Category: Best Practices

Whether your job is to maintain an airplane, a car or a paper machine, reliability stands as a pillar of sustainable success. The efficiency, safety, and longevity of industrial assets depend heavily on the effectiveness of maintenance strategies. However, achieving excellence in maintenance requires more than just reactive fixes and routine checks. It necessitates a…

Digital transformation (DX) refers to the process of leveraging digital technologies to fundamentally change or enhance business operations, processes, and strategies. It involves the integration of digital technologies across all aspects of an organization, including but not limited to customer interactions, internal processes, and business models. Figure 1 : example of DX From automation to…

Yup, it’s 2024 already! And it goes without saying that maintaining machinery at peak performance is not just a goal but a necessity. A well-structured lubrication program stands as the linchpin for ensuring smooth, efficient, and cost-effective machinery functioning. To achieve this, organizations can follow a strategic approach, encapsulated in a four-step framework presented below:…

Reliability refers to how consistent a plant’s operation and performance are. Thus, a plant boasting high reliability demonstrates the capability to sustain consistent production levels, meet market demands, and avert unexpected asset failures and downtime. In accordance with findings and benchmarks from Solomon & Associates and Emerson, top-performing entities in the first quartile manage to…

The latter half of the 20th century saw the rise of globalization, characterized by increased international trade, communication, and cultural exchange. Advancements in technology and transportation broke down barriers between nations, leading to the expansion of multinational corporations and global supply chains. Although globalization facilitated economic expansion and progress, it also prompted apprehensions regarding sovereignty…

When operating a business in today’s demanding markets, there is little allowance for downtime. We can achieve this by ensuring that our machines are running in an optimum state. This is achieved by correctly aligning our equipment and decreasing excessive vibration and temperature. Here are some key points explaining how precision machine alignment contributes to…

When assessing a plant’s performance concerning its production and maintenance activities, we often focus on evaluating the overall reliability of the plant. “Reliability” has become a buzzword in today’s industrial world and can be interpreted in various ways. However, in this article, when referencing reliability, we specifically refer to the consistency of a plant’s operations…

Like life’s patterns, the maturity of reliability programs in a factory follows a cyclic process. The diagram above illustrates the most common stages that most plants currently occupy concerning their reliability maturity relative to maintenance costs. Your specific plant may not align precisely with one of the four identified levels; it might be in-between two…

Brace yourselves because it might sound outlandish: a touch of conspiracy theorist mentality is a good quality for a great reliability engineer! Yes, you read that right – embracing a dash of conspiracy thinking might just be the secret sauce for top-notch industrial machines caretaker.   I know you’ve seen them and are too afraid to…

Implementing condition monitoring tools such as infrared cameras into your plant’s reliability program can yield impressive returns on investments (8 To 12% annual cost reduction through IR thermography). Adopting these technologies can lead to early fault detection and reduce reactive maintenance practices, improving your bottom line. But are you obtaining the full payoff for your…