Pareto Analysis

Pareto Analysis is a key tool for reliability engineers, but what is it and what is the benefit?

Pareto analysis was developed by an Italian economist (amongst other fields) who analysed the wealth of Italy.  Wilfried Pareto discovered that 80% of the wealth (Land) of Italy was owned by only 20% of the population.  This coined the phrase of the 80/20 rule - 80% of your effects come from 20% of your causes.  How can this be applied to reliability engineering and the mining industry?

80% of downtime are caused by 20% of component failures.
80% of maintenance spending are caused by 20% of the equipment.
80% of stock costs are caused by 20% of the stock.
80% of failures are caused by 20% of the defects or issues.

The Pareto analysis is a fantastic tool for analysing data, particularly for defect elimination.  As one of the keys to successful reliability engineering, defect elimination is focused on finding the key issues affecting the equipment and solving them.  This is where Pareto analysis helps to identify those issues that have the largest impact on the equipment.  The chart below demonstrates an example that could have been found on a dozer fleet.  The bars display the effect of the issues from highest to lowest.  These could represent downtime hours, costs, failure events or any measurable unit.  The red line displays the cumulative percentage of each issue.  This graph shows a hand full of issues and after only 9 issue types, 80% of the downtime is identified. 

The important note for this analysis is that it is dependent on the data it is analysing.  Quality data is a critical part of a reliability engineers role and the team must work to ensure the data compliments their analysis.  For more info read "Understanding your data"

The ability to identify the key issues for the fleet, allows for the reliability team to prioritise their projects.  This creates projects that can deliver maximum value to the business.  The key benefit of Pareto analysis is this ability to demonstrate why the RE teams projects are important and what they are trying to solve.

FYI - How do you pronounce it?
http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/audio.pl?bixpar02.wav=Pareto

Looking towards composites

Over the past 50 years composites have become a big part of engineering design. These composites provide lightweight and high strength options, however they have commonly incurred a high cost for manufacture.

The recent increased use in large industries (airplane design, advanced ship building, consumer goods) has led to the cost for manufacture reducing. How do these products reach the industry? An industry where reliable products pay for themselves very quickly!

This creates a huge potential for reliability engineers in the mining industry. Composite materials could be used for many options increasing durability, component life or reducing servicing requirements. These could include gaskets, guards, covers or even entire components.  Many components on mobile mining equipment, such as Dozers, experience high levels at vibration at the top of the machine.  This scenario leads to cracking of the components when made of metal strucutres (commonly steel or aluminium).

The hardest step to take is through research and development of potential options. Reliability engineer's focus is mostly directed towards defect elimination and RCA, as these have the most obvious impact on the fleet. There is a large opportunity in the mining industry for composite manufacturers to develop good relationships with reliability engineers to identify potential applications.  This could be a larger opportunity if the work can be developed with OEMs to develop class leading machines for the next generation.  An example of this is how Airbus have developed composite materials for their A380 with researchers.

Please feel free to leave any comments or email us about your thoughts or ideas of composites in the mining industry.

Accepting pain now, avoiding catastrophe later

A sure fire way to steadily watch your Reliability of equipment reduce, is to allow maintenance to be performed to a sub-standard quality in an effort to meet production expectations. By saying sub-standard I am referring to the practices of;

• taking shortcuts
• not completing work to specifications
• doing enough to "keep it running"
• utilising a band-aid measure as a long term fix

Allowing this culture to foster in any maintenance department contradicts the principles of RE and will not allow any department to reach world class operations.

The proven practice that will facilitate world class operations is to "wear the pain now to avoid catastrophe later". Now this doesn't mean the minute a breakdown occurs you must complete the required maintenance in full, this is unrealistic in most cases. What it does mean though, is not to let a band-aid repair be the only maintenance completed and the defect or failure is forgotten about.

