One of the first things I recognized as being different less than year after I left Eastman Kodak and started traveling the world as a consultant was the value of friendships you make in working with people for several years. In the nineteen years I worked at Kodak I made several lasting friendships, people I still call, have lunch with or play a round of golf with from time to time. When you become a consultant you find it difficult to build such bonds. It takes time build a strong friendship, for people to learn your character, to understand that trust is more than just a word.
While I have been lucky enough to make some new friends over the past 10 years, I lost a close one last night. Wilson Sheffet and I became friends through our sons, my son Jared and Wilson’s son Matt wrestled together for six years and in that time our children became friends and Wilson and Dawn became friends of my wife Leslie and I. When our sons were seniors in High School we started a weekly tradition of having breakfast on Sunday morning with Dawn and Wilson. Through that tradition a friendship grew, Wilson and I hunted together, golfed together, continued to follow our high school wrestling team always talked sports.
More important than sports we shared the ups and downs that come with raising children, the expectations you have as fathers, and the proud moments in life that can only be provided by those same children as they grow and venture out to face life head on. We shared the stress and excitement of Weddings and how complete you feel when you first hold and look into the eyes of your grandchild. Wilson and I understood that true love is not hard to find, it comes through your family, it’s the pride you feel in every accomplishment, in every small step we take together and in the smiles we share.
Good Friends are hard to come by. I will truly miss the friendship I shared with Wilson Sheffet!
Friday, January 22, 2010
Thursday, January 21, 2010
RCM Blitz Continues to Grow
Every once in a while I run into someone I worked with years ago and they ask me how are things going? What is going on with RCM Blitz™ these days?
As I go through the list of where we are and who we are working with I’m sometimes even surprised myself at how the process has grown from a one man show to where we are today!
As of January 1, 2010, RCM Blitz™ Facilitator Training is now available in the following locations around the world:
• United States
• Canada
• Mexico
• England
• Ireland
• Netherlands
• Belgium
• France
• Spain
• Australia
• Puerto Rico
In 10 years the capability to deliver RCM Blitz™ around the world has grown seven times and our plan for the immediate future is to more than double that growth in the next year.
In 2007 Allied Reliability and GPAllied purchased an exclusive license for RCM Blitz™ training and facilitation, and we now have offices and resources in Europe, Australia, Central and North America.
In 2010 we presently have four public training events planned for RCM Blitz™ at various locations around the world. If you are interested in attending one of these events please click on the RCM Blitz™ Public Training Link.
Looking forward to seeing you all at one of our public training events!
As I go through the list of where we are and who we are working with I’m sometimes even surprised myself at how the process has grown from a one man show to where we are today!
As of January 1, 2010, RCM Blitz™ Facilitator Training is now available in the following locations around the world:
• United States
• Canada
• Mexico
• England
• Ireland
• Netherlands
• Belgium
• France
• Spain
• Australia
• Puerto Rico
In 10 years the capability to deliver RCM Blitz™ around the world has grown seven times and our plan for the immediate future is to more than double that growth in the next year.
In 2007 Allied Reliability and GPAllied purchased an exclusive license for RCM Blitz™ training and facilitation, and we now have offices and resources in Europe, Australia, Central and North America.
In 2010 we presently have four public training events planned for RCM Blitz™ at various locations around the world. If you are interested in attending one of these events please click on the RCM Blitz™ Public Training Link.
Looking forward to seeing you all at one of our public training events!
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Using the KISS Principal
When it comes to Reliability Engineering and Reliability Centered Maintenance I have always been a believer in the KISS principal. KISS means Keep It Simple Stupid and while some people might be offended by this I firmly believe that our profession contains a large number of people who feel a strange need to impress customers who don’t know better, by using complex reliability tools to obtain simple solutions.
In the world of RCM this most often comes into play when it comes time to determine the frequency of a failure-finding task. Having completed several courses in reliability statistics at RIT I am well aware of the statistical methods we could put to use depending on the availability of failure history and the expected level of reliability my customers would like to see from this component. Living in the real world I also have nearly thirty years experience in the world of maintenance and reliability and I also am well aware recommended industry standards for the frequency of PdM technologies for critical assets.
With over fifteen years experience in providing RCM training, mentoring and facilitation at locations around the world on hundreds of assets and thousands of failure modes I can honestly say I have yet to find more than three instances where I felt the need as a RCM facilitator to check industry standards with statistical methods and in each case the task frequency resulted in a minimal improvement to asset reliability.
Reliability Centered Maintenance on its own is a fairly complex process, if you want to make it slow, cumbersome and nearly unbearable to your RCM team, force your facilitator to lead them through statistical calculations for each failure mode that results in a PdM task. While your managers might be impressed by the calculation, your team just used a torque wrench to install the plastic cap on your valve stem. Being both blunt and brief, you’re wasting both time and money.
In completing this piece it would only be complete unless I was to say where should you use reliability statistics to determine task frequency? The following would all have to be true:
1.The component being analyzed should be a critical asset
2.The company/client you are working with has no experience with this component
3.The failure of this component has dire consequences on health, safety or environment
4.As a facilitator you are not comfortable in using industry standards for PdM frequency
In the world of RCM this most often comes into play when it comes time to determine the frequency of a failure-finding task. Having completed several courses in reliability statistics at RIT I am well aware of the statistical methods we could put to use depending on the availability of failure history and the expected level of reliability my customers would like to see from this component. Living in the real world I also have nearly thirty years experience in the world of maintenance and reliability and I also am well aware recommended industry standards for the frequency of PdM technologies for critical assets.
With over fifteen years experience in providing RCM training, mentoring and facilitation at locations around the world on hundreds of assets and thousands of failure modes I can honestly say I have yet to find more than three instances where I felt the need as a RCM facilitator to check industry standards with statistical methods and in each case the task frequency resulted in a minimal improvement to asset reliability.
Reliability Centered Maintenance on its own is a fairly complex process, if you want to make it slow, cumbersome and nearly unbearable to your RCM team, force your facilitator to lead them through statistical calculations for each failure mode that results in a PdM task. While your managers might be impressed by the calculation, your team just used a torque wrench to install the plastic cap on your valve stem. Being both blunt and brief, you’re wasting both time and money.
In completing this piece it would only be complete unless I was to say where should you use reliability statistics to determine task frequency? The following would all have to be true:
1.The component being analyzed should be a critical asset
2.The company/client you are working with has no experience with this component
3.The failure of this component has dire consequences on health, safety or environment
4.As a facilitator you are not comfortable in using industry standards for PdM frequency
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