Reliability the Missing leg of the Stool: Copyright Material IEEE, Paper No. PCIC-2018-13

All end-users within heavy industry focus on improving `Safety' and some also work on improving `Operations Excellence,' but there are only a few end-users who spend equally as much time on `Reliability.' PCIC is an example of this culture where it has created a standalone safety entity to enhance electrical safety. Unfortunately, in industry, we continue to see significant incidents with loss of life even with this enhanced focus on safety and operations excellence. A three-legged stool is inherently stable and will not rock as a four-legged stool can, but a stool with less than three legs cannot stand. Therefore, the missing leg of the stool is reliability, which has not been a focus area of but a few end-users. In the companies that view reliability (all failures are preventable) on par with safety (all incidents are preventable) equipment failure is addressed proactively to prevent the `catastrophic failures' that has led to significant incidents in facilities. This paper will provide a context of the methods for developing a world-class reliability-centric organization.