Operations personnel often feel that they are not responsible for reliability.  It’s the wrong way of thinking – they play a critical role, not just for equipment reliability, but the process reliability – the ability of the system as whole to produce the maximum quality product, on time, in full, at the lowest sustainable cost.  Some things to do on their part include developing a deep understanding of the process and the equipment, and knowing the process standards; following procedures and when they’re not clear, getting clarification; on that note, reviewing procedures to assure clarity and conformance, and make any appropriate modifications; understanding equipment criticality and its importance to the business; being focused on product quality to assure customer satisfaction; encouraging the right behaviors – people must care about the equipment and process, and encourage others to do so; learning and understanding the importance of condition monitoring and predictive maintenance technology – most processes and equipment have a random failure pattern associated with them that must be managed with condition monitoring; learning and applying RCA, beginning with a  simple 5 whys; and finally, keeping things clean – dirt is the enemy of reliability.  We’ll discuss this and more in this session.