Maintenance and Reliability Forum

It's certainly a worthy forum suggestion. Let's let a few more CR4ers chime in and see what they think.

I will be happy to be in and around.

Sharing my 30 years of maintenance experience should be a lovely feeling, besides never ending learning oppertunity...

This might interest you.

http://www.globalspec.com/Goto/GotoWebPage?gotoUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eidcon%2Ecom%2Ftoastforum6503%2Ftoast%2Ftoast%2Easp&gotoType=SE&VID=176775&SrchItem=1&frmqry=Maintenance%20forum&kqid=127762671&show=total

When it is available, I'd also like to join. Currently I am a maintenance engineer in the offshore industry, and always looking to learn something new.

Sounds like just the ticket for me.

More properly: a RAM (reliability/availability/maintainability) forum. These are the industry and academic, standard, logical assemblage of design disciplines. To throw in maintenance (a non-ility) throws the whole forum concept off track...into a "How do I fix this or that?" forum - something that already exists.

I agree, I'd like to see a forum dedicated to the maintenance arena. As an engineer in manufacturing, I don't care much about design but I'm always looking to improve reliability....

CR4 section: Maintenance/Reliability Engineering ??

There seems to be a basis misunderstanding here, one that is exemplified in the OP suggestion and, now again, in the previous post...where mvida speaks of two subject areas, maintenance and reliability, as if each is part and parcel of the other when, in fact, they are each one the antithesis of the other: maintenance being a proactive or reactive product support activity; and reliability being confined for the better part to the arena of design or design support.

To combine the two in the way suggested in the OP will lead, either, to a forum which would prove confusing and self-contradictory, or to a forum in which one (probably reliability) will be short shrifted or ignored altogether.

As to a (solely) "maintenance" forum, it is difficult to see any gain for "conference room 4." The facility already exists, and has existed, to receive any support or interaction needed as regards questions about maintenance...and to receive it within the particular discipline (the forum category) to which one's "maintenance" issue most aptly pertains. For a person to post a maintenance issue within a separate "maintenance" forum would amount to undoing of the specialty forums as they presently exist; you would have "maintenance" issues otherwise addressed in the specialty forums (say, for instance, electrical or mechanical) becoming all lumped together (say, electrical and mechanical) in a single forum ...not much different than if all the specialty forums were dispensed with and only the General forum remained! But only more confusing and more difficult and inefficient to work with!

As mentioned in a previous post, Maintainability is one of the standard RAM trio of design disciplines that go hand in hand with each other...are intrinsically related and not mutually antithetical (as is reliability and maintenance). So a RAM (Reliability-Availability-Maintainability) forum would not only be in keeping with the standard criterion for "natural" grouping of interrelated engineering disciplines, it would avoid the kind of forum dilution, obfuscation and/or confusion as was mentioned above.

The question then would be, whether a forum concentrated heavily in theory and mathematics (reliability, availabity, maintainability) is one in which sufficient numbers of members, or prospective members, would take interest and participate. Because the RAM disciplines are also involved with testing (both destructive and non-destructive), there is good reason to think that an appreciable number, both design-oriented and otherwise, would choose to participate in a RAM forum. But...

But because (as said), RAM are a relatively restricted (and, to many, arcane) area of specialization, an even better idea might be to place them under the broader umbrella of a new specialty forum that does not yet exist: a forum called "Systems Engineering." And, because that discipline is relatively new and frequently not well understood, it could prove a "refreshing" as well as thought-stimulating addition to the conference room.

Well stated, very ACADEMIC but well stated. Maintenance and reliability do go hand in hand, ask any maintenance manager that and you will get the same answer. Granted, all the text books, seminars and schooling will break them apart and give long winded definitions as you have done. The reality is this, we all work with worn out, old equipment that must be retrofitted because everything is obsolete and it's manufacture parts on the fly. If you're lucky enough, the equipment was taken care of prior to you getting it and getting it to run RELIABLY won't be too much of a challenge. As Maintenance and Engineering Manager of a $6B company, every breakdown is an opportunity to increase reliability. My staff is constantly reverse engineering parts as well due to the ridiculous costs from OEM's.

With that said, my position hasn't changed. A forum dedicated to Maintenance (or whatever you would like to call it) would be a good idea.

Interested with over 20 years exp.

And so??