The
One Absolutely Critical Point
RCM,
FMEA and the like
All
Miss!
Engineering Driven Reliability (EDR)
is the new method for the future of reliability.
Using a plant criticality scoring system (FMEA style) on current machinery is
a fine approach for prioritizing equipment importance. A criticality ranking
method like FMEA lets you identify what plant is important to your continued
operation.
With that knowledge you can decide your asset management strategies. These
include your spares holding strategy, preventive maintenance strategy,
predictive maintenance strategy and your equipment replacement plans.
FMEA (Failure Mode and
Effects Analysis) is one of several methods used for risk assessment and
enterprise operational risk management. FMEA also plays a key part in QS 9000.
An alternate criticality rating method used in Japan is also discussed in 'The
Pocket Maintenance Advisor' available from Feed Forward Publications (www.feedfoward.com.au).
For new equipment I would do a full RCM
(Reliability Centered Maintenance). In new equipment you want to get rid
of failure risk and operating problems at the component level. RCM will do that
for you. It's the approach to use when you want to design failure-free
equipment.
In a way RCM and
FMEA are similar.
They both focus on reducing business risk from equipment failures. They both
deliver a list of design improvements and better operating practices that if
implemented to the highest of standards produce greatly improved plant
reliability.
The difference is FMEA risk assessment is at the plant equipment
level, whereas RCM detects risk at the individual part and subassembly
level.
The one major limitation with these techniques is that they do not encourage
creative, innovative, new discoveries! They simply promote best practice methods
and designs, not break-through, earth-shattering, technological revolutions!
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 Imagine
if Thomas Edison, the inventor of the electric light bulb, had it in
his mind to only improve how lighting worked in his day! What if he
had approached the task of developing better lighting with an RCM or
FMEA mindset? I reckon every night we would now be striking a match to
light the longest-lasting, brightest candles in the world!
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I hope you can see my point. RCM and FMEA will not break you out of using
today's limiting technologies and designs that we all have to live with (at
least until the next 'Thomas Edison' comes along). With RCM and FMEA you just
end up 'making a better mouse trap' and you never discover the new ideas that
keep the mice away in the first place.
I hate the limiting technological choices we have to use to build our
machines and our businesses! Why can't we invent new equipment technologies to
give outstandingly reliable plant? Other industries have!
Do you realize that from the 1970's to the 1990's our entire communication
system was revolutionized? We went from sending letters that at best took a week
to get a reply, to now sending emails that get replies in minutes.
That is a communications revolution the like of which humanity has ever seen
before! That happened over a 20-year period! 20 years ... only 20 years ... to
totally change the way we communicate and make the world better forever!
We need the same thing to happen with the technologies we use in our plant
and equipment. We need the equivalent of the 1970's - 1990's 'communications
revolution' in our industrial equipment.
It saddens me to think that roller bearings were invented nearly three
hundred years ago when the first clocks were built, and we still use them today.
They were definitely a wonderful discovery, and in three hundred years we have
got them just about right. But they are not the best solution.
The best solution is a frictionless, lubrication-free, unfailing, unbreakable
device. Where is it? Three hundred years is too long to be waiting for the next
revolutionary invention in rotating shaft support technology. We must research,
innovate, discover, challenge, adventure, excite, explode away from three
hundred year-old solutions to our problems!
Thankfully great technological advances are happening with some equipment.
The most astounding one I know of is the magnetic shaft coupling (the magdrive
pump is another good one).
You can now buy a shaft coupling containing rare earth magnets that lets a
motor drive a piece of equipment without having to physically connect the
shafts. That is wonderful! No physical contact between parts, only magnetic
force fields. That is the sort of equipment engineering revolution I want to see
more of!
The magnetic coupling is even more fantastic for equipment maintainers and
users, because it does not require perfect alignment. You can be out of line by
6 mm (1/4"), and the motor will still drive the equipment. That means my
11-year old girl can set it up. It doesn't need a trained technician to get the
shafts perfectly in-line with laser shaft alignment equipment. But there is
more!
The new technologies I want will do even greater things for us! They will
forgive human errors and still operate perfectly. The magnetic shaft coupling is
a great example. You can't destroy the motor or the equipment because the
magnetic fields decouple and unlatch the two shafts. So nothing breaks! It needs
no maintenance!
You can make 'human error' after 'human error' and the plant is unaffected!
It can't be broken! That's marvelous news to every operator and maintainer's
ear. And it makes businessmen jump for joy too! There will be no need to allow
for costly maintenance in the budget!
One day we humans will want to fly to Mars and the planets beyond, and come
back. But we cannot take a maintenance workshop, a machine shop and a warehouse
full of parts to fix our spaceship on the way. We must build equipment that
cannot fail. We must have equipment that does not need maintenance. We must have
equipment that is fantastically energy efficient. And we must invent them soon!
Yes, it's good that your company wants to use RCM and FMEA. I encourage
everyone to apply RCM and FMEA and RCA and TPM and OEE and the rest. It's all
that we can do at the moment to improve our plant and equipment. And they do
work.
Properly implemented they can make a massive improvement to your bottom line
results (better to have efficient, failure-free candles than to have to live
everyday with candles that keep going out!).
But they will not give you the 'Thomas Edison type' industry-changing,
world-revolutionizing, humanity-advancing solutions we desperately need to have
if we really want to get past our industrial equipment maintenance problems and
let humanity fly to the stars!
The problem of technological limitations on equipment reliability
(reliability engineering) has absorbed my thoughts and efforts for many months
now. I do not believe that we can ever successfully prevent equipment failures
by using the methods and technologies available to us today! Even using today's
very best operating methods, designs and training, our technology will let us
down in a comparatively short time!
I believe the best approach to rocket reliable equipment is to force
technologically innovation to its absolute limits!
Engineering Driven
Reliability (EDR) is the new method for the future of reliability. No
longer will reliability depend on people doing the right things! Through
technological innovation and engineering advancement EDR will insure reliability
is built into the machine!
We will have machines and equipment that cannot fail, and remove forever
today's situation where we work to keep the machines going!
Keep an eye on my new web site www.lifetime-reliability.com
where you will be able to get designs of outstanding reliability engineering,
giving equipment lifetimes more than three and four times normal! You are
welcome to become part of a network of engineers, design engineers and
technicians motivated to produce new, outstandingly reliable equipment designs.
Best regards,
Mike Sondalini
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