How reliability teams can move from fixing what just broke to protecting what matters most.

In the modern industrial landscape, “Zero Downtime” is often treated as a lucky outcome – a byproduct of good fortune. Yet, for elite teams at manufacturing giants like Takeda and Bahlsen, it is a deliberate, data-driven decision.

End of Year is a good moment to evaluate the past year and think about how things could be done differently in the year ahead. Let’s call these – appropriate for the times – New Year’s resolutions. Some examples: prioritise people, focus on continuous improvement, increase the efficiency and reliability of your assets and learn from others. Too much for one year? Not if you integrate this in an improvement programme.

This case study explains how electrical fluting was diagnosed on a 15 kW electrical motor using ultrasound inspection and sound spectral analysis. Electrical fluting is a common failure on bearings in variable frequency drive (VFD) motors, but with the right tools it can be diagnosed in its early stages, before it becomes a serious issue.

Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) promises improved reliability, but is it always worth it? Full-scale implementation is often overly complex, costly, and unnecessary—like using a cannon to shoot a mosquito. Without readiness and a strong foundation in basic maintenance practices, RCM can distract from more practical, cost-effective solutions. Simpler, experience-driven approaches may often yield better results.