December 15, 2005
Infrared Tip
How to save time generating reports
With each new generation of thermographic camera the time needed to generate reports is reduced. For example, the introduction of onboard digital recording eliminated the need for Polaroid screen shots and analog video recording. Another more recent example is in camera data logger software that eliminates the need for ineffective voice recording.
1. Use templates that automatically load thermal and visible images.
2. Record images with the appropriate measurement tools on the image. Some systems will automatically recreate in the report software the same analysis and report the result to a table in the report template.
3. Record images with file names that have some reference to the equipment inspected. If your camera does not have this feature use a small notebook and create a cross-reference list to the default file names assigned by the camera.
4. Use automatic multi-page report generation software or create your own macros in MS Word if possible.
5. If your camera has the ability to create data recording fields use them consistently
6. Create a permanent link between the IR image and visible control photograph
Follow these practices and you should be able to generate a 20-page report in less than 2 minutes.
Tip provided Electrophysics
Tel: (973) 882-0211
Win a Harley and get a Flash HotShot Demo
December 15, 2005
The Enterprise Asset Management Summit
EAM-2006
March 8-10
3 days of focused learning and networking in Las Vegas
EAM-2006 Workshops include:
• The Manufacturing Game by Winston Ledet
• MRO Inventory Optimization by Gene Moncrief
• Leadership and the SAP Plant Maintenance Tool by John Hoke, CMRP and Lorri Craig, of Reliability Solutions
• Be Brilliant with the Basics: Making Maximo Work by Steve Richmond, Projetech Inc.
Short Courses include:
• Using CMMS/EAM effectively to Implement Reliability Best Practices by David Hurst and Ramesh Gulati ,ATA Arnold Air Force Base
• Planning a Start-up by Kevin Lewton, MET DEMAND LLC
• Unleashing the Power of the EAM As a Reliability Improvement Tool by Bill Keeter, BK Reliability Engineers
• MRO Excellence – Equipment Available to meet Customer’s Expectations by Kevin Lewton, MET DEMAND LLC
• Connecting Reliability to EAM by Ricky Smith, CMRP, IVARA
• What I Wish I Had Realized at Go Live – Learning’s from SAP PM Renewal Efforts by John W. Hoke and Lorri A. Craig, Reliability Solutions
• Accelerating Implementation & Use of Maximo by Steve Richmond
• MP2 Tips and Tricks by Leanne Joseph, CMMS data group
Plus 9 “how we did it” EAM/CMMS Case studies!
Register before January 31 to get:
4 Star Hotel just $60 per night!
$200 Early Bird Savings
EAM/RCM-2006 event attendance is limited to 500 – Call toll free to participate and for group discounts (888) 575-1245 or…
December 15, 2005
Motor Testing Tip
Determining if Your Power Station is Sufficient
When using CSA (Current Signature Analysis) it is useful to look for events that will tell if the power station is providing enough to drive the loads or feeder cables sections to the machines sufficiently. What needs to be done is correlation of the current, voltage and load graphs at the same time. With this increased current, increased load, and voltage drop can be recognized. If this is found, it might indicate an insufficient power condition.
When the load augments slightly and the feeder cables section is small, this causes an immediate voltage drop. In cases like this a saturation of the core happens with a resultant temperature increase.
By building a “skin” within the CSA software tool that shows the needed graphs appropriately many headaches can be avoided.
Tip provided by Baker Instrument
Tel: (800) 752-8272
http://www.bakerinst.com
December 15, 2005
Maintenance Tip
YOU WANT, HOW MUCH MONEY?
The end of the year is near. If your maintenance operation is based around the calendar year, you may want to consider the following to prepare for 2006.
Budget Development
You can’t operate without some sort of budget. Minimally, you need money for labor (employees or contracted services) and materials (items in house that you already own or buying parts and materials next year).
If you run maintenance with or without a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS), the issues are very similar. However, if you have a CMMS, budget development may be much easier and the system itself may need some “year end” attention.
So, if you have a computer based system, you may not need to read this. You already have your budget done, right? And, it was based on the following, right?
