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Q: Could you briefly explain your role, involvement and experience with regards to this seminar?
Kevin Rayment (KR): I gained my passion for reliability improvement working for Ford Motor Company, where I was Quality Supervisor for the Dagenham Body and Assembly Plant. I was later involved in the company’s Engineering Quality Improvement Programme where I trained and supported engineers and managers in Total Quality Management tools.
This allowed me to gain extensive experience of how to successfully apply these tools, including two of my teams winning Ford’s prestigious President’s Customer Driven Quality Award.
I attended the first wave of the company’s Six Sigma Black Belt and Master Black Belt training and headed up deployment of Six Sigma into foundries, V-Engine plants, automatic transmission design and diesel engineering. Following time as the Quality and Reliability Supervisor for European diesel engines fitted into prestige vehicles, I joined Network Rail to deliver their Maintenance Six Sigma Programme leading to very significant savings.
A subsequent role as Reliability Improvement Manager for Signalling, led me to identify the need for an enhanced process to design reliability into railway products. I created Network Rail’s, ‘Design for Reliability’ process and then ran extensive stakeholder consultations and gained agreement to publish the mandated standard for railway products seeking Product Acceptance from Network Rail in June 2016. I have subsequently briefed and taught this widely across Network Rail, suppliers and other European Infrastructure Management companies. I am also part of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers’ Safety and Reliability Group.
Q: What are the main engineering challenges facing the industry at the moment and what are the most common issues you hear from colleagues?
KR: From my point of view, the continually increasing demand on the railway to cater for higher passenger numbers combined with a desire for improved on time performance, means that railway assets must be designed to deliver better levels of availability for rail users.
Many suppliers say they wish to engage with the customer’s engineers as early as possible in the design process and the Network Rail DFR process has made many changes to facilitate this.
Q: What key topics are you excited to speak about?
KR: I am keen to share that we are not only adopting a range of tried and tested reliability tools, but are mandating these in a logical, joined-up manner allowing them to be applied efficiently. A clear selection process allows a range of paths through the DFR process to be customised for specific situations to maximise benefit gained from effort applied. It is also key to customise the process for a business and the railway has a lot of activity installing products that may not be relevant elsewhere.
Q: Who else are you most interested in hearing from on the programme, and why?
KR: The whole programme is of interest, but I am most interested to hear James Pugh from Dyson, as I believe a lot can be learnt from very different organisations to our own and his subject of data capture is a key input to delivering reliability.
Q:What is your top tip in terms of designing for reliability?
KR: My top tip is to do it as early in the process as possible.
Q: Why is it important for engineers to join this seminar?
KR: As engineers we can all affect reliability, whether intentionally or not. This seminar allows us to gain CPD, whilst gaining proactive experience from a range of industries, rather than finding out about reliability the hard way by experiencing failures and having to apply reactive solutions, which cost more and are typically less effective than designing it in.
Q:What developments are you most interested in for the future and why?
KR: Increased use of sensors on the railway to monitor when products are starting to fail and trigger maintenance interventions to avoid failures is very powerful. Network Rail’s DFR process works well with this ‘Intelligent Infrastructure’ approach, as not every failure mechanism can be designed out and once potential causes are identified this gives twice the power to address them.
Asset Management: Designing for Reliability takes place on 26 March 2019 at One Birdcage Walk, London. Join this seminar to:
- Hear from asset management, design and reliability specialists from organisations across engineering sectors including ROSEN Group, Sellafield Ltd, Caterpillar Defense, Dyson, Rolls-Royce, Network Rail and more
- Learn how achieving clear definitions of life cycle conditions, loads and costs, can assist in saving costs and man-hours, reduce maintenance needs and guarantee safety
- Address challenges in capturing data in context, and using trending data to measure design robustness
- Build upon and improve existing design and strategies for whole life cycle costs
- Take part in interactive discussions during our roundtable sessions focusing in on key challenges relating to designing for reliability.
To book your place, please visit www.imeche.org/assetmanagement.