Separating Church and State in maintenance and Reliability

What happens when independent bodies start to act like practitioners?

Within the world of maintenance and reliability practitioners there are a great number of independent bodies, often professional societies but sometimes fully fledged private companies also.

These include standards bodies such a the ISO, British Standards, SAE and IEEE; publishers and promoters such as Plant Services and ReliabilityWeb, and national institutions like the Institute of Asset Management in the UK, AMC in Australia and SMRP in the USA.

That is all well and good, the discipline needs independent professional bodies for regulation, establishing leading / common practices and for promoting their interests on the national / political stage. Particularly given our unique responsibilities for safety, productivity and environmental integrity. (note the emphasis on independence)

But what happens when the line gets blurred. What happens when these cross over from one area into another.

Being busy ain't what is used to be...

If you need something done urgently give it to a busy man...

Remember that saying? Well I don't think it's true any more. Busy people these days are incredibly busier than they were at any time in my memory during my working career, and probably at any time in history.

The danger of success (again)

The war against ignorance in physical asset management is pretty much over and we won.

We were screaming about it in the 1980's and by the early part of the 21st century there is literally no major asset intensive company or institution that does not realize the fundamental importance of physical asset management to their businesses chances at success.Regardless of whether they work for a utility, a mining house, a resource company or any other form of asset intensive organization.

One of the ugly side effect of this however is the appearance of fleets of internal or contractor tactics developers.

You would think I would be happy about that right...?

The problem I see often, though not always, is that they turn the exercise from one focused on asset performance to one focused on data manipulation.

This is often evident when you look at these companies and you see failing or even appalling asset performance, even though there are teams of people squirreling away working like mad wallpapering the entire equipment register with asset tactics....

And for some reason the warning bells don't ring.

The ERP Game (Or, how corporations spend recklessly on IT)

In the light of the recent SAP / Oracle court case I thought it would be worth while revisiting this post.

The ERP game has grown in popularity since the end of the 1980’s. Today a growing number of teams all over the world play the game.

Despite the surge in popularity, there is no record of the rules of the game. Therefore, for the first time, here is a guide to the unwritten rules of The ERP Game.

A busy month...

We have been pretty busy at Reliability Success lately. We have some new ads which have premiered on www.longwalls.com, a site aimed at the underground coal industry. You can see one of them alongside the blog.

We have restarted the newsletter as of today. Took a bit of a hiatus during the past couple of months to focus on my business. The plan is to publish this every two weeks filled with our news, some stuff from the blog, a feature article and tips specific to the newsletter. (You can register here)

Our big news - we have signed a deal with The Reliability Center Inc from Richmond Virginia. We are now their exclusive agent for ProactOnDemandSM, a product I see as potentially revolutionary for our industry.

Why? Because it is an online RCA system. This is a big deal. It is cheaper, can be implemented across a global enterprise extremely rapidly, and means our clients can get a much quicker return on their efforts. You will be hearing more about this over the next few weeks.

For now you can see a 9 minute video here and get a 48 hour demo here. I am really excited about this. I think this changes everything...

In other items our business continues to grow with contracts from Queensland and the Goldfields, and we are in talks with one of the Gas Majors from Australia. Potentially a big deal for us, but still very early days yet.

Stay curious, stay inspired. Al the best.

Beware....

I saw this sign travelling from Dubai to Abu Dhabi one time and it frightened the life out of me.

I was driving along peacefully then all of a sudden - surprises.

What could they be? Is it the road? A herd of wild camels? Do they arrive by carrier pigeon...?

A stretch.. but it is sort of like RCM benefits. They exist sure, but if you don't deliberately go hunting for them they aren't going to just appear.

What are the core arguing points of Asset Management?

I really don't know, but here are some issues that I regularly find rigorous debate and hardened positions. Your comments would be welcomed.

1. Asset selection - Seems to be a continuing push for criticality analysis on everything before starting the work. Not bad except there is no clear and consistent definition of criticality, and it often ends up targeting assets that are working well. (Okay, so that's my view of course)

Techniques often thrown into the mix include:

• FMECA style studies
• Bad actor analysis
• RAM simulations, de-bottlenecking
• Boss's opinion (Winning s surprising amount of arguments)

2. What is optimal? Often semantic debates about details of the final goal rather than concentrating on the journey.

Anyway, the arguments here often spiral around whether a) Its a cost risk trade off, as you spend less risk increases, or b) Its a cost - performance trade off - with safety and environment managed separately.

3. Failure codes and other hot button issues in CMMS implementations. (Every time)

4. The bathtub curve - consistent and entrenched arguments around the application, use and usefulness of the bathtub concept.