As an example I am going to pick on structural repairs on mobile and field equipment. Without thorough and tightly managed maintenance on structural defects in a timely manner, what you poorly repair today will potentially lead to a catastrophic failure and an exponentially larger amount of equipment downtime in the future. Follow repair specifications, use experienced and competent tradespeople, ensure to find the root cause of the issue. These are elements that promotes reliable structural repairs and these elements should be applied to any quality maintenance task.

Maintenance departments cannot afford to complete sub-standard maintenance in resource industries where every dollar counts. Reliability Engineers must influence the department and foster a Reliability centred culture to ensure informed decisions are made at all levels. Maintenance mangement cannot allow  production pressures to completely govern the maintenance of equipment.

Without the Reliability culture driving decisions, you commit your KPIs to downward trends for the future. Instead, wear the pain in the here and now, band-aid if you must and correctly complete the work at the next planned maintenance time. Accept short periods of downtime now, utilise the principles of RE to prevent a reoccurance of the downtime and only then can the maintenance team reap sustainable benefits in the future.

If you have examples or ideas of managing short term downtimes to avoid catastrophic failures, please feel free to comment or email us to discuss.

iPad and Engineering

The role of a reliability engineer is to get the most out of your equipment and that means the REs must always be looking for new technologies. The iPad or tablets can be a fantastic tool for engineers or maintenance department to utilise.

http://www.apple.com/au/ipad/business/ipad-at-work/#create

Tablets allow for the reliability engineer to manage projects out in the workshop.  Being locked into the office to use the computer can restrict the RE from where they need to be, out working with the maintainers, developing projects and promoting the reliability culture. 

Both Alex and I use an iPad to manage our projects, meetings, emails and as a diary.  We have found that taking the step to tablets eliminates the need for diarys.  There is also huge potential for the use of tablets in the maintenance department moving forward as other technologies improve. 

Paper work could be eliminated through the use of tablets by maintainers.  Work orders can be completed at the job and instantly updated.  Machine specs or manuals can be access without leaving the job.  Live machine data (VIMS, VHMS etc) can be monitored from an iPad as you watch the equipment in operation to identify performance issues.  The only limit on what it can be used for is the desire of the company to adopt new technologies into their systems.

We will be blogging about new ways to use an iPad for work each month.  The future of iPad use in engineering is very exciting and will greatly improve the RE role for all aspects of failure prevention. 

Failure Prevention

If you have any questions about using the iPad at work feel free to comment or email us.

Adam Chater - adam.chater@miningreliability.com

Understanding your data

Data is key for reliability engineering, it provides the maintenance department with information about the condition of the equipment.  It is of the highest importance that the reliability team understand what the data represents and what factors impact the quality of the data.  This understanding will allow the RE team to prioritise what issues are having the greatest affect on the business and the equipment.  Each site needs to review what data they have and where it comes from, to determine the most effective data set for managing their equipment.

Teams that don't review the data and always focus on what they have always used, don't improve their understanding of what has the largest impact on the fleets.  If the analysis of the equipment performance is not regularly adapted and review the mine site will never be able to reach world class reliability.

Quality data will lead to good decisions about what projects to focus on for reliability improvements.  While it is not commonly the responsibility of the RE team to enter the data, it is their role to develop the maintenance department process to improve the quality of the data. 

The department must understand their data and the data must drive their decisions.

Mining Reliability is Live!

Miningreliability.com is now up and running!

Our website has been created to share what reliability engineering is relative to the mining industry. There are many books and articles that focus on reliability engineering with fixed plant. We have found that these can provide some good ideas, but were not very applicable to reliability engineering within the mining industry and open cut equipment.

Alex and I worked on what steps you would take to achieve world class reliability and what the reliability role entails. How do you manage large amounts of mining equipment that can be hard to monitor and how do you engage a large workforce to promote a reliability culture.

We are going to each post once a week discussing a topic, commenting on the mining industry or reviewing technology that can help achieve world class reliability.

Mining Reliability is almost live!

A few more edits and the site will go live at www.miningreliability.com

Once the website is done, Alex and I will begin to provide weekly blogs about reliability and the mining industry.