wound and have the phases stacked rather than lapped. As a result they may produce a natural separation in the phase inductance readings.
Today many of the manufacturers of low voltage NEMA frame motors have upgraded their stator winding processes, so you may find motors as large as 150 HP or larger to have concentric windings. This is important to remember when performing a Rotor Influence Check for the first time on a low voltage machine. At the end of the first pole group the results may appear as a possible air gap eccentricity because each of the phases; 1-to-2, 2-to-3, and 3-to-1 appear to have separated minimum and maximum inductance values, resulting in a graph that appears like a misalignment. Because the nameplate data does not let the operator indicate if a motor is concentric or lap wound, continuing the test for at least a second pole group provides the information needed to determine if the motor is concentric wound. If each of the three phases has consistent minimum and maximum inductance values from the first pole group to the second it is an indication of a concentric winding.
Tip provided by PdMA Corporation
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April 02, 2009 Maintenance Tip - PM Ratio Analysis
PM Ratio Analysis
To help evaluate your PM program effectiveness, consider performing a preventative maintenance ratio analysis.
The first step to expedite the PM ratio analysis is to know your CMMS capabilities. Hopefully you are capable of distinguishing the different types of work orders within your CMMS.
If you do not have the means to sort work orders by type in your CMMS, the option is to obtain historical data by the way of sorting the work orders manually for the asset.
All work orders associated for the specific asset are sorted as PM, reactive, and/or corrective.
The “ratio” definition is a simple three to six interval check. What this means is, look back at your last three to six PM intervals on the selected asset and identify what (if any) issues were encountered.
If the asset did not require any repairs or nothing was noted “out of the ordinary” on your PM check-sheet, then this asset becomes a candidate to extend the PM frequency.
Using the ratio analysis provides sound judgment and good principle to identify savings from valuable manpower to parts inventory reduction.
Another result is that, you have performed a recognized best practice by reviewing your asset’s reliability.
The ratio analysis may also identify your need to investigate alternative non-invasive tasks that can be performed such as vibration analysis, infra-red, oil analysis, etc. In addition, the ratio analysis outcome can provide sound evidence to present to management to consider a potential change from a preventive program to a predictive program.
For more information view a 12 minute iPresentation on PM Ratio Analysis
Tip provided by Don Olszewski
Reliability Consultant
The Timken Company
April 02, 2009 Reliability Centered Maintenance using ... RCM Blitz by Douglas Plucknette
Work alongside the author as he walks you through his step-by step method for applying Reliability Centered Maintenance, RCM Blitz, that focuses on manufacturing assets.
RCM Blitz is a 5-part process, with an easy to follow flow diagram, that includes:
• Up-Front Tasks - Those tasks required to ensure the success of the RCM Facilitators and Team.
• Probability and Consequence - The steps needed to build the groundwork for understanding the importance of each individual failure mode and developing sound methods to prioritize RCM tasks.
• Functions and Functional Failures - The to successful RCM analysis is understanding the importance of addressing maintenance at the functional failure level.
• FMECA - The heart and soul of Reliability Centered Maintenance, this is where the work gets done, identifying failure modes, describing failure effects and developing tasks.
• Follow-Up Tasks - These tasks are designed to help the team quickly move forward and drive the implementation of the RCM tasks. Follow-up is just as important as the analysis itself and like everything else it has a process.
