About the Road to Reliability™

ABOUT THE ROAD TO RELIABILITY™

It's reliability. As simple as it can be.

JUST IMAGINE ...

Imagine if your plant was highly reliable, cost-effective and safe. All at the same time. Each and every day.

No more firefighting and chasing around for parts or specialist services at the last minute. Instead all jobs are thoroughly planned and scheduled. When they’re due to be done everything is ready for your technicians to efficiently execute the work.

No more quick fixes that you know won’t last. Instead, you apply simple techniques to identify the source of the problem and remove it.

No more bickering between Operations and Maintenance. Instead, you have productive daily meetings where you agree priorities for new work requests. You jointly execute a frozen weekly schedule.

No more repeat failures. Instead of being great at fixing things that have broken many times before, you’ve become great at eliminating the sources of those failures.

No more useless PMs that just waste your limited time and do nothing to improve equipment reliability. Instead you understand your equipment’s dominant failure modes and have identified cost effective tasks to deal with them.

WHAT WOULD YOU GIVE

TO ACHIEVE THIS IN YOUR PLANT?

Working in an environment like this is stimulating.

The culture is strong and positive.

The relationships are trusting and you can put your energy into improving things. It’s an environment in which the people and the plant thrive.

Sadly though, not many plants around the world operate in an environment like this.

But it’s possible. In fact, there’s less stopping you than you might think.

You too can achieve high reliability

using my simple 4-step framework

MY BIGGEST FRUSTRATION WITH OUR INDUSTRY

But just because few plants around the world have achieved such an environment does not mean it is complicated or difficult. Sure it’s hard work. And it takes time. But what needs to be done can be summarised in a surprisingly simple framework.

And that’s one of things that frustrates me the most.

Somehow we’ve got people convinced that to achieve high reliability you need to successfully implement a model with 10 or 20 different elements. Most of these models are complex. And the idea of having to implement all those elements would be daunting to just about everyone.

But you know what?

These models are more complex than they need to. You don’t need 10 or 20 elements to achieve high reliability. In my experience the “Best of the Best” get to World Class Reliability by doing the basics really well. And that’s not just my experience, industry research shows the same.

Adopt an overly complicated approach like we discussed and you lose sight of those essential basics. Lose sight of the basics and you’re doomed. You’re doomed to a life of low reliability.

I like to keep things as simple as possible. That’s why I developed a very simple model called the Road to Reliability™ which consists of just 4 Essential Elements that you need to worry about. It is easy to understand. It helps you focus on what’s important. And it works.

two decades of world-wide experience

encountering the same problem again and again

Hi, my name is Erik Hupjé, founder of R2 Reliability and I developed the Road to Reliability™ framework. It’s unique in its simplicity yet it’s highly effective.

For the last 20 years I’ve worked in asset management, and specifically maintenance & reliability in the upstream oil & gas industry. I’ve worked in The Netherlands, United Kingdom, the Philippines, the Sultanate of Oman and Australia.

Everywhere I’ve seen the same problems again and again.

People in charge of maintenance and reliability are busy fighting fires. Working in highly reactive environments. Almost never a chance to look ahead and think about longer term improvements. Running from crisis to crisis.

As an industry we know how we should manage maintenance and reliability. But within individual organisations this knowledge is often not there where it matters.

Too often those in charge of maintenance & reliability don’t know how to avoid the fires. Or they don’t have the skills to bring about the change that will stop the fires.

WHAT PEOPLE SAY ABOUT ME

ERIK IS THE CONSUMMATE PROFESSIONAL

Erik is the consummate professional in all aspects of his dealings with colleagues, service providers and other stakeholders. Our team valued his forthright perspective, solid expertise and sage advice on all aspects of Maintenance Management and Readiness during our work with him. Erik in turn fostered a true team spirit, enjoying the respect of the seasoned professionals in our group.

Jacek NaroznyManager Performance Improvements at Amec Foster Wheeler

ERIK IS A VISIONARY

I worked with Erik for the better part of a year on a very challenging scope of work. Working with knowledgeable client is always a privilege, and in the field of Engineering & Maintenance Erik’s extensive international background serves him well. He has an exemplary eye for detail, which earns respect very quickly. He also has an innate ability to listen, which along with his conceptual viewpoint of matters is a great aid to dissect a problem, and define possible solutions.

Pieter FerreiraDirector Blue Lens Group

WHY I DEVELOPED THE ROAD TO RELIABILITY™

When those in charge of managing maintenance & reliability turn to the market for help they are often let down for a range of reasons:

Too often end up getting a solution that is really just addressing one small part of the puzzle. And typically it’s based on a piece of software that is being sold to them.
Too often the frameworks for achieving reliability that are being offered are overly complicated. This creates risks around focus and implementation.
And way too often, education is neglected.

But improving reliability is a marathon, not a sprint.

It takes time.

And often it takes quite a bit longer than you want to hire consultants for.

Let’s be honest, hiring good consultants to change your business is expensive. Not something most companies can afford to do for a long time. But, companies also can not afford to ignore reliability for a long time.

The solution is quite simple. You need to achieve reliability (mostly) on your own.

To succeed you need:

A simple and effective framework.
Effective education solutions that teach your education what you need to know. When you need to know it.
Simple tools to help you implement the Essential Elements of Reliability.
You need a community where you can share experience and get advice from.
And you need all this, without having to pay top dollar all the time.

And that’s exactly what will be on offer here at the Road to Reliability™.

In case you're wondering who I am ...

I’m not big on social media and I prefer to keep to myself.

But I also understand that when I put a framework like the Road to Reliability™ online, people may well want to know a bit about the person behind it.

So here’s my story in a few bullets:

I was born in Brunei but lived most of my childhood in The Netherlands with short stints in New Zealand and Paris, France.
I went to The Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands where I graduated in 1997 from the Faculty of Systems Engineering, Policy Analysis and Management.
I’m married to the most wonderful woman, Olya, who is a very talented artist. Together we have three awesome kids who are growing up way too fast.
Having lived as a family in the UK, the Philippines and Oman we are now living in Brisbane, Australia. And since 2017 we are all proud Australian citizens.
Outside work I enjoy travelling, cooking, reading about history and since moving to Australia I’m a big fan of beach fishing.

And if you still want to know more, then get in touch.

READY TO TRAVEL THE ROAD TO RELIABILITY™?