What is Predictive Maintenance?
When people talk about predictive maintenance, it is often used as a synonym for condition-based maintenance. But in my view, with the advent of artificial intelligence, lower cost of equipment sensors, and machine learning—there’s a clear difference between predictive maintenance and condition-based maintenance. And that’s what I’ll be talking about in this article. I’ll discuss […]
What are Maintenance Strategies?
When you read about maintenance strategies on the web, there seems to be a belief or confusion that maintenance strategies and maintenance types are the same thing. Search for the term “maintenance strategies” or “maintenance types”, and you’ll probably see the same results—you’ll find articles talking about preventive maintenance, predictive maintenance, corrective maintenance, condition-based maintenance, […]
How to Escape Reactive Maintenance?
Many organisations are stuck and seeking ways to escape reactive maintenance, as they face a ‘vicious cycle of urgent fixes It’s an all-too-common situation. Once you finally get that emergency fixed and resolved… you find yourself looking at 10 more emergencies you need to deal with. And being ‘emergencies’, there is no time to plan. […]
Why standardising your process is a crucial first step before automation
Many of our tasks are automated. But just imagine that you need to manually do some of those. For example, collect and process data from different areas of your plant. That would be a nightmare. And one would think it as a waste of time. But someone’s got to do it, right? That’s why automation […]
The Waddington Effect
Is doing more maintenance ‘good’? It’s common to think so. I mean, it makes sense that the more maintenance you do… the less likely your equipment is to fail. Right? But if that’s the case… Why do we still suffer from poor reliability? Why do we still struggle with emergency breakdowns? Why do we struggle with expensive […]
How to stay reliable DESPITE maintenance budget cuts
How’s your maintenance budget? Chances are you think it’s not enough. And you resent that it’s been cut back for the umpteenth time. Every organisation should have the necessary budget to execute the required maintenance. But that’s often not the case, so… “How do you stay reliable despite numerous maintenance budget cuts?” Now, this is […]
Why do we reward poor behaviour?
When it comes to building a culture of reliability, what you say is important. What you do is even more important. But what you reward is KEY to your success. And we want nothing more than to reward good behaviour and good employees. See, people must feel valued and committed to their work to sustain […]
Does your CMMS Suck? 10 things to consider when choosing the right CMMS for your organisation
Ever watched a group of maintenance professionals heatedly debate over software? If not, go ask them which is the best Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS). And you’ll see a lot of passionate (and sometimes humorous) discussions. See, after 20+ years in the industry, it still fascinates me how this topic causes a lot of arguments […]
RCM’s bad reputation
Improving reliability has always been the top priority of many maintenance managers and practitioners. And so as an industry, we’ve come up with numerous strategies to help us achieve that goal. One notable strategy that has created hype in the maintenance world is Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM). See, everybody wants to join the RCM bandwagon […]
Your CBM Efforts Will Fail Without Effective Planning & Scheduling
This article first appeared in reliable plant. You can read the first version of this article here. Many maintenance organisations around the world are reactive. They experience excessive breakdowns, low productivity, and high maintenance costs. To break this reactive cycle, a common solution organisations implement is Condition-Based Maintenance. The problem is this strategy rarely works. […]