5. RCM, PMO or other - I see this ongoing discussion as a good thing. Particularly these days. It shows an interest in the detail and application. The whole equipment strategy thing turned from an optimization step to an almost "dump and run"exercise designed to get strategies in a  CMMS and not overly focused on the material impacts.

6. Use an application of probabilistic techniques. Again, I see this argument as a good thing, and one that seems to show where we think we want to move. The arguments tend to revolve around issues related to availability of data, suitability of external data, and confidence in the answers.

Any of these issues surface often where you are? Or are there glaring elephants in the room I have missed?

RSPT making mine sites like utilities

A rant about the ongoing RSPT debate in Australia. I don't blame you for not reading on...

When I lived in the UK I worked almost entirely with the water and rail sectors of that country. Fascinating experience, and a study in paths of privatization.

The regulatory framework is a bit long and dense, so I wont go into it too much here, but there are elements of the coming Resource Super Profits Tax (RSPT) that are strikingly similar.

Within the water industry in particular there is something called Regulatory Capital Value or RCV.

Fundamentally this is used by the regulator to help them determine what price a water utility should ask for their water over a 5 year period. (Their regulatory cycle) It gives them an agreed idea of the return on capital a company should be able to generate.

This is part of what the federal government is trying to do in Canberra Australia. By calling for a tax on all profits above 6%, they need to have an agreed valuation point to determine profit.

Return on invested capital seems to be the going approach, with the government looking to use historic valuations. meaning - cheaper.

So instead of a system like in the UK where RCV is indexed to the Retail Price Index (RPI), our beloved government is suggesting to state the value of the assets at lower rates. Meaning the tax kicks in on lower cash levels.

In a sense giving miners the ability to earn 6% on past valuations, not valuations that match what they would be bought for, which may be as low as two or three percent today. And for every dollar over that, 40% goes to the Government. (And whatever charges, royalties etcetera)

Makes a lot of small companies with marginal resources suddenly look a lot more appealing than one large one don't they? Not to mention the sudden attractiveness of other resource laden regions such as Canada, Latin America and Africa.

The problem here, when comparing to the UK utility regulatory framework, is that these were once public companies, and the regulator was set up to mimic the impacts of a competitor in their market space.

I don't think there is anybody saying that mining is not competitive is there? At any time there are countless West Perth and Terrace CEO's looking for cash, debt, skilled resources and ongoing client contracts. (The binding sort)

The work in environments with competition and negotiation at their core. Particularly in the unlisted iron ore and coal commodities. And lets not forget that not every year is a good year, regardless of how much demand there presently is in China.

Do they really need a cap on what they can earn? Do they really need to change the underlying financial justifications for many small and medium sized investments started over the past few years?

The further you look into this tax, the more ridiculous and inappropriate it appears. If you had access to 40% of every dollar over 6% profits from a major national industry, and you were charged with spending it wisely for Australians - would you give it to the Federal government?

Where is reliability / maintenance software headed?

I have long been a believer in on-the-web technologies. A big fan of SaaS systems myself I use them regularly in business and in delivering services. In fact most of the world runs a lot like this nowadays.

Except us..While industries from banking to consulting are more and more web based, our companies are fixated with racing towards the old SAP-style architectures of the late 1990's.

I am writing because I stumbled upon an old press release for a company that appeared back near the first internet bubble. A kiwi company called Sparesfinder.com. (Since changed ownership and now based out of the UK)

This is an absolutely great technology, a brilliant idea, and dramatically underused for some reason.

The core concept is simple, to quote their news release:

The service is totally unique in that it allows individual end-users of spares to trade their excess inventory between each other. Also, because the service is delivered through the internet, it provides all subscribers with a global choice of spares instantly and at the touch of a button.

A brilliant idea.

A way to get rid of excess inventory after taking a decision for technology reasons. Or a way to manage obsolescence, purchasing obsolete stock from other companies after upgrades.

The core idea of releasing capital from purchased inventory, easily.

The trick is though, of course there is a trick, the more people are in it - the more useful it is.  But the possibilities are really intriguing. Particularly if it could become a business line for resellers of parts and equipment.

The other is of course emaint.com. Another long lived great little company providing online CMMS to small to medium sized industries.

The benefits of these systems are reaching the "obvious choice" level I think.

• Rent rather than install. 
• The fees are generally lower
• Implementation time characteristically lower
• Functionality is between okay and really great.
• Infrastructure is often a browser
• Access is global. In an instant. 

