The Asset Reliability Transformation® [ART] Process
The sole goal of the ART process is to provide your organization with a detailed roadmap so that you may improve reliability and thus achieve the goals of your business.
For many years, training companies, consultants, conference organizations, and trade journals have been educating people about the reliability improvement process. But for the most part, the focus has been on why an organization should improve reliability and the core elements that comprise a reliability improvement program, such as condition monitoring, planning and scheduling, root cause analysis, and so on. What has been sorely lacking is an explanation of how to combine all of those elements into a successful strategy. As a result, the leaders of the reliability improvement initiative faced the daunting task of trying to successfully implement the strategy.
Sadly, many failed.
In fact, if the measure of success is that an organization achieved the designed plant capacity, with consistent production output, with minimal maintenance costs, and no safety and environmental incidents, then it would be fair to say that the majority of programs failed.
And that is simply an unacceptable state of affairs.
Sadly, the Mobius Institute™ has been part of the problem. We provided education on many of those “obvious elements”, and we provided workshops on the “holistic view” of reliability improvement, but the reality was that the participants would return to their plants and struggle to achieve the “reliable plant”.
It is time to change all that.
For the past 10 years, we have been working on a roadmap to improve reliability. While we believe the knowledge we have provided through workshops, training courses, and our iLearnReliability e-learning system has helped people, we still know that many were almost overwhelmed with the challenge.
And that’s not surprising, there is a great deal to understand.
And what makes it even more challenging, is that for a variety of reasons, many service providers in the field of reliability improvement recommended a focus in limited areas: reliability-centered maintenance, defect elimination, condition monitoring, root cause analysis, and so on.
Sadly, those areas should be part of a much bigger plan.
But that was then, and this is now.
After 35 years of observing and working with organizations from around the world as they endeavored to implement reliability improvement initiatives, and learning why many of them failed, and what the successful organizations did to overcome the challenges, we have developed a process that we call the Asset Reliability Transformation [ART] blueprint.
This process is summarized by the 10 phases in the following charts:
While this chart is very colorful, it does not shed very much light on what must be done to improve reliability. We have broken the ten phases into sixty-three major steps that define exactly what should be done to improve reliability, and in what order they should be performed. You can see the steps in the following chart.
Yes, the chart has a large number of steps, and it may be a little overwhelming to face the reality that you must implement every step. But there is no doubt, you must perform every one of them.
The following chart breaks down each phase into the major elements that most people associate with reliability improvement.
So, yes, there are a large number of steps to perform. The difference is that now you have a step-by-step guide to improve reliability. Don’t look at the entire chart. Just look at the very first step. That’s where you need to start. And once you have made a start, you can consider the second step. And then the third step. One little step at a time will allow you to achieve your goal.
But wait, there’s more – much more.
We have not just defined the sixty-four steps, we have defined recommended practices for each step. There are 365 recommended practices.
Once again, please do not be alarmed. Don’t think of all those recommended practices as a hurdle. Think of them as detailed guidance. When you decide to begin the first step, the recommended practices will help you to understand what you need to do. When you have completed the recommended practices, you will have completed the step, and you are on your way!
You now have two choices. You can define your own strategy, determine the order in which you will implement the program, seek training and advice from different companies, and generally do what many companies have done (unsuccessfully) – or you can utilize our guided process and take the guesswork out of it.
How can I learn more?
You can learn even more about ART via the button below. We will explore the phases and steps in a little more detail.
At this time, the only way to follow the ART process is to request your free ART poster, and take the ARP-A “Reliability Advocate” training to get an overview, the ARP-E “Reliability Engineer” course to understand the detailed technical requirements, and the ARP-L “Reliability Program Leader” course to understand the entire implementation process.
You can attend public courses, experts can come to your site and deliver training to your team, you can take virtual courses, perhaps with your teams from multiple sites, or you can watch the distance learning video-based online courses.
But soon there will be detailed training on every phase, step, and recommended practice. Please contact Mobius Institute so that you can be notified when it is available.