First of all let's talk about what Five Whys is before we mention what it is not. It is a problem solving tool used in many facilities and is commonly associated with Lean, Six Sigma and Kaizen implementations. The technique was originally developed by Sakichi Toyoda and was used within the Toyota Motor Corporation during the evolution of its manufacturing methodologies. The method is quite...

When I discuss RCA I use a method called Transitional Root Cause Analysis or TRCA for short.

It is made up of 10 tools that can be explained and understood in a very short period of time.

In the next few minutes I will demonstrate both the simplicity and rules for use for 3 of the 10 and explain why we consider them transitional in nature.

In this blog we will use what I categorize as the tree...

Why do people do training? What a great question to explore your teams motives as well as your own. Here are 7 reasons we have heard recently. Let's look at each one and what it says about the organization and what you might do to improve your training ROI.

New facilities by nature can be reactive. Reactive behavior when it comes to reliability and maintenance is expensive. Our goal should be to be proactive in identifying risk and mitigating or eliminating it before we have to react. When you bring a new plant online there are many things that can drive the culture to be reactive. I have listed a few below:

• Poor start up planning and procedures

The following are quotes I have heard over the years that might not speak well of your maintenance and reliability efforts or the culture that has been created. The question is have you heard any of these in your facility? What did you do?"I don't need a vibration analyzer, I use a screw driver and my ear." 

Root Cause Analysis (RCA) can be a very powerful tool for eliminating defects and increasing efficiency and profits. I have noticed seven common pitfalls that prevent practitioners from getting maximum value from their RCA efforts. Below is a brief look at each of them. 

1) Not digging deep enough into the problem.

This manifest itself as either getting stuck on the physical causes which leads...

So summer is here in the US and when I think of summer I think of food from the grill, cold drinks and fun on the water around the Charleston area where I live. Just this last week I was out on the boat doing a little fishing after work. As I drifted down the river enjoying the water and the cold beverages, I begin to smell the third component of summer… grilled food. Since I had the first two...

So if you could sum up the common areas of focus during reliability improvement efforts what would they be? 

The thought behind this blog post was if someone ask us what we are doing or what all is involved in a reliability improvement effort, how can we give them the scope in a concise, and memorable way. This could be used early on in the discovery or kick off phase to outline without...