Deploying a condition monitoring program to better track asset health and performance can have the effect of narrowly focusing the team on one or a few types of data. Typically, maintenance and reliability professionals install a sensor such as an accelerometer on machines to measure vibration and relay that data to a vibration analyst to…
By Brian Harrison According to a Fluke survey done in late 2019, some 50% of maintenance and reliability teams were actively planning Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) initiatives. This, of course, was before the massive change brought upon us all by the spread of the coronavirus. Still, at the time, more than half of those…
At a time like this, when normal is abnormal and abnormal has become business as usual, it can be useful to find out how your peers are approaching their maintenance strategies. That’s why we at Fluke worked with Plant Services this spring to survey more than 200 maintenance and reliability professionals to assess how the…
The pandemic that has upended normalcy in 2020 is fueling urgency among maintenance leaders for system improvements previously viewed as “future considerations.” The ability to monitor asset health remotely, for example, has gone from a “want” to a “need”—something essential to stay productive in the near term and competitive over the long run. Around 82%…
On July 27, 2020, Virginia became the first state in the U.S. to introduce workplace safety rules related to COVID-19. “These first-in-the-nation safety rules will protect Virginia workers by mandating appropriate personal protective equipment, sanitation, social distancing, infectious disease preparedness, and response plans, record keeping, training, and hazard communications in workplaces across the Commonwealth,” Gov….
Mike Mills, CRL, Senior Sales Engineer at Fluke Reliability, recently appeared on the Industrial Talk Podcast with Scott MacKenzie. Mills talked about industrial safety and reliability through a focus on continuity, agility, and repeatability. One of the many impacts of COVID-19 has been staffing—many organizations have not been able to have as many people on…
“Virus-driven decision making.” Dr. Klaus Blache, Director of the Reliability and Maintainability Center (RMC) at the University of Tennessee, used this phrase to begin his June 2020 webinar, “How to lead and maintain reliability in a crisis.” “Many things have changed, and many have not in these challenging times of virus-driven decision making. (But) as…
The current crisis is making the benefits and value of flexibility in the Industrial Internet of Things more obvious than ever. It is driving more people to investigate how the cloud and IIoT with software-connected equipment and advanced analytics tools can turn data volumes into meaningful maintenance intelligence accessible onsite or remotely. However, maintenance leaders…
Reliability professionals such as Ramesh Gulati, a recognized expert in the field, have experienced one of the most dramatic slowdowns in the history of business and industry since the pandemic began in early 2020. Now Gulati is one of many evaluating how maintenance and reliability units can help lead their companies safely into recovery. Gulati…
While COVID-19 has turned the industrial world upside down in a lot of ways, the need for skilled workers to perform on-site services at customer locations has not disappeared. From equipment installation to supply delivery to inspections and troubleshooting, some services just cannot be provided online or over the phone. With the reduction in plant…