Mike, I think you are right, I was trying to find an evaluation method for effectiveness before the fact, because I understood that this was the essence of the RCM2 as John Moubray established, I mean the reason why you make FMEA is to know what could happend and decide an action before it happends but you need to know in some way if the action that you decided is really effective or not. John Moubray doesn't tell exactly how to do it in his book, in his paragraphs is only implicit that there must be a method for such evaluation without specify one. I have heard about some statistical approaches for risk evaluation as Monte Carlo Simulation but I don't think that those sophisticated methods would be suitable when you are making your FMEA. So gentlemen what do you think?

Regards,

Lester Pino
Work Planner
Bahía Las Minas Plant - Panama

Les, Vibration,oil analysis,ultrasound,Thermography,Borescope etc are all proven technologies.
The only things that up the risk are the ability of the technician, the quality of the data, the reliability of the technology.
By ensuring these you have done the most you can.

Mike.

Mike,

quote:

What Vee has oulined are measures we can use "after the fact"

Except the discovery of hidden failure modes we never knew of before the RCM analysis!

Ok. Gentlemen, after all of this discussion I think that the most pragmatical solution to this issue of evaluating the task effectiveness for safety and environment consequences when you are making your FMEA is to take the expirenced judgment of your people in the plant. It would be something embarrassing to try a sophisticated statistical method (if it exist) to perform such evaluation for a simple Failure mode, moreover, if you are dealing with maybe dozens of them, I mean, the cost of this would be enormous compare with the real benefit obtained instead of use the experience.
By the way Vee and Daryl, I was looking for your books here in my country but I couldn't find them in our bookstores, do you have those books in PDF format and a link to pay a fee for download?

Thanks to all gentlemen

Good call Les. Yes in the end a lot of the input does rely on best judgement and putting faith in the knowledge of your team.

Thanks Vee for your correction - yes discovery of hidden failure modes is "a before"

Mike.

Les,

quote:

By the way Vee and Daryl, I was looking for your books here in my country but I couldn't find them in our bookstores, do you have those books in PDF format

I wrote to my publisher in NY. He says we dont have download versions yet, though you can get it on CD-ROM. You can contact him directly at Industrial Press, details as follows.
Patrick Hansard, Marketing Director,
Phone(212) 889-6330, X.20
Fax (212) 545-8327
e-mail phansard@industrialpress.com
If Borders have a bookshop near you, they can get you a copy as well. Amazon US may also be able to ship it.