REPORTING YOU SHOULD EXPECT FROM YOUR CMMS
Financial reports
Account Summary Report with Year To Date (YTD) totals for each valid account (account numbers and descriptions provided by the Accounting Department), which are arrived at by the CMMS accumulating all Work Order and Purchase Order activity. Sorted by Account Number and totaled at the bottom. This shows you how much money you spent from each bag of money the front office provided access to.
Equipment Cost reports
Equipment Cost Summary reports, with YTD totals for each piece of Equipment that you have done work on during the year. This listing should specify total labor costs (employee and contractor) and total materials costs (from stock or purchased as needed) as well as the combined total. The equipment/assets should be sorted according to the most costly equipment to maintain, to the least costly. The individual totals reflect the cost to maintain those pieces of equipment and the accumulated total should reflect the cost of doing the maintenance work in 2005. Also, the total will not likely match the total of the Account Summary, because it is not likely that all parts and materials purchased throughout the year, were used……but, remain in the storeroom/stockroom.
Inventory reports
Inventory Cost Summary report should total how much money you have tied up in repair parts, materials, supplies and spares. This should make up the vast difference between the totals generated for the two preceding reports. Trending the “total” value will provide feedback as to the effectiveness of your efforts to standardized parts/materials, consolidate vendors, control inventory traffic and support a proactive maintenance program (predictive, preventive, TPM, RE, etc).
Failure Analysis reports
Various reports should be available to identify those pieces of equipment that need more maintenance resources and those that require less (so you can appropriately make adjustments to your budget requests, based on facts). Coupled with the Cost to Maintain reports, the CMMS should be able to produce Failure Rate and Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) reports. These reports can identify how often pieces of equipment fail (availability) and how long they’ll run after fixed (dependability). Those pieces of equipment with high maintenance costs, may or may not have high failure rates or short MTBFs. It is also possible to spend too many resources on maintenance efforts that achieve marginal, if any, added benefits.
Manpower projections
With your preventive maintenance data as a base, the CMMS should be able to project the manhours of “preventive”/ ”repetitive” work. Coupling this with a projection of the current backlog, the system should be able to reasonably project your workload for 2006.
Materials projections
Assuming that your CMMS has the capability of, and that you have estimated the materials for, ”preventive”/”repetitive” work, the system should also be able to, at least, project the dollar value of pats and materials need for the execution of these tasks.
Outside resources
By analyzing Purchase Orders from 2005, you should be able to determine how much of that manpower and materials had to be obtained “from the outside”.
Armed with this information, and the ability to “drill down” into the work order or purchasing data that forms the foundation of the reports, you should be able to make pretty reliable decisions as to what money you need for what. Just remember those “special projects” and capital improvement. Don’t let them slip a budget by you that include this kind of work without an account number (and money) that will pay for it. Ask Peter. He’ll pay Paul.
Tip provided by Glen Veno
Ashcom Technologies, Inc
http://www.ashcomtech.com/
December 08, 2005
The 2006 National Plant Engineering & Maintenance Show
March 21-23, 2006
Rosemont Convention Center
Chicago IL
The 2006 National Plant Engineering & Maintenance Show and Conference™ connects you with the leading suppliers, focused product pavilions, and a leading application oriented conference with more than 250 all new sessions and workshops – all engineered to help you innovate, work smarter and excel.
Held during National Manufacturing Week®, you’ll have the unique opportunity to find new products and technologies to make a safer, more reliable, and more productive plant with less overhead. No other event gives you this much insight, interaction and actionable ideas you can put to use right now to better compete in the global marketplace.
Please stop by and say hello as Reliabilityweb.com, Reliability Magazine and Uptime Magazine sponsor the Reliability Pavilion with leading solution providers in one convenient location.
December 08, 2005
Maintenance Tip
Beware of the Scale!
Most reliability technicians deal with detailed numbers and charts that will spin the heads of engineering students. Managers deal with information in the immediate sense, with rapid-fire decisions. For both groups, it is the nature of their respective jobs.
In a still reactive maintenance environment , but working toward proactive with predictive technologies, a difficult agenda for the technicians is to convince managers that a particular item is exhibiting symptoms of failure. Paperwork with comparison graphs can help, but only if the scales are set the same.
