Accendo Reliability

My first job with the word “reliability” in the title was at a mining operation, and the whole program fitted on one shelf: a folder of oil sample results that came back from the laboratory each month, and a set of motor vibration readings compared by eye with the month before. When a number looked out of place we raised a work order. It caught faults, and it beat waiting for...

There is a statistic making the rounds in reliability engineering circles that should stop every African plant manager cold.

According to field data compiled across multiple industries on the continent — cement, mining, port operations — more than 70% of rotating equipment failures are not caused by the equipment itself. The bearing...

Root cause analysis loses its value the minute we settle for surface-level explanations like ‘human error,” “inadequate training,” or “poor communication.” These labels feel comfortable yet rarely reflect the real causes. Getting to the root causes and meaningful improvement begins only when we push past the easy answers and examine the systems and decisions that ...

We previously explored FMEA as a structured way of thinking about how systems fail. Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) approaches the problem from a different direction.

Instead of starting with individual failure modes and asking what might happen, FTA starts with an undesirable outcome and asks:

“What could cause this to happen?”

Many assets are repaired and returned to service repeatedly throughout their operating life. Motorized windshield wiper systems used on heavy-duty trucks are one example.

For these repairable systems, the engineering challenge is to compare designs, evaluate performance, and estima...