Subscribe for updates
People Forget to Be Afraid…
Reading Time: 3 minutes “Preventing process accidents requires vigilance. The passing of time without a process accident is not necessarily an indication that all is well and may contribute to
A Different View of the Swiss Cheese Model
Reading Time: 4 minutes Much has been written about James Reason’s original Swiss Cheese Model described in his book Managing the Risks of Organizational Accidents. Figure 1 is a basic representation
Is System’s Thinking Critical to Root Cause Analysis’s (RCA) Success?
Reading Time: 11 minutes Is System’s Thinking Critical to Root Cause Analysis’s (RCA) Success? Put another way, can RCA be successful without the incorporation of system’s thinking? What prompted
Why Can’t Learning Teams (LT) & RCA Teams be Friends?
Reading Time: 7 minutes Why Can’t Learning Teams (LT) and RCA Teams be Friends? A Little History About How I Came Across Learning Teams. A little over three
What Does It Mean to Be ‘Safe’?
Reading Time: 6 minutes So what does it mean to be ‘safe’? Is a company ‘safe’ because they have not had an OSHA recordable injury in say over a
Do Learning Teams Make RCA Obsolete?
Reading Time: 2 minutes Originally published August 31, 2017.
Understanding the Basics of Grease
Reading Time: 6 minutes Since lubricating oil can oxidize, so can the base oil in grease. When the grease oxidizes, it usually darkens; there is a build-up of acidic
Defining & Achieving the Reliability Culture
Reading Time: 31 minutes There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in
Root Cause Analysis vs. Shallow Cause Analysis: What’s the Difference?
Reading Time: < 1 minute Does regulatory compliance with RCA guidelines ensure operational reliability? Operational Reliability involves the aggregation of Equipment, Process and Human Reliability methods and techniques. What is
‘Fantasy’ Maintenance: The Illusion of Best Practices
Reading Time: 4 minutes The following article was published in Plant Services earlier this year with the title, “Don’t get stuck in reactive mode – The world of fantasy
Fatigue & Overload: Part II, 4 Mechanisms of Component Failure
Reading Time: 4 minutes Author’s Note: I want to reiterate that this Series about reading the basic fracture surfaces, is for novices who often come into contact with such
Root Cause Analysis (RCA) Management Best Practices
Reading Time: 8 minutes RCA management is a structured and methodical approach to problem-solving, and it helps organizations learn from their mistakes and continuously improve their processes and systems