Are you 100% sure?

Can we reach to be 100% sure of anything in our life? You can reach 100% sure of some fundamental things in your life like you are alive now and you have internet access because you can reach this post, also you are sure that you have a smart device that can access this link. Also, you are sure of where you are. However, I believe you can reach to a maximum of 90% trust with time to what is outside this category. Why we can’t reach 100% trust? Because then you are trusting your perceptions about the situations, the people and the equipment. Why is it a perception and not a truth? Because those situations, people and equipment are not at a close proximity to you in location or in time all the time. You believe that what happened the previous time will continue to happen this time.

This probability is not a small one but, you can’t rely on it every time. It is better to be cautious and follow the safe correct steps every time. Is it better to overlook what you know you should when no one is looking? What about the next time? Or will you try the last time shortcut that was successful but not safe? It is clearer with examples, so let’s give some examples and squeeze them to get a useful extract out of them.

Maintenance tools

Let’s start by a painful example. One repair day was extended for about 10 hours because the final tests for a 700kw DC motor was out of range. The supervisor in charge of this repair activity met me with tears in his eyes next day. The production started after 10 hours delay because he didn’t realize that his test device batteries need replacement.

In the maintenance field you can meet a lot of stories like this one because tools and protection devices are out of order. That’s why RCM (Reliability Centered Maintenance) gives the highest priority to hidden failures i.e. failures that you will discover only when you need those standby equipment intervention or help.

In safety,

One of the cause of accidents is the negligence coming from over confidence in doing things. We might get over confident when we get used to bypass or ignore the safety conditions without causing accidents. Other times some people do not follow the rules because they faced no punishments. They are 100% sure that every time after the few first times when they were worried, no onw will realize them. Unfortunately, that’s seldom the case.

Can we be sure of our regular maintenance procedures?

Yes but not indefinitely. There is one interesting law from Murphy’s laws it says

 Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.

Murphy’s Seventh Law

If you want to know more about the story of the aerospace Engineer of the USA Air Force Edward A. Murphy who put these laws and how they came popular, you can read it in this article Murphy’s laws origin

Even though his laws seem pessimistic, many had followed them and proved it to be true. Even, you can reach some universities and businesses teaching them or adopting them in their strategies. So, it can apply to the maintenance system. If you leave your maintenance activities without review, update or at least analysis, it will go from bad to worse.

That’s why after introducing or applying maintenance activities for sometime, it won’t continue smoothly indefinitely. Consequently, you can’t be sure that the same activity will bring same result, take exactly same time and have no problems on the 2nd or tenth time.

Why things might get worse with time?

There are many natural reasons for this. Among these reasons are the wear and tear, the lose of interests, the business environment and many others.

Are you sure of your Wear and Tear rates?

This law was introduced in the 1880’s by a biologist and researchers proved it for living cells. Then, it was adapted by equipment manufacturers to give the equipment its useful lifetime. Generally it is called Aging for both living things and equipment. Whether, you delve deeper in analyzing the aging of living bodies or equipment there is a fact that you can’t skip. The utilization and maintenance along the years creates a huge difference at the prescribed end of life time. Many people reach over 100 cycles over planet earth while in good shape. On the other hand, others start suffering in their 40’s or 50’s.

If you consider any equipment you are using in work or at home, they have the same wide range of probabilities. They all suffer tear and wear. What makes the real difference is your utilization and maintenance. So if you are sure that you are maintaining your car as per the designer recommendation, can you guarantee the usage? Are you the only one using it? Your Home PC as well as your mobile are having a certain storage capacity. If you continue to download a lot of stuff, are you sure that the next movie will find a space?

I had seen a variety of examples in the equipment realm that can demonstrate how many factors can affect equipment reliability. There is a complete series about reliability in our blog, you can reach here. Also you can join our Arabic or English maintenance trainings that give you insights about those details. Let’s not forget our main line of thoughts which focuses on how to be 100% sure of something. Let’s delve deeper with the equipment, its maintenance and maintainers.

Lose of interest or disengagement

Maybe you are at your desk and you are quiet sure that the inspection is running today as it had been for the past 5 years. You are happy with the results as usual. Then after few days or weeks a failure occurred. Reviewing the inspection results brings no clue of what had changed. Inspecting the field, it is clear that the inspection results were not reflecting the true condition. Which means that they were skipped for days or weeks. It is the same human program that makes us forget our grieve or our joy few days or weeks after it. It the same built in program and life distractions that made you stop following up and rechecking the execution of the maintenance activities after you reached 100% sure that it is done correctly and consistently.

In Conclusion, to answer “YES” to the question of “Are you 100% sure?”

You can reach to be 100% sure of someone, some system or some equipment. However with time, each of those change independently. Moreover they change independent of you because they have their own pattern of wear and tear and interest declining. To maintain your level of trust, you need to shake your believes, test it, refresh, boost it or simply change it. Doing something differently guarantees a fresh start that will boost your engagement for sometime. Before you return to disengagement or to forget why you were doing this task, ask your self “Are you 100% sure?”. May be you trust that your coffee will boost your mode. However if you are true to yourself, sometimes it doesn’t. Why? It may be you are not here and now while drinking it. So, to ensure that you get the result that you trust, be conscious while you are taking the used to action. And reflect what you had realized during those consciousness moments on the next cycle.