Many businesses exhaled with the dot com bust. It was as if they already had enough to worry about and now they did not have to include the Internet on that list. Most businesses had the equivalent of an electronic brochure and an e-mail link on their web sites, so they thought they had covered their bases.

The mistake of simply offering customers an electronic version of a company brochure is highlighted at Cluetrain.com. The site states that a powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies. Networked markets are beginning to self-organize faster than the companies that have traditionally served them. Markets are becoming better informed, smarter, and more demanding of qualities missing from most business organizations.

John Gilmore, one of the founders of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) states, “The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” Companies can no longer be in exclusive control of information relating to the application of their products and services. With hundreds of formats available for information exchange, consumers can access an unlimited amount of information on the products they are interested in and the companies that provide them, often at independent web sites. This information flow allows the balance of power, once controlled by the supply side, to shift to the demand side, creating tremendous benefit to end users and consumers.

According to Doc Searls and David Weinberger at the web site World of Ends, the true nature of the Internet isn’t hard to understand. In fact, they have reduced the Internet to a simple 10-item list:

1. The Internet isn’t complicated.
2. The Internet isn’t a thing. It’s an agreement.
3. The Internet is stupid.
4. Adding value to the Internet lowers its value.
5. All the Internet’s value grows on its edges.
6. Money moves to the suburbs.
7. The end of the world? Nah, the world of ends.
8. The Internet’s three virtues: No one owns it, everyone can use it, anyone can improve it.
9. If the Internet is so simple, why have so many been so boneheaded about it?

Visit World of Ends for No. 10 and more detailed explanations.

If you publish a web site, make it easy and make it informative. Provide visitors with a way of interacting with you and possibly with each other.

When Reliabilityweb.com was launched, we had no idea if maintenance and reliability professionals would respond positively. After all, everyone is busy and Internet access was severely restricted inside most maintenance departments.

Now, our online community has grown to more than 10,000 maintenance and reliability professionals from around the world. Most have joined the online reliability discussion e-mail forum that allows them “to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed” as envisioned by the folks at Cluetrain. You can be part of the information revolution that includes empowerment through information access and networking. All you need to do is to log onto your favorite maintenance web site today.

We are proud of our association with MAINTENANCE TECHNOLOGY magazine and for the incredible support they have provided as we make our own journey to reliability with you online at www.mt-online.com and www.reliabilityweb.com. MT

INTERNET TIP: ELIMINATE SPYWARE
Is there anything more inconvenient and aggravating than Spam? Recently we discovered something worse—spy-ware that installs itself on your computer without your knowledge. Spy-ware reports every web site you visit to an unknown advertiser who will pop up ads and send e-mails based on your surfing habits.

If you see new toolbars in your browser that you did not install, if your browser crashes, or if your browser start page has changed by itself, you probably have spy-ware.

Even if you do not see anything you may be infected, because more and more spy-ware is emerging that is silently tracking your surfing behavior to create a marketing profile of you that will be sold to advertising companies.

Antivirus applications do not cover spy-ware. But you can check for spy-ware and eliminate it by downloading a free copy of Spybot--Search & Destroy which will detect and remove different kinds of spy-ware from your computer.

One of the important ingredients for making and keeping a reliable electrical connection is clean contact surfaces. The other important ingredient—force—was covered in “The Trouble with Torque in Electrical Connections."

RESISTANCE VS. FORCE Fig. 1. Contact theory says that contact points are actually cold welds. If the high contact force is decreased, the contact resistance remains constant and does not increase until a much lower force is reached.

This sounds logical because if the high contact force is decreased, the contact resistance remains constant and does not increase until a much lower force is reached. See Fig. 1. This would be expected with welding, not with a spring-like mechanism. For cold welding to occur, clean surfaces and massive distortion are required. This is accomplished by proper contact preparation, abrasion from relative motion, and volume reduction during the high forces.

As this discussion implies, the true contact area is where we have the welds. For example, a 4 in. wide bus bar with a 4 in. connection overlap does NOT produce a contact area of 16 sq in. (4 in. x 4 in.). If the connection is made with a single bolt in the center, the contact area is under the head of the bolt. If a large diameter, thick washer is added, the contact area then is increased to the washer area. Note that NEMA Standard CC1, Electric Power Connection for Substations, specifies four bolt holes for a 4 in. wide bus.