Then there is Google Apps Engine.. This is a really great little platform. For those of us in reliability in the early 1990's - it is the Microsoft Access for this period!

A relatively easy to learn, scalable, and robust platform allowing us all to create online business applications. Google have effectively turned business applications open source and free. 

The need for data in our game is irrefutable. The means of accessing it, using it and analyzing it is where we really need to be thinking for the next big steps forward in productivity and costs I believe. 

Responses to The Super profits Tax

In Australia, The PM Kevin Rudd, and his cohorts, The Ruddy Gang, have successfully demonstrated that Paul Keating (love him or hate him) was the only economic visionary in that party in it's history.

It's not going to have an impact, it is having an impact already.

A 40% tax on any profits above 6% is tantamount to nationalization, and puts a large portion of wealth generated in this country into the hands of those who are least qualified and least likely to spend it wisely.

The argument is that these are Non-renewable resources. We get one chance to sell them, and we (Australia) needs to benefit from that.

Fair point.

But The Federal Government isn't Australia. We are. Raking off large scale profits, primarily out of Western Australia, so Canberra can squander this cash on bloated government spending, short term point scoring and pork barreling.

If miners are going to see this through, particularly miners with deep cyclical products such as nickel and zinc, then asset costs will need to be reined in, and in a sustainable manner.

This will mean substantial hardening of the asset management practices underlying many companies.

• A focus on more accurate capital projections up to five years out.
• Higher focus on whole of life management of asset performance, not only costs
• Alternative funding avenues for asset maintenance. (PPP, MARC, regulatory frameworks spring to mind)

The need for accurate short term forecasts and performance, tied with greater accuracy in longer term projections, is going to force a sea change on some miners in the short term.

Re-defining the role of Electrical tradespeople

Even at the beginning of the twenty first century, almost every maintenance review we do uncovers a raft of electrical tasks and routines that serve no purpose apart from raising the likelihood of equipment failures.

When I was a baggy shorts apprentice back in the 1980's we used to do lots of tasks like opening up motor termination blocks, and marshaling cubicles and checking for tightness of the terminals.

And then, at least once a year, there would be a huge influx of large DC motors from the mining shovels and draglines which we were supposed to overhaul.

This ended up being a change of the bearings, re-painting the windings to restore the insulations original resistance to failure, and running a wheatstone bridge over the windings looking for indications of early life failures.

In the vast majority of cases this was a dramatic waste of time! And I cannot believe that this thinking still exists today.

Something I have learned - if it is not subject to ambient vibration, and the cables don't move - then nothing is going to come loose! (Period)

In fact, you run the risk of loosening the terminals by mucking around with them. As well as messing up the gaskets, introducing foreign matter and moisture, and a whole host of other issues under the heading of "messing with things that are working fine".

In the case of DC motor overhauls, most of this stuff can be done in situ. Skimming armatures, replacing and bedding in brushes, and getting rid of excess carbon build up are all small and regular tasks that need to be done in situ, not in an overhaul situation.

Bearings should NOT be replaced on a hard time basis! This is one of the greatest scams of modern asset management. Do you really need to re-paint the windings to restore the insulation? I have yet to find a case where not doing this has led to early failures. (But there are many cases where interfering has caused failure!)

So what should Sparkies do then?

There are routine tasks that electricians should be doing, and some of these are above. But principally electricians are there for the hard hitting end of the deal. The moment when it all turns to muck and we need to rapidly get to the bottom of the problem.

The job creation works as outlined above are more likely to lead to failure rather than prevent or predict it. The heart of the problem is our attitudes towards maintenance people and their employment.

If hey aren't actively engaged in maintaining assets then we see them as wasting our funds. Yet with a small mind change we could employ the electrical trades in a lot of higher end tasks such as analytical problem solving and reviewing general maintenance practices.

We don't need to force them into activities that are detrimental to our operations...surely.

At the heart of reliability

"Reliability engineering is concerned with forecasting and preventing failures..."

I just read this in an article I am reading by a respected author and practitioner on reliability engineering. The sad fact is that he is wrong, and this line of thinking has been wrong for about half a century now... old habits die hard I guess.

By forecasting this guy means "forecasting" as in probabilistic modelling. Now while I agree with the use of probabilistic tools where it is warranted, blanket statements like this are what lead people into dramatically over analyzing and over maintaining their plant items.

Lets take the case of a bearing failure. Due to long term minor overloading cracks have developed within the inner race, breaking the surface and rapidly contributing to the deterioration, and ultimately the failure, of the bearing.

