The Biggest Problem to Your Reliability Program Is…

(Video Transcript)

Hi Everyone.  In this video, we’re going to talk about the biggest enemy to your Reliability Program.  I’m in St. Augustine, Florida at Castillo de San Marcos.  And it is the oldest masonry fort in the United States.  It was originally built to ward off enemies and that’s why it reminds me about Maintenance and Reliability.  Because the biggest enemy to your Reliability program is living in Reactive Mode.

If you’ve ever been there or if you are there now, then you know it means running from fire to fire…and living in Reactive Mode…being at the mercy of your equipment.

To get out of that mode, you can do two very important things.  Number one, you just have to stop and pause.  Figure out your top two or three worst actors in your organization.  And sit down and identify exactly what you need from them.

If you’ve ever done a Failure Modes and Effects Analysis or a FMEA, that’s known as writing Functions.  And when we do that, we write exactly what we need from our equipment.  This helps us to achieve two things.

Number one, it helps us to figure out if our machine can even do what we need it to do, which is one of the biggest causes of chronic failure…is asking it to do something that it can’t.  So, it can uncover some big problems there for you.

But the second thing it sets you up to do is that you can identify causes of failure.  In other words, you can sit down and figure out exactly – specifically – what would cause you not to be able to get out of your equipment what you need.

Now, that’s what Reliability is all about.  Reliability is getting out of our machines what we need.  And identifying what specifically could cause you not to get it is an excellent way to start to become proactive in your organization.

Because when you identify Failure Causes, you set yourself up and you get yourself in a position of strength.  Because then you can figure out exactly how to manage each specific Failure Cause.

And that could be maybe instituting a new Proactive Maintenance task.  Or maybe there’s some sort of a Default Strategy.  Like, maybe you need to test a Protective Device.  Or, maybe in the process you uncovered an error in a tech manual and that allows you to fix it.

So, there you have it.  Your biggest enemy to a Reliability Program is living in Reactive Mode and being at the mercy of your equipment.

And the two top ways to get out of it is to pause.  Identify exactly what you need from your top two bad actors.  And then, identify what specifically is causing it to fail so then you can figure out how to manage each Failure Cause.