Get surfaces clean, level
From a practical standpoint, try to make the contact surfaces as clean, smooth, and level as possible. Dirty or oily surfaces should be cleaned with a solvent. Rough surfaces should be filed and/or sanded. For most surfaces, abrading with a wire brush, sandpaper, or steel wool and removing loose particles is sufficient. With stranded conductor, try to use fresh portions and wire brush the outer strands. When pressure is applied to the conductor, the strands abrade each other.

With copper conductor, it is usually easy to see how the cleaning is going. With aluminum this is more difficult since the oxide coating is colorless and starts to reform after cleaning. Therefore, extra care must be exercised with aluminum. The oxide film is initially weak and thin, so right after cleaning, apply a joint compound to bus bar contact surfaces or, if cable, to the outer strands. Then immediately tighten bolts or compress the connector. Tests have shown that this procedure results in a good connection.

If the contact surface is plated, try not to remove the coating. Solvent cleaning is usually sufficient.

Years ago a common recommendation for aluminum was to apply the joint compound prior to cleaning and to abrade the surface through the joint compound. This messy procedure is not required if the compound is applied immediately after cleaning. In a cable connection, the compound will be forced between the strands when pressure is applied. The joint compound should not be relied upon to clean the contact surfaces; its purpose is to surround the cold welds to prevent the ingress of harmful matter such as air, moisture, and contaminants.

Check contact resistance
Checking an electrical connection is difficult. Ideally, a contact resistance reading is best. But with high current connections we are dealing with micro-ohms, hard to read in the field and masked by nearby bulk resistance. This makes the contact resistance hard to determine. If possible, make trial connections in the shop and check as follows:

• Bus bar connections. Place a die penetrant or a pressure sensor film in the contact area prior to tightening the connection. Contact area and/or contact pressure is determined after disassembly.

• Cable connections. Cut through the crimped or tightened section of the connection and then prepare like a metallurgical specimen. All strands should be distorted and no air spaces should be evident. This technique also is useful for failure studies.

Analysis of these results can assist in specifying the connection procedure and in improving the proposed connection. MT

Norman Shackman, P.E., is based in Kent, CT. He conducts in-house seminars on electrical connections and can be reached at http://home.earthlink.net/~elecon/ or (860) 927-4067.

Why does this delay in the adoption of technology occur? We certainly cannot blame it on a lack of technology or information available to us. The Internet, along with other technologic advances, have allowed for information to be far more readily available than it has ever been before. In order to cope with this overload of information we often tune it out, but at what cost?

If we turn our focus to business, in order to be successful, we do not have the luxury of ignoring the masses of business information and data that we produce, disseminate, and receive. Instead, we must learn not only how to deal with this information, but also how to manage it, and how to use it effectively to try to gain the upper hand on the competition.

Vision, goals, and success occur by leveraging and applying technological advancements. It is not the availability of advancements holding companies back, but rather the leadership necessary to implement and apply the advancements available to us. There needs to be an individual, a leader, an entrepreneur in the organization who stands up and says, “We need to take advantage of this innovative solution because it will allow us to be successful and gain the upper hand.”

Companies have recognized equipment reliability as a strategic component in their plans for future success, a way to gain a competitive advantage. Maintenance goals are now aligned with company goals to achieve higher returns on asset investments, to increase output and revenue, and to ensure safety and environmental integrity.

Now more than ever, with shrinking budgets and fewer resources, maintenance requires innovative solutions to maximize equipment reliability while optimizing cost efficiencies. Will it take the lead and adopt these innovative solutions? Let’s look at an example.
To improve reliability, most companies are using, or have experience with, various forms of information systems. All systems can create lots of data, but where does this data come from?
• 15 percent is from predictive technology
• 10 percent is numeric condition process data
• 75 percent is from qualitative descriptive inspections which are mostly recorded on paper check sheets that end up as clipboards hanging on walls. Others are filed away never to be looked at again.

All this data is critical and therefore collected, but it resides in different locations and databases, creating many islands of data. How do you manage it?

