Magazine

Advanced-analytics tools make it possible for engineers and other SMEs to greatly increase productivity and overall plant reliability. In the process-manufacturing industries, there has been a significant increase in the amount, complexity, and accessibility of operational and equipment data. Engineering teams now have visibility into historical and near-real-time data, from local and remote locations. Add…

Digital technologies allow teams to take an informed approach to asset maintenance. Nine of ten manufacturers now say digital transformation is important to their organization’s success. While digitalization can improve virtually any aspect of your operations—from throughput to quality to sustainability—perhaps no area has more potential for improvement than maintenance.  Maintenance activities remain inherently inefficient…

By Mark Barnes, PhD CMRP, Des-Case Corp. The Stribeck Curve and the Hersey number are your primary tools for selecting proper lubricant viscosity. For rotating equipment, proper lubricant selection is critical to asset reliability. Done correctly, equipment can live a long and healthy life; done poorly, asset life will be significantly reduced. Of course, original…

Summer is here, and it’s a great season to start working on various maintenance projects. This is especially true as more facilities workers return to their workplaces in person after working remotely during the worst days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Regular upgrades to outdoor projects may have been postponed due to COVID-19 and staff shortages,…

Once a pandemic stopgap, hybrid working has fast become the norm in many workplaces due to the work life balance it offers to employees. From a managerial perspective, this has other benefits to business, from increased employee retention to the potential downscaling of offices to cut costs. However, in modern hybrid work environments, a variety…

All systems are perfectly designed to produce their results — even when their results are far from perfect. Engineer Edward Demings observed that decades ago. Don’t like the results? Change the system. Potential systems change exists on a continuum, from wholesale system destruction and reconstruction to incremental system shifts. The former is often due to…

Corporate America’s commitment to environmental justice has been tepid to non-existent. Several factors explain this absence of commitment, including a fear of lawsuits from high community pollution levels, opposition to revising operating permits by regulatory agencies, potential citizen protests to plant site expansions, and corporations’ broader reluctance to discuss their economic and political power in…

Universities across the country are embracing solar energy to help power their campuses, become more sustainable, and save money. Proving that point, here are three major announcements U.S. universities made in late May alone. Brigham Young University–Hawaii Brigham Young University–Hawaii announced completion of a campus-wide renewable energy system that includes rooftop solar, carport solar, and…

Comprehensive retrofits of commercial buildings can reduce their energy use by up to 40 percent but are not happening anywhere near the scale needed to meet climate goals, according to a report released by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE). With new federal funds available for such energy-saving upgrades, the report offers a…

NFPA Today – June 03, 2022 Over the past several months, I have noticed a few incidents occurring in mercantile occupancies that have raised some questions related to the allowable delay between sprinkler activation and fire alarm notification in the event of a fire, which is governed by NFPA 72®, National Fire Alarm and Signaling…