Reliability improvement articles and best practice advice.

Improve your equipment performance and efficiency with these news articles, insights and resources written by our experienced consultants. If you would like to receive weekly email notifications for new articles, consider subscribing to our newsletter.

How to estimate the economic value of improved maintenance...

Using a value driver tree to estimate Economic Value Added can help reliability and maintenance managers build a business case for improvement initiatives.

What does a reliability engineer do?

Reliability engineers should be focused on guidance, analysis and improvement - not on managing the day-to-day execution of maintenance tasks.

Covered in slurry: the importance of proper root cause...

Stopping a root cause analysis at human error, or at the obvious component failure level, is unlikely to prevent future failures.

7 tips to become a strong reliability leader: Moving...

It doesn’t matter where in the organisation structure you are, you have the capability to influence others - and this is at the core of leadership.

How to create opportunities for teamwork and learning: Moving...

There is little point in having a strategic vision unless you actually allow your people to learn and apply their new skills.

How to improve cross-functional collaboration: Moving from a repair-focused...

As organisations move into the planned maintenance environment, the nature of the relationship between production and maintenance changes.

Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) in action: apron feeders

Let's use the example of apron feeder maintenance to illustrate how you might develop a better maintenance strategy for your key assets.

How to align reward systems with strategic goals: Moving...

Want to encourage change within your organisation? Here are some tips to build a successful environment and answer the question: "what's in it for me?"

How to build a business case for reliability improvement:...

Let’s examine how you might estimate the costs and benefits associated with a reliability improvement program, to develop a sound business case.

How to ensure a long-term strategic focus: Moving from...

Most maintenance organisations are looking to move from a repair-focused to reliability-focused culture, but how can we shift from one to the other?

Have you outgrown your perfect repairables management system?

The system was perfect. Everyone knew what to do when a component failed. Everyone knew how to determine where to send the part for repair.... then Bill left.

Asset Performance Management (APM) – Key implementation issues and...

Let's discuss the challenges that we have observed our clients struggle with as they have implemented their APM solutions, and how to avoid falling for these same traps.

Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) and Asset Performance Management (APM)...

Can you make sense of your asset related data? Can you use this data to optimise your business? Integrating data from the EAM system is not always smooth sailing.

The importance of a no-blame culture for safety and...

As a general rule, we need to be very careful in using punishment as our first and primary response to any safety or reliability incident.

Availability vs reliability: which is more important?

There is often confusion among those new to maintenance management and reliability improvement regarding the difference between availability and reliability.

Creating the environment for successful root cause analysis

Experience tells us that, in practice, there are several barriers that inhibit the success of implementation of Root Cause Analysis (RCA) practices.

Why you don’t need software to perform root cause...

A growing number of root cause analysis processes are being supported by software. We need to be careful not to oversell the benefits of software in effective RCA.

Why team-based approaches to root cause analysis are more...

There is a school of thought, particularly among more highly qualified engineering personnel, that problem solving and root cause analysis is best performed by “experts” in their fields.

Why root cause analysis is not just ‘common sense’

Let's discuss some of the practical issues surrounding root cause analysis implementation within organisations, and how to obtain success from these processes.

Putting a value on maintenance and reliability improvement

Let's consider how to obtain value in maintenance and reliability improvement projects, and approaches that we can take to estimate value from the improvement.

Big data, predictive analytics and reliability: moving beyond better...

In this article, we continue our exploration by considering how developments such as big data and predictive analytics are contributing to reliability improvement.

4 essential tools and techniques for improving equipment reliability

Let's discuss some of the key tools and techniques that can be used to contribute to sound equipment reliability, and where these may be applicable.

4 things supply can do to assure asset reliability

Being at the tail end of the operational chain, supply can often bear the brunt of poor decisions made by asset designers, or during operations and maintenance.

4 ways maintenance managers can impact on equipment reliability

Let's explore some ways in which maintainers and maintenance management can impact on equipment reliability, and some suggestions to improve reliability via better maintenance.

How operations management can impact equipment reliability

Let's explore the key ways in which operations management can impact on equipment reliability, and offer some practical suggestions to improve reliability.

Design your asset life cycles for reliability

Let's explore the communal accountabilities that should be considered in the design phase of an asset life cycle, and the roles that different parts of an organisation play to...

Reliability is everybody’s responsibility

We are fascinated by disasters, yet everyday in our workplaces, mini-disasters occur with monotonous regularity. Why should we accept that failure is the norm?

How to continuously improve your preventive maintenance program

It's ideal to embed continuous improvement of your preventive maintenance program as part of day to day business. Let's discuss how to make that happen.

Introduction to the PF interval

This video introduces the PF Interval: one of the core principles that underpins reliability centred maintenance and preventive maintenance program development.

Reliability centered maintenance (RCM) vs preventive maintenance optimisation (PMO)

Let's compare reliability centered maintenance (RCM) and preventive maintenance optimisation (PMO), and determine which approach is best for you.

5 tips for successful root cause analysis

Most organisations have some sort of investigation process, ranging from a basic incident report form through to a mature root cause analysis (RCA) process.

What is preventive maintenance optimisation (PMO)?

In preventive maintenance optimisation, the key objective is to review the current PM program, starting by assembling all of the tasks that it consists of.

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