Comparison charts have the initial “in tolerance” results, and an “alarm” chart showing the increase in noise, vibration or particulates. These alarm charts are usually on a larger scale, causing the chart lines to look the same, but on different scales. The same can be said for success stories, but with the charts reversed.
With the scales set the same, the manager can compare the two graphs and make the decisions necessary to help his operation eliminate potential losses. The quick visual allows the manager to process the information that the technician is trying to convey, creating a win-win situation.
Reader Tip submitted by Robert Calvert
Fabrication Maintenance Superintendent/Reliability Manager
Cargill Meat Solutions
Plainview Texas
Thanks Robert - your Maintenance Tips hat is on the way!
December 08, 2005
Motor Management Workshop by Howard Penrose Ph.D, CMRP
February 21 to 24, 2006
Glen Ellyn, Illinois
Is your maintenance program effective? If not, what is preventing its success?
Join the leaders in maintenance and reliability for a three day seminar taught in an open classroom environment. Bring your questions and an appetite to learn. Learn to be more proactive in your maintenance programs by selecting
the right maintenance, on the right equipment, at the right time, for the right reasons using a simple process.
At the completion of this seminar, the attendee will have the tools and knowledge to have an immediate impact on the reliability of your motor systems and your bottom line! Review and correct your maintenance, repair vendor issues, best practices, repetitive failures and more!
Topics include:
• Condition Based Monitoring
• Motor Circuit Analysis
• Electrical Signature Analysis
• RCM-Based Motor Management
• Setting Condemning Criteria
• Time To Failure Estimation
• Selecting Test Frequencies for CBM
• Root-Cause-Failure-Analysis
• Repair vs Replace
Tel: 860 575-3087 Fax: 860 577-8537
December 08, 2005
Root Cause Analysis (RCA) Tip
RCA Definition and Approaches:
The most consistent definition of root cause analysis (RCA) is provided in the handbook put out by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE): “Guidelines for Incident Investigation, 2nd Edition, 2003.” In this guideline, an incident (loss, near hit, problem, etc.) has one or more (so far, always more than one) causal factors (previously know by many names) and each causal factor has multiple root causes.
The definition in this guideline was debated for many years leading up to the issue of the 2nd edition, but we all finally agreed that a root cause should be defined as: “A fundamental, underlying, system-related reason why an incident occurred that identifies a correctable failure(s) in management systems.” Note that the definition of a root cause does not include blaming on the individual but rather focuses on the underlying reasons why a part fails or why a human makes a mistake. This definition was specially chosen based on decades of experience by the large group of chemical companies who contributed to the writing of the guideline; they had discovered that the only way to improve systems long-term was to focus on things they can fix. They recognized that parts fail because of human error (usually at the management system level) and that direct human errors are also the result of weaknesses in management systems.
Management systems include procedures, training, communication methods, administrative controls of various kinds including management of change, supervision, and risk reviews (such as FMEA). A specific management system of increasing focus is the control of human error through optimization of human factor engineering. This involves following best practices in design of the human-machine interface, using the best rules for writing procedures, and setting up the best methods for communication.
Literally dozens of competing approaches have been used in RCA over the past 50 years. Many have proven ineffective at getting to root causes and several require you to already know the answer for them to work! The best approaches appear to those that allow a team to work backwards for known events and ask good cause-effect questions, which in turn lead to other questions. These questions must then be answered by gathering data from the right sources in the right way.
Secondly, the RCA approach needs a consistent way to determine the management weaknesses that led to each causal factor (component failure or direct human error). The oldest method, called 5-Whys, Why-Tree, and several other names, is still valuable for this step, but most analysts will couple it with a pre-listing of possible management system weaknesses to help ensure both thoroughness and consistency in this step of determining root causes. The pre-listings are called by many names and some are proprietary in nature, but the more popular ones share 90% of the same root causes and have similar structure. The more popular root cause charts are provided by:
http://www.process-improvement-institute.com
http://www.absconsulting.com
http://www.taproot.com
The chart from Process Improvement Institute is free for the asking. And at least snippets of the other methods are described in the AIChE handbook’s supplemental CD of examples.
