Maintenance Management – Defining, Clarifying “Reliability”
Torbjörn Idhammar, IDCON INC
The purpose of this column is to raise questions and challenge plant leadership on strategy, vision and execution of reliability and maintenance management. Since the name of this magazine is Reliable Plant, I think it would be interesting for my first column to challenge you on the meaning of the term “reliability.”
Reliability is often used by plants to define future improvement efforts and set expectations for employees and managers. In several recently written mission statements, I’ve seen expressions such as “to increase profitability through increased reliability.” But when companies are asked to define what the words mean, what reliability is and how it’s measured, it’s unusual to get a comprehensive answer.
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