Volume 15: Welcome: Please select "subscribe to newsletter" on our contact form. Topic: hazardous area trainingWelcome to the 15th issue of our Feed Forward Newsletter; "The Maintenance War Newsletter". This first area of the newsletter is for introductions and commentary. Remember, the website has many new items added each month. So please browse around and find yourself quality maintenance and engineering information. Online version at www.trade-school.education
I would also like to wish everyone a Safe and Happy Summer. With the new year all is a buzz around here as we have many new products and information scheduled to release 2008. We have not waited until the New Year to start delivering though, since the last newsletter we have already released a lot of great new products and many articles. Be sure and review our industrial news area this issue, as we have changed the approach. Typically we forward on to you world news in that area, this time we have used the news area for all our own related industrial news. The theme this issue is targeted towards our readers from the more hazardous industries and mission critical industries. All of our readers can benefit from the best in class standards those industries are required to maintain, whether it be by law or just by the very nature of the processes they require. Hazardous Areas are typically found in large facilities like chemical processing plants, oil production platforms, tank farms, refineries, storage tanks, ships, grain silos, warehouses and other similar areas, which have the risk of explosion or fire due to explosive mixtures of vapors or dusts. While most technical personnel, who work in such facilities or help in designing these installations, are fairly aware of hazardous areas and the risks involved, the report of a recent study carried out by the Health and Safety Executive, UK, is surprising, as well as shocking. It points to the fact, that many so called hazardous area installations, were not up to the standard and some were downright unsafe. Learn more in the article ... Hazardous Area Installation Management I think those in chemical processing plants, oil production, refineries, rubber and plastic manufacturing, transportation manufacturers, food industries, power generation facilities and other similar areas will find this volume of our newsletter of particular interest.
The Accuracy Controlled Enterprise: Moving from Quality Conscious to Accuracy Controlled Production and Maintenance Moving from Quality Conscious to Accuracy Controlled Production and Maintenance. Highly reliable equipment is necessary to reduce production costs and maximize production throughput. High reliability from operating equipment requires high quality reassembly, coupled with the correct operating practices. You can guarantee correct maintenance and proper plant operation by specifying a target and tolerance in maintenance and operating procedures. Having a target and tolerance sets the recognized acceptance criterion. A simple proof-test will confirm if it has been met. Specifying a mark and tolerance range changes the focus from one of simply doing the job; to now doing the job accurately. This results in high quality trades, workmanship and sound equipment operator practices that deliver reliable equipment performance. Those organizations that use "target, tolerance, proof-test" methodology in their procedural tasks move from being a quality conscious operation to being an Accuracy-Controlled Enterprise (ACE). To read more of Mike Sondalini's article, see Accuracy in Production and Maintenance.pdf
The World Wide Web: What is Value Management? Value Engineering? Value Analysis? Equally important as the internet being a tool to network knowledge, is it's value to network people. I was exploring a new contact at "www.Linkedin.com" (a site designed to help you build new contacts in business), of which I have been a member for years. A new friend I made had such an interesting site, I thought I should share it with my readers. I read the content of his site for about an hour, initially just wondering, what exactly is "Value Management"? But after a few minutes it became a quest for me to evaluate how the True Downtime Cost methodology could be used as a tool to solidify and justify Value Management. In an email reply to me, Jim explains ... " I haven't heard of TDC, however, it's possible it could enhance Value Management. True downtime cost could probably be used assist with evaluating the functions of a system that needs improvement. VE stands for Value Engineering. VA is for Value Analysis and VM encompasses both. VE is the term used when the methodology is used in the design phases of a product/process/service. VA is the term used for improving and existing product/process/service." "Cost usually is an important element when trying to improve value. When cost data is available for a VA/VE study, it is used to determine where improvements should be made and to quantify these improvements. However, in my experience, many times cost data is not available. So then the things you mentioned such as RCA and other techniques such as FMEA are used. In these cases, the emphasis is on improving quality, reliability, or solving root cause problems with the system. VA/VE is a systems approach, using and interdisciplinary team, to problem solving. This is the primary focus of most of my studies. It seems that in the nuclear industry and environmental industries that I have worked in the past 15 or 16 years, these are more important than cost." Jim was very detailed in his respond, as the conversation went on about one of his articles that provided a case example. My realization of the need to sense a condition in an airplane with total solid state equipment instead of using a micro hole in a diaphragm, who's quality is detrimental to the sensing. As we all know, most failures are mechanical in nature. :>0 Point being, network with some people this season!
Some TDC and OEE resources online ... What is True Downtime Cost - This site has been dedicated to exploring the True Cost of Downtime. (More accurate and complicated ABC method, simplified by automation and computing power) https://www.mt-online.com/articles/0701_hiddencost.cfm - This article explains how to calculate them using company financial information and simple rules of thumb. https://www.mt-online.com/current/02-00mm.html - How Reliability Affects Earnings Per Share What is OEE & Teep? - Start with a clear understanding of what exactly OEE is and how it is to be used.
Best regards and thanks for being a subscriber to this newsletter, Don Fitchett Managing Editor Feed Forward Publications https://trade-school.education Tel : (573) 547-5630 www.trade-school.education teaches your maintenance crew engineering and asset care knowledge so that they can solve more problems, become more knowledgeable, make better decisions and your plant runs more reliably! Please select "subscribe to newsletter" on our contact form. "The War on Maintenance" newsletter is listed at Mega-Zine (Engineering Ezines) |