Reliability Tip:

A rose by any other name…

Everyone has their own way of expressing themselves. This gives us personality; it also leads to confusion. When I say ‘repair,’ do you say ‘fix?’ When I say ‘rust,’ do you say ‘corrosion?’ Is it the same? Not always.

Nothing frustrates a reliability professional more than not having accurate data to work with. When completing work orders in the field, the technician completing the work has the opportunity to provide the history that makes work analysis valuable to us in the future. By providing details on the conditions found at the site of a failure, and details on the cause of the failure, we can take the needed actions to prevent a similar failure in the future. However, to be successful, several things have to take place:

1. The technician has to take the time to make note of the conditions and the source of the failure. Noting the presence of a corrosion perforation in a pipe is critical to making decision about metallurgy or corrosion barriers, but if the technician doesn’t (or isn’t expected to) make note of the problem, the reliability organization is going to make that repair again (and probably again).
2. The language we use in describing the conditions needs to be consistent. It does no good to tell a process engineer that the hole in the pipe was ‘about the size of a squirrel’s ear’ if the engineer has never set foot in the woods. The use of failure codes is the practical solution to this. To successfully utilize failure codes, there must be some initial training on the meaning of the codes and how the codes are to be used. Afterwards, there must be consistent review and discussion of the codes with the technicians and with the reliability professionals using the information.
3. 3. Action needs to be taken on the results of this effort. The process of gathering data often goes off the rails when the technicians see that there is no point to the collection of the data in the field. After all, if my boss doesn’t demonstrate that the hard work of gathering these details is important, why should I continue to make the effort of providing the information? The act of turning the data into useful information, and then using the information both makes the process pay for itself, and demonstrates that we value the technicians’ time and results.

Pick some codes for use in gathering flied conditions (not too many, or the only one used will be the first one), set the expectation for performance and pay attention to the results. You will enjoy the outcome.

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