If you want to be a leader and recognize that equipment reliability is a strategic component to success within the solution, then you need to ensure that the reliability software you are planning to use does the following:
• Presents results visually through flashing alarms and trending graphs, identifying potential failures and recommending corrective actions—before the equipment fails.
• Uses single or multiple data points to analyze the data, applying defined rules and calculations to get a true picture of equipment health.
• Performs the calculations and conducts the analysis automatically.
• Collects equipment condition data from controls, sensors, data historians, predictive maintenance technologies, and visual inspections.
• Solves the problem of islands of data by directly linking condition information to CMMS and plant information management systems.

Reliability software is able to correlate the islands of data into one information system and turn it into actionable knowledge that feeds your CMMS the right work at the right time to optimize asset performance and extend asset life.

That is what University of Washington researchers discovered when they tracked a group of engineers to find how they obtained information vital to their work. The engineers usually chose human sources over written ones and were three times more likely to choose familiar people over experts they didn’t know.
The study by UW Information School professor Raya Fidel and assistant professor Maurice Green is scheduled for publication in Information Processing and Management.

The researchers analyzed more than 600 pages of transcribed interviews to understand the engineers’ thinking and performance in doing recent work tasks:

• Nearly all the engineers (97 percent) consulted another person at least once, while 77 percent searched the Internet and intranet sites at least once.
• Among situations in which a person was the source consulted, it most often was a co-worker (31 percent of cases), followed by an outside expert (29 percent).
• The most common reason for selecting a person as a source—by a factor of more than 3 to 1—was that the engineer knew the person.

“The human side of information-seeking is so important,” Fidel said. “This shows that companies would benefit from encouraging richer social connections.”

We would encourage everyone in a position to do so to in turn encourage maintenance and reliability personnel to expand their network of professional contacts by supporting their attendance to at least one respected industry event each year. MAINTENANCE TECHNOLOGY provides a list of major events scheduled for the next few months on the first page of its News section (pg. 9), and a more extensive list on our online calendar.

Knowing that trusted sites on the Internet are frequently consulted sources for helpful information, as confirmed by the research, we have enhanced the search capability of our web site to provide easier access to our article archives. Check out the story on page 9 for an overview of the improvements, or better yet, visit www.mt-online.com and give it a try.

Like the subjects of the research, we at MAINTENANCE TECHNOLOGY tend also to seek information from the people we know best. MT

In Part One of this article, we discussed the three different types of availability—inherent, achievable, and operational (see Fig. 1); their implications for strategic planning; and the methodology for modeling and determining achievable availability. In this installment we will discuss using the availability model to determine plant bottlenecks and increase throughput, the impact of the need for modeling and analysis on the maintenance and engineering organization, and offer suggestions on how to close the natural gaps between the three types of availability.

Identifying and removing process bottlenecks
Availability is a proxy for revenue and throughput. The implication, therefore, is that availability models can be used to find process bottlenecks created by equipment issues. This is in fact the case.

During the design phase the availability model can be used to pinpoint changes in equipment design that will increase plant throughput. The availability model enables the design engineer to make decisions about redundancy levels, plant access, and equipment specifications based on their impact to overall throughput and the cost-benefit ratio (CBR) of the changes.

During the operating life of the plant the reliability engineer and the process engineer can work together using the availability model and Weibull analysis to ferret out process bottlenecks created by poor maintenance strategies, poor initial design, and poor maintenance and operating procedures. By making changes in the availability model the engineers can analyze the CBR of changes in strategy, design, and operating parameters and make those changes which create the lowest life cycle costs for the plant.

Organizational implications
The need to understand and manage the top-level factors that affect availability and to model and understand the achievable availability of a plant has important implications for the shape of the maintenance and engineering organization. The typical organization does not have the necessary resources to accomplish these objectives. Industrial engineering and reliability engineering functions are required.

Fig. 2 illustrates the functional makeup of a typical maintenance organization vs the functional makeup of an availability management-driven organization.

Closing the gaps
Natural gaps exist between inherent availability (A_i) and achievable availability (A_a) and between A_a and operational availability (A_o). Closing these gaps in a cost-effective way makes the plant more successful. Closing the gaps requires a thorough understanding of the top-level factors that determine availability and finding ways to improve in each aspect of those factors. The goal is to select strategies that:

• Minimize the number and length of scheduled outages to drive A_a closer to A_i by making operational and noncapital equipment improvements (see accompanying section “Minimizing Scheduled Outages”).