Training of new RCA leaders normally takes 2-3 days. Most of that time is needed to learn how to complete the analysis up to determination of causal factors. After that point, the determination of root causes is straightforward in most cases.
So, there are industry-endorsed approaches to RCA and easy ways to learn more about these (such as by obtaining the AIChE guidelines book at http://www.aiche.org or contacting one of the firms at the web sites listed above).
Regardless, RCA is an integral part of any comprehensive maintenance management system. Without, we are doomed to leave root causes undiscovered and therefore suffer repeated losses for the same reasons.
Reader tip submitted by William Bridges, President, Process Improvement Institute, 11003 Crosswind Drive, Knoxville Tennessee 37922
December 08, 2005
Cooling System Tip
Electrical Test for Voltage in Dry Land and Marine Equipment Cooling Systems
The following procedure will test a complete system for voltage - with the exception of an electrical current which can be generated by the rear end and transmission. This is particularly true with air bag suspensions, rubber pad suspensions, and rubber mounted transmissions. Any current generated will travel up the drive shaft to ground through the engine coolant. We recommend grounding rear ends and transmissions to the frame rail the battery is grounded to.
EQUIPMENT REQUIRED
A multi-meter or voltmeter capable of reading both AC and DC currents is required. The meter needs to read 0 to the maximum voltage of the system being tested in tenths of a volt. The meter leads must be long enough to reach between the coolant and the ground side of the battery. We do not recommend a digital voltmeter.
TEST PROCEDURES FOR DRY LAND MACHINERY
• Attach the proper meter lead to the ground side of the battery, negative to negative or positive to positive.
• Install the second lead in the coolant, touching the coolant only.
• Read the DC and AC voltage with all systems off. If a block heater is present, also take a reading with the heater turned on. If an automatic battery charger is present, as in a stand-by system, also take a reading with the system running. Turn engine off and read DC and AC voltage.
• Read the DC and AC voltage with the electrical starter engaged.
• Read the DC and AC voltage with the engine running and all systems turned on; lights, heaters, air conditioning, two-way radio, and the radio on both stand-by and transmit.
• Remove the lead from the coolant and repeat the DC and AC voltage tests with the lead touching the top radiator tank metal hose connection.
• Remove the lead from the coolant and repeat the DC and AC voltage tests with the lead touching the outside of the engine block.
Tip provided by POLARIS Laboratories
Tel: (317) 808-3750
Click here for voltage test procedures for marine applications
December 08, 2005
Invitation to the First World Congress on Engineering Asset Management
On behalf of the Organising Committee, we invite you to attend this inaugural World Congress combining the interests of both academic and industry groups. The Congress is being held at Conrad Jupiters Conference Centre at the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia, 11-14 July 2006.
The objective of WCEAM is to bring together leading academics, industry practitioners and research scientists from around the world to:
• Advance the body of knowledge in engineering asset management,
• Strengthen the link between industry, academia and research,
• Promote the development and application of research, and
• Showcase state of the art technology
1st biennial WCEAM is being organised by the CRC for Integrated Engineering Asset Management (CIEAM) and the Maintenance Engineering Society of Australia (MESA). It brings together a number of major international conferences:
• The Asia Pacific Conference on Systems Integrity and Maintenance (ACSIM) hosted by CIEAM,
• The Condition Monitoring Conference hosted by the British Institute of Non-Destructive Testing, (BINDT)
• The Intelligent Maintenance Systems Conference (IMS)
hosted by the IMS Center in the USA, and
• The International Conference of Maintenance Societies (ICOMS ® 2006) hosted by MESA
1st WCEAM is a refereed congress. All final papers will be peer reviewed in full by a panel of international experts. Industry case studies will also be featured. The congress will also host selected short courses in Asset Management on July 14 2006.
Delegates will attend from all parts of the world and will include professionals from many areas of government (including policy makers), academia and industry.
The Congress will consist of keynote presentations, oral submitted presentations and poster submitted presentations.
We encourage you to submit abstracts for consideration online once the call has commenced.
We hope that you will plan on joining us at the Gold Coast in July 2006.
Regards
Joseph Mathew Chief Executive Officer CIEAM
Jim Kennedy National Chairman MESA
