Not long ago, I completed writing a book entitled "Little Black Book of Reliability Management". When I finished, I felt as though that book achieved its objective of providing a simple explanation of the variety of reliability tools that are available. My objective was to provide basic tools so that almost anyone could get started installing an effective reliability program. Not long after completing that book, I was reminded of one of the most basic rules of reliability. Simply stated, that rule is, "To get the results, you have to do the work".

That rule is a simple reminder that performing the analysis alone is not sufficient. After using Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) to identify the most cost-effective program for predictive and preventive maintenance, we still have two things we need to do:

1. We have to install the tasks that were identified (e.g. integrate those tasks into maintenance programs).

2. We have to actually perform the predictive and preventive tasks when they are scheduled.

The same is true of any of the other tools for improving reliability. They identify changes that are needed to improve reliability. Still, in order to achieve improvement, you must implement the recommendations.

All too frequently, we do the analysis but we do not perform the recommended work. There are a variety of reasons why the work does not get done but frequently ineffective or inefficient work management processes make implementation impossible. We simply cannot afford to do the work needed to become more reliable until we...