• Minimize the number and length of unscheduled outages to drive A_o closer to A_a by using precision maintenance techniques and making noncapital equipment modifications (see accompanying section “Minimizing Unscheduled Outages”).

Further increases in availability may be obtained only by capital investment to increase inherent availability and achievable availability.

Capital improvements for increasing availability
After achievable availability is optimized by improving maintenance operations and making noncapital equipment modifications, the only recourse is to increase availability by capital investment in the plant or by capital investment in the equipment to increase inherent availability:

• Increase achievable availability
1. Modify surroundings: add space around equipment for easier access, improve ingress and egress
2. Modify shops: relocate closer to equipment, improve shop and support equipment (better cranes, better tools, better technology), improve layout
3. Modify stores: relocate closer to equipment, improve storage equipment, improve stores’ management software, provide for controlled remote stores

• Increase inherent availability
1. Upgrade equipment: match equipment to production need, improve control system and embed troubleshooting tools
2. Modify equipment: reduce part count, modify guarding, modify lubricant delivery system, add redundancy

Matching availability goals to business need
No business operates in a static environment. Availability goals that are appropriate today may not be appropriate next year, next month, next week, or even tomorrow. Equipment availability is as sensitive to the vagaries of the business climate as any other key performance measure. Business decisions that either enhance or impair availability are made every day at every level of the organization. Availability goals must be reviewed and managed the same as any other business goals because of their sensitivity to available capital and operating funds. Fig. 3 shows typical inputs and outputs of the maintenance process.

The business situation determines whether inputs or outputs are optimized. During times of overcapacity, the business is cost constrained. The input side of the process must be optimized to reduce costs. During times of undercapacity, business is output constrained. The output side of the process must be optimized to increase business output. The important point to remember is that at best, business output will remain constant during periods in which process inputs are being optimized. The longer inputs are constrained, the more negative the effect on the outputs.

Conclusion
Using availability modeling and simulation to engineer availability into a manufacturing facility by laying out equipment and facilities for optimum reliability and maintainability, installing reliable equipment, and engineering maintenance procedures prior to startup will give an organization its best chance of having a reliable plant that is optimally available from day one.

Using availability modeling and simulation to continually monitor operational needs, improve maintenance and operating procedures, and to thoroughly understand the three subtypes of availability and the plant’s current status in relationship to achievable availability will help promote long-term success by improving bottom-line results throughout the life of the plant. MT

Bill Keeter is president of ARMS Reliability Engineers-USA, LLC, 8450 N. Devonshire Woods Pl., West Terre Haute, IN 47885; (812) 535-1445

THREE TYPES OF AVAILABILITY

Fig. 1. Inherent availability (A_i) is the expected level of availability for the performance of corrective maintenance only; it is determined purely by the design of the equipment. Achievable availability (A_a) is the expected level of availability for the performance of corrective and preventive maintenance; it is determined by the hard design of the equipment and the facility. Operational availability (A_o) is the actual level of availability realized in the day-to-day operation of the facility. It reflects plant maintenance resource levels and organizational effectiveness.
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TYPICAL MAINTENANCE ORGANIZATION

NEW MAINTENANCE ORGANIZATION

Fig. 2. The typical maintenance organization (top) does not have the necessary resources to understand and manage the top-level factors that affect availability and to model and understand the achievable availability of a plant. Industrial engineering and reliability engineering functions are required (bottom).
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THE MAINTENANCE PROCESS

Fig. 3. These are the typical inputs and outputs of the maintenance process. The business situation determines whether inputs or outputs are optimized.
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One would think that, for a concept that is said to be one of the most important in the field of labor management, backlog would have more definition and interpretation. It is not to say that the backlog issue is not important, just that it is one of those concepts that can be approached from more angles than a game of pool.

Backlog is, in fact, a very important tool. Backlog can be used to produce and analyze budget and staffing requirements, balance workloads across a labor force, and much more.

Simply put, backlog classifies work that, for whatever reason, has not been completed.

The basics
Every work order in any organization's backlog has five primary characteristics that can be used to further define the meaning and forward the analysis of the backlog. These characteristics are status, classification, priority, age, and estimated duration.

Backlog work status (Fig. 1). The most basic example of this characteristic is that the work order is completed, cancelled, or open. To fit the bill for backlog, it is the open work orders that concern us.

