Has Reliability Lost Its Way?

Walk into any maintenance and reliability conference today, and you’ll see presentations on Artificial Intelligence, Digital Twins, Machine Learning, IoT, cloud analytics and predictive algorithms. The technology is impressive. The possibilities are exciting.

But I can’t help asking myself a simple question….

Has reliability lost its way?

After more than 40 years working in maintenance and reliability, I’ve seen our profession evolve from grease guns and clipboards to real-time dashboards and AI-powered analytics. Some of that progress has been remarkable. Yet I also find myself visiting manufacturing sites where, despite all the technology, the conversations haven’t changed.

“We’re still firefighting.”

“We’re struggling with breakdowns.”

“We can’t find enough skilled people.”

“Our PM compliance is over 95%….but availability isn’t improving.”

Sound familiar?

We Have More Data Than Ever

Today we can monitor almost anything.

Vibration, Temperature, Oil condition, Motor current, Ultrasound, Energy consumption.

We can even predict failures using AI before they occur.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth.

Collecting data doesn’t improve reliability. Acting on it does.

I’ve walked through plants with hundreds of condition monitoring alarms, yet defects remained open for weeks or even months because nobody had the resources or discipline to remove them.

Technology identified the problem.

The organisation accepted it.

Those are two very different things.

Predictive Isn’t Preventive

One of the biggest misconceptions I see is the belief that predictive maintenance prevents failure.

It doesn’t.

Predictive maintenance tells you a failure is developing.

That’s incredibly valuable.

But if we don’t remove the defect causing that failure, we’re simply becoming better at predicting our own problems.

The ultimate goal of reliability has never been to detect failure earlier.

The goal has always been to prevent failure from occurring in the first place.

Maintenance Doesn’t Own Reliability

Perhaps the biggest misconception of all is that reliability belongs to the maintenance department.

It never has.

Reliability starts long before an engineer picks up a spanner.

It begins with:

• Design
• Equipment selection
• Procurement
• Installation
• Commissioning
• Operator care
• Precision maintenance
• Defect elimination
• Leadership
• Culture

Every one of those functions influences whether an asset succeeds or fails.

Yet many organisations still expect maintenance to solve problems that were designed into the equipment years earlier.

We Celebrate Activity

I often ask organisations:

“What does success look like?”

The answers usually include:

• PM compliance
• Schedule compliance
• Backlog
• Tool time
• Number of work orders completed

They’re all useful measures.

But none of them tells me whether reliability is actually improving.

I’ve seen maintenance teams achieve world-class schedule compliance while equipment availability remained stubbornly average.

Being busy isn’t the same as being effective.

Have We Forgotten Defect Elimination?

When I started my career, one of the biggest lessons I learned was simple.

If something fails repeatedly…

Stop fixing it.

Find out why.

Remove the cause.

That thinking led me into Root Cause Analysis, FMECA, Reliability-Centred Maintenance and, ultimately, helping organisations build structured reliability programmes.

Today, I sometimes wonder whether we’ve become so fascinated by detecting defects that we’ve forgotten to eliminate them.

The biggest reliability improvement I’ve ever seen didn’t come from installing more sensors.

It came from removing the defects that created failures in the first place.

AI Won’t Replace Reliability Engineers

Artificial Intelligence will undoubtedly change our profession.

It will help us:

• Analyse work orders.
• Generate reports.
• Identify trends.
• Suggest maintenance strategies.
• Even write FMEAs.

But AI cannot replace curiosity.

It cannot replace experience.

It cannot replace standing next to an operator who says:

“It’s been making that noise for months…”

Only last week, while working with a customer, we identified a high-frequency, short-duration stoppage on a production line. The operator had become so accustomed to the issue that five one-minute stops every hour were simply accepted as part of normal operation. But they weren’t normal and they certainly weren’t acceptable.

Once we quantified the impact, those seemingly insignificant interruptions amounted to more than £1 million per year in lost production. It’s a powerful reminder that the greatest threats to reliability are often the problems we’ve learned to live with.

Reliability has always been about people solving problems together.

Technology should enhance that, not replace it.

Reliability Is Bigger Than Maintenance

Throughout my career I’ve become increasingly convinced that reliability isn’t something a maintenance department delivers.

It’s something an organisation builds.

It requires alignment between operations, engineering, maintenance, procurement, leadership and everyone who touches an asset throughout its life.

That’s why I believe reliability should be viewed as a business strategy, not simply a maintenance initiative.

So…Has Reliability Lost Its Way?

Not entirely.

We’ve developed incredible tools.

Our ability to analyse data has never been greater.

Our understanding of failure mechanisms continues to improve.

But perhaps we’ve become distracted by technology and forgotten the fundamentals.

Reliable assets are still built through:

• Good design.
• Skilled people.
• Precision workmanship.
• Operator ownership.
• Defect elimination.
• Learning from failure.
• Strong leadership.
• A culture that refuses to accept recurring problems.

Technology can support all of those.

It cannot replace them.

Perhaps it’s time we stopped asking how smart our software is…

…and started asking whether our assets are actually becoming more reliable.

Because at the end of the day, reliability isn’t measured by the sophistication of your technology. It’s measured by the consistency of your production.

Summary

Perhaps reliability hasn’t lost its way after all. Perhaps we’ve simply become distracted by the latest technology and forgotten some of the fundamentals that have always delivered sustainable results.

Every organisation’s reliability journey is different. Some are just beginning to move away from reactive maintenance, while others are looking to optimise mature reliability programmes. Whatever the starting point, the first step is understanding where you are today, defining where you want to be, and developing a clear roadmap to bridge that gap.

At Pro-Reliability Solutions, that’s exactly why we developed the ReliabilityFocus™ platform. Rather than promoting individual tools or quick fixes, ReliabilityFocus™ provides a structured framework that helps organisations benchmark their current maturity, identify improvement opportunities, prioritise the right initiatives, and build a practical roadmap towards Reliability Excellence.

Because reliability isn’t achieved through technology alone.

It’s built through people, processes, leadership, culture, and the consistent application of proven reliability principles.

The question isn’t whether reliability has lost its way.

The real question is…

If reliability is a journey, do you know exactly where you are today, where you want to be tomorrow, and how you’re going to get there?

By Gary Tyne CMRP– Director, Pro-Reliability Solutions