reliable plant May 2006

Manufacturing plants use a wide variety of power tools. From electric drills and impact wrenches to reciprocating saws and air chisels, power tools are utilized throughout the facility by...

The CHDA (1,4-cyclohexanedicarboxylic acid) production plant that I work at experienced a significant decrease in conversion efficiency due to oil contamination of a fixed bed reactor catalyst. The...

In the Reliability Forum department of Reliable Plant magazine, suppliers provide their insights to a question posed by editor Paul V. Arnold. This issue, the call went out to manufacturers of hand...

A whopping 94.7 percent of plant maintenance managers feel they are not using their computerized maintenance management software system to its maximum capability, according to the results of a...

Research shows that America’s 350,000-plus manufacturing facilities annually spend nearly $200 billion on indirect materials (also known as maintenance, repair and operations [MRO] products)....

In parts 1, 2 and 3 of this column series, I outlined the need for developing maintenance leadership (visit the Reliable Plant Web site at www.reliableplant.com to read these articles). This column is...

Why don’t more reliability programs deliver successful results? It’s not for a lack of condition monitoring technologies. In fact, the technologies are often considered to be the easy part....

If you’ve read any of my previous articles, you may have noticed a few references to the term “talent management” and may have wondered what that means. It’s just not a commonly used term outside of...

In honor of May’s designation as National Hand Tool Safety Month, Reliable Plant magazine provides the following 30 safety tips created by the Hand Tools Institute. The institute, founded in 1935,...

We’ve all heard from reliability experts that the “bathtub curve” – the poor, misunderstood bathtub curve – fails to accurately reflect a machine’s failure rate as a function of time. While there...

The world of thermography is expanding faster than ever before, with new applications, markets and cameras. More and more maintenance practitioners are putting this remarkable technology to use as...

Maintenance and reliability professionals can make a difference. At most manufacturing plants, that means focused work that allows operations to get more finished product (whether it’s soft drinks,...

There appears to be an ongoing shift toward operator involvement in machine relubrication practices. During my last several seminars, I’ve asked the audience to identify themselves if their plants...