What many fail to take into account is an important division of the backlog that involves the concept of attainment. Attainment is the existing status of a work order which suggests that it either can have labor applied and/or be completed, or that it is temporarily in a holding status for specific reasons.

The elements of unattainable backlog include work orders that have recently been approved and remain unguided, those waiting for materials, and those waiting for planning. The status of waiting approval is intentionally left out of these categories since these work orders have not yet been determined to be feasible future work.

Likewise, attainable backlog applies to work orders that are readily available for processing and completion. These include waiting for scheduling, scheduled, and in progress.

This division is essential to good backlog management for a simple reason. The attainable work is the backlog available for processing and the workload that should be focused on for future labor assignments. The unattainable backlog is essentially the work on hold and is not readily available to the organization.

Backlog work classification (Fig. 2). Work orders can, and often are, divided into logical groups to account for the nature of the work. These work types can fall into two categories.

Direct labor directly contributes to productive maintenance goals. Indirect or overhead labor does not directly contribute to productive ends. These hours include the functions of administrative tasking and training. Fig. 2 shows some common work types associated with these categories.

Backlog work priorities (Fig 3). Some people may say, We just don't use priorities. But priorities are used whether or not they are actively recorded in a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS).

A primary example is that more urgency is placed on jobs that affect safety and production. Also, no one can say that if a company executive requests work to be done, no matter what it is, that more urgency will apply to that work just to keep a good reputation with upper management.

Priorities are essential to backlog management because they show how important the hours in the backlog are to an organization.

Some might reflect that their operation processes multiple thousands of work orders per week and that the task of prioritizing them would be time prohibitive and not worth the effort. Fig. 2 shows how this issue is solved with relative ease by simply establishing default priorities in conjunction with work classification. These defaults should be set as a guide for work orders when they are created and should not be rigid values, since priorities on any one work order can change based on circumstances.

Fig. 3 shows a basic representation of a priority system. It is not as important how priorities are set up as how they are controlled. In Fig. 3, the shelf life column demonstrates the true meaning of the system. This shelf life determines how long a work order of any priority would be allowed to remain in backlog before raising questions and/or concerns about its processing.

Backlog age (Fig. 4). Determining the age of backlog work orders is an important element to use when thinking about the validity of work yet to be done. For simplicity sake we'll look at a military concept, the 30/30/60/90.

As demonstrated in Fig. 4, this concept is simply grouping work orders into zones depending on their age. These zones are used as control points for decisions on cancellations and changes in priorities.

Probably the simplest contributing element of good backlog management is using planning to produce an estimate for labor requirements on the work orders. Because backlog is measured in hours, the more planned work orders in the backlog, the more accurate that measurement will be.

For example, a maintenance shop has 3590 hours in backlog, and these hours apply to 704 individual work orders. This shop has 16 percent, or about 108, of these work orders left unplanned. If these work orders were actually 16 percent of the labor in the backlog, they would be worth around 682 hours. This is a very defined concept of what backlog really is. But, what does it all mean?

Backlog representation (Fig. 5). Representing backlog statistics is essential when making decisions based on its content because those decisions must be justified to someone who, more than likely, has little knowledge of how to read the supporting data. In this case, having a uniform format for displaying the data makes for faster reading and better understanding of its meaning.

Fig. 5 is an example of backlog representation that uses many of the backlog characteristics previously mentioned. The layout takes advantage of the attainment division of backlog status, while providing a section reflecting the total backlog. Next, the report separates the data by age and priority, and finally summarizes the count of existing work orders, estimated durations, and the backlog coverage index, which is a simple percentage showing how many of the work orders have had duration estimates planned.

As stated before, because backlog is measured in planned hours, providing estimated durations for backlog work orders determines the accuracy of the end data and the decisions that can ultimately be made. Future articles in this series will cover backlog measurement and its analysis. MT

Jason Aughenbaugh is a business analyst with Amgen, Inc., MS 21-2-A, One Amgen Center Dr., Thousand Oaks, CA 91320-1799

Fig. 1. Attainable work is the backlog available for processing and the workload that should be focused on for future labor assignments.

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Fig. 2. Various types of work fall into two categories.

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Fig. 3. Priorities are essential to backlog management because they show how important the hours in the backlog are to an organization.

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Fig. 4. The concept of age is simply grouping work orders into zones depending on their age in order to make decisions on cancellations and changes in priorities.

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