The consequences of this failure are severe, so severe that a condition monitoring regime has been put in place and is being done at 33% of the P-F Interval. (To make sure that the onset of failure is detected)

How then are you going to prevent the failure in this case? There's no way known to man.. the bearing is going to fail just as the sun will rise again tomorrow. Nothing in this world will stop it... what we can do however, is preempt it somehow. Through early interventions, changes to the production run cycle or whatever other options you may have.

Are we about predicting failure here? Yes! Not forecasting but predicting as part of our failure management strategy.

And why have we bothered? Because the consequences are severe.

Lets take another example of an over speed switch in a turbine. A plant has 6 turbines. After careful consideration of the demand rates, failure rates and acceptable / tolerable levels of risk we calculate that these need to be checked every 18 months. (say)

We perform our baseline checks and find everything to be okay, and it is not until we check for the third time that we actually find that one of the over speed switches is now in a failed state. (Meaning it will not work to protect the machine if it is needed)

Preventing, avoiding and even (in this case) predicting the failure is way out of the question. Actually it has already failed.

Again we see that the reason why we are doing this at all is not to predict or avoid failure per se, it is to manage the consequences to a tolerable / acceptable level.

So where is all this going...

Even those who are very deeply embedded in probabilistic analysis realize that the likelihood of accurately forecasting failure is very remote. Because the data is never available. In fact, in my own experience with probabilistic analyses I have found that most turn into projects to try to find relevant data to use in the model.

The famous statement on the use of Weibull is that you only need 3 failure points. Fair enough... but getting even those three is often exceedingly difficult.

They need to be of the same failure mode, and if they are serious enough to warrant investigation then they carry significant safety / economic consequences. So analyzing them after the fact is almost in the realm of negligent isn't it?

The whole point of modern asset management is not to predict / forecast dates of failure - it is to manage the failure process where the consequences warrant it!

The Predictive and Detective maintenance examples above are pretty clear on this. And then there are run-to-failure cases, where we have determined that the most effective means of managing the asset is to actually let it fall over.

Do probabilistic methods have their place? Of course!! I'm a big fan of most of them and I use them regularly within my team and our business - but only where they are the best option. (You know the old story, when you have a hammer everything looks like a nail)

The real danger is thinking that it is all about preventing or avoiding failure, it is not - and thinking it is will lead only to frustration, over maintenance, and misapplied maintenance strategies.

I need reviewers for my new book, Interested?

Good to be posting on this blog again. I used to think it was a good idea to be posting on the sites run by trade publications, but I am not so sure anymore. It all ends up being free content from people like me, for publications who run all sorts of stuff without editorial or scientific oversight.

Anyway....the reason for this post is to announce that I am going to be writing what will be my third book in the field of asset management. This is going to be a self published work, and it will cover a range of fields that I have helped to pioneer over the last decade or so.

Since starting out in the game I have been struck with two fundamental problems. The first of them was "why do reliability initiatives fail?" And this is an issue that I have been working through now for over two decades.

The general (read: consultants) answer to this is generally some fluffy statements about vision, management support, toolkits and tools and so on. My opinion? All great for separating clients and their money...not so great for rapid results that last.

The answers I have arrived at spread across a range of issues from the danger of champions, through to the impractical nature of collecting asset data, through to choosing the right projects to start on, and a whole mess of subjects in between.

The second of these two great issues was around corporate involvement. "How can we place asset management firmly at the center of corporate life?". I had a go with my early book on the Maintenance Scorecard, a book which has now formed the backbone of several large institutions rive for strategy.

But ultimately the questions was a bit larger than that. This book is a story that has crossed three different continents, a range of countries and industry sectors, and with input from some of the better minds in this area on the planet.

It is also going to encapsulate a lot of the processes and thinking that I use today in delivering reliability consulting services.

If you receive our newsletter (you can subscribe in the top right hand corner) then I am going to be publishing each of the chapters in draft form for your feedback.

It took me several decades to work out I am not John Moubray so the book will be written in my blog voice. That is, relaxed, casual, and not trying to be a university professor.

I am a bit worried that there are some unethical types who will steal the ideas and pass it off as their own without any form of recognition...but the world is filled with Pirates and I can't be worrying about them all the time.

I swore to never write another book on asset maintenance unless it was something new, unique and worth writing... there are already a heck of a lot of books and articles out there telling us how to be planners, or why RCM will save you money.

I think that this book will be something new... please stay tuned and let me know what you think of the chapters as they roll out.

The SMRP and the Success of good intentions

Since I first started to hear about the Society of Maintenance and Reliability Professionals I have been impressed by their focus and the value they bring to the marketplace.

