By Chuck Baker

 

   Andy ................. Reliability Manager of Electrical Power System (just recently hired by Brian, the Plant RVP)

   Tim .................... Electrical Engineer (who reports to Andy)

   Tina ................... Maintenance Manager (who reports to Brian also)

   Brian ................. Regional Vice President (head person for this plant)

   Kevin ................ Director of Reliability

   Jill ..................... Director of Operations

You are Andy, and you have recently been hired into a newly created position at Smith Industries as the Reliability Manager of the Electrical Power System within their industrial manufacturing plant. This new position was created after Brian, the Regional Vice President for the plant, returned from a Power Reliability Summit.

You get onboarded, introduce yourself to the maintenance team and look over the team and their experience level.

Your first order of business is to sit down with Tim, your Electrical Engineer to find out as much as you can about the electrical system maintenance program history. You determine the location of the maintenance files which include Dielectric Fluid Reports, Electrical Testing Reports and all services provided on the power system over the years. Tim takes you to the maintenance storage room where a long row of 6-inch 3-ring binders are located. They are labeled by substation and by year.

It is explained to you that after each test, they have corrected what they can afford to correct, however it is often normal for anything that is not an emergency to be postponed or the approval is denied. After all, money is tight and reactive maintenance comes first.

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This article was originally published in the December 2019 issue of the Critical Failure: Modes & Prevention magazine.

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