Author: Diane Gordon, Reliability Center, Inc.

I was ecstatic to see our company and family featured in the Richmond Times – Dispatch (read the article here). Joan Tupponce did a lovely job sharing the history of our family-owned and operated company, which helps other companies understand the importance of root cause analysis and how to best approach problems that need solving.

What I didn’t know was that another leading lady had also learned about our story a few years ago and published a heart-felt post about my father and the legacy he started (read Courage for Reliability). We’re a very close family here and our father was committed to helping people in the engineering world. He cared very much for them. It was more than just doing business with them. We, my siblings and I, have been around Reliability since we were very young children. It flows through our veins and we try to show others how valuable it is.

What people don’t realize is that reliability really is a ‘family’ affair. Not just in terms of my family’s business, but in terms of what it takes to achieve reliability at the plant level. It is not any “one” person’s responsibility. It takes a culture of reliability. Everyone working in a plant or at a job site has to make reliability a priority. Each and every person needs to know the part they play in equipment reliability – from the person sourcing and selecting equipment for the system to the operator who needs to know how to run the equipment most efficiently, to the maintenance staff who needs to know how to properly service the equipment so it will run reliably for its intended life cycle.

If you want to know more about reliability and the role root cause analysis plays in creating a culture of reliability, I invite you to watch this video.