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