If you haven't heard about them then they do certification of reliability and maintenance professionals based on experience and a brief test. The idea was to provide practitioners with some form of recognition that employers / clients can use as a benchmark.

I liked the approach when I first heard it, and as the years roll on I like it even more.

But, as always, it doesn't go far enough... While the SMRP have done wonderful things in the states. We have yet to see organizations like the Asset Management Council  (Australia) and the Institute for Asset Management  (UK) endorse and adopt this framework approach.

This is a tragedy I think. Everyone is doing great work around the globe and as much as possible it would be very wise to leverage each others work rather than continually try to reinvent the wheel.

For example, regardless of what you may think of it the work that the IAM did on PAS-55 was world leading and worthy of review and reference by the other institutions at least. The work that the AMC is doing on forming a national council directed to this area is beyond what I have sen in any other nation.

And all three of these organizations produce what is their regions premier events each year in terms of conferences and networking events.

I think pride and a "we do it better" attitude is probably the primary reason for any problems. I think that a level of pragmatism, and accepting that a CMRP certification isn't the end of the road, but merely the beginning. Providing members in all three of these nations with a benchmark for initial benchmarking of reliability skills and experience.

How can we make this happen? At the end of the day these councils and institutes are set up for us, not for their own existence.

What is the skill set of a reliability engineer?

We often get overwrought by trying to work out the skill set that Reliability Engineers should have. In particular people often- almost always- focus on the high end probabilistic functions. And every single time we focus on the  technical capabilities - often missing out altogether the personal and professional skills these people should have.

I am working on a paper relating to this issue as I think it is a vital issue heading into the second decade of the 21st century. Particularly as enterprise seems to have suddenly woken up to the importance of what we do.

In brief, I think the following are basic technical skills:

- RCM (Must have)
- RCA (Must have)
- Maintenance work processes (Must have)
- Weibull and Growth Analysis (Nice to have)
- WoL modelling (Must have)
- Asset Economics (Critical)

A fair challenge for most of us. Particularly as most of us start out with just a focus on our own engineering disciplines.

This is where the challenge really starts. because even if you have a guy with all of these skills what you will end up with is a set of very expertly done analysis on the shelf. With no real hard results to speak of.

The team will be wondering what this guy is doing. The Reliability Engineer will be disheartened because he thinks that nobody is taking him seriously. And from the corporate point of view it is a waste of time and money generally speaking.

This is why they need a range of additional interpersonal skills. No, I am not talking about "effective communication" or other 1980's garbage. I mean real stuff. The sorts of things that takes a role like this from boffin to game changer.

- Can you present? Really present? Tell stories and craft presentations that will have people enthralled and leave them wanting to tell everyone about your work?

- Can you lead others? Not be a manager, but be a leader? Managers administer, leaders inspire. Managers get the job done, leaders paint a vision and charge off in front of the pack.

- Can you get things moving? Not get things done but get them moving. Are you able to get the senior management to be buzzing among themselves about the prospects of real valuable benefits from the work you are doing?

There are a range of other soft skills that I am going to cover in this paper. I think it is a subject whose time has really come.

And...we're back !

After over a year of being very quiet, I am just about to kick this blog back into high gear.

I will post more on this over the next few weeks, but I am on the verge of a historic move back to Australia. (Historic for me and my family anyway) As a result I can get back to one of the things

I most enjoy - blogging and writing about Reliability and Asset Management!

There are also a lot of other activities that I have planned to try to add some real value to the community.

1) If you aren't already a part of our LinkedIn community, then you might want to join. The link is here. We are the largest reliability focused community on LinkedIn and I hope to grow that substantially over the next few months. (Now defunct)

2) I have been posting a lot on my regular column at PlantServices.com. I hope you will follow there and let me know if the posts are of use to you or not. They're good people and they are doing a lot fo the asset management community.

3) Please get involved! It isn't a conversation if there is only one of us doing all the talking. So feel free to comment on the blog, argue, differ, agree or whatever. The goal is to generate a community - not just to give speeches!

4) At the end of January I will be starting a once a month Teleconference / Webinar. I hope this will be a regular event where we will run through issues related to reliability.

And in particular where we will be able to address the very serious issue of why do many reliability initiatives fail! (If you are interested please send me an email.)

5) I will be starting up a newsletter series soon. The primary goal of the newsletter is to deliver so much value that you will feel compelled to tell other people about it. I hope you will stick around for that.

In the meantime, watch this space. I will be posting a few items here regularly until I get settled back in Australia again. And I hope that you will drop back to see how it is all going.

Great to be writing here again!