121 - Starting with Mathematical Foundations with Fred Schenkelberg

Rooted in Reliability: The Plant Performance Podcast

Starting with Mathematical Foundations with Fred Schenkelberg

Every system in the world, no matter how complex, is designed on an algorithm. All the systems use the same basic principles of mathematics. When there is a failure in a system, there's a logical explanation for its occurrence. Every engineering principles that vendors follow to build the machines and every calculative functionality they add to it so that it will work the way it is is based on mathematics. That's why it is very important to have strong mathematical foundation in a reliability-oriented organization.

In this episode, we covered:

• What are some of the fundamental mathematical disciplines that Maintenance, Reliability, or Asset Managers should have an understanding of?
• Where can someone learn or get some mathematical foundations?
• And much more!

If you don't have an idea of the basic mathematics involved in the working of a system, you will never be able to get the results that you need from it. Before you start to analyze data and then assess systems using a dozen different strategies, you need to make sure that you understand what that data means, what is it about, and how to make sense of it to everyone. Most of the time, a team gathers machine data and sends it to the analyst. They run tests and do all sorts of experiments with it. They don't even think for a second to understand the logic behind that kind of data.

Then the data goes to the CMMS and you get a garbage value as an output because the information wasn't complete. In other cases, the results just don't make sense to everyone at all. They expect something different and get something else. It is better to analyze the data and understand the basic plot details, graphical values, and variation points before you go about devising a strategy that won't get you anywhere. There is no use of spending money on getting partial results that can't help you control your systems or maintain your plant.

There are a lot of courses and manuals that you get help from to get a better understanding of variation plots, regression analysis, and failure distribution analysis. It happens sometimes that the technicians and engineers and stuck at something and they think that the best approach would be to go for the sure thing according to them. They have to learn with time that surest way is not always the best way. When it comes to statistics, you have to explore your data and try different solutions to the problem. You just need to start from the beginning, gather data, and make little calculations.

When you understand the statistical side of the data, you can put it in the CMMS and see if the plots and calculations that you made match with the results generated by the statistical evaluation tools or not. If you don't have any idea what a plot, failure data, or a variation means, you need to ask someone who can tell you. You just need to be willing to try things in order to learn from them. This process can take time but once you start to check multiple solutions for a single problem, you will be able to find the most appropriate one.

You might be interested to check our other episodes with Fred Schenkelberg.

Eruditio Links:

• Eruditio
• HP Reliability
• A Smarter Way of Preventative Maintenance Free eBook
• inspired Blended Learning (iBL®)
• James Kovacevic's LinkedIn

Fred Schenkelberg Links:

• Accendo Reliability
• CRE Preparation Notes
• Fred Schenkelberg
• Reliability.FM Network
• FMS Reliability
• SMRP 26th Annual Conference
• Recommended Resource:
  • Books: Measurement Systems Analysis (MSA) 3rd Edition by AIAG, Exploratory Data Analysis by John W. Tukey
  • MOOCs Sites: Khan Academy, EdX, Coursera, MITx, Stanford Online

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