Bloch, Heinz P.
Heinz P. Bloch resides in Montgomery, Texas. He retired as Exxon Chemical’s Regional Machinery Specialist for the U.S. and has authored or co-written more than 780 publications, among them 23 comprehensive books on practical machinery management, failure analysis, failure avoidance, compressors, steam turbines, pumps, oil mist lubrication and optimized lubrication for industry. Mr. Bloch holds BS and MS degrees (cum laude) in mechanical engineering from the Newark College of Engineering (NCE). He is one of 10 inaugural inductees into NCE’s Hall of Fame, which honors its most distinguished alumni.
HP Reliability: Publish or perish – a reminder to industry
A number of useful textbooks dealing with machinery reliability and dozens of technical papers dealing with related subjects owe their existence to an interesting policy. Twenty-one years ago, one of ..
HP Reliability: Closed-loop oil mist systems are a viable lubrication option
Although plantwide, centralized oil mist systems have served industry well since the early 1960s, closed-loop oil mist systems have made major inroads only in this decade. Environmentally-acceptable a..
HP Reliability: Reliability growth models for process plants
Failure data are used to build simple log-log plots for predicting future failures and identifying if failure trends are improving or deteriorating. On the Crow/ AMSAA plot (Fig. 1), stable processes ..
HP Reliability: How installation and operation influence MTBF
Mean-time-between and mean-time-to-failure (MTBF and MTTF) can differ for the same equipment. The differences are often attributable to quality of installation and grade of operation. This situation i..
HP Reliability: What to do with reliability indices
This issue is often raised, or even debated. A simple explanation would be that reliability data can be converted into uncomplicated, figure-of-merit performance indices. Consider these indices as coa..
HP Reliability: What to do with reliability indices - Fig 1
This MTTF data from production, maintenance Remember: MTTF is a meterstick- and purchasing records. not a micrometer ..
HP Reliability: Plans needed to train proficient engineers
More than once, this column has dealt with the importance of training the reliability professional. Thirty-five years ago, my section supervisor at New Jersey-based Exxon Research and Engineering disc..
Use equipment failure statistics properly
These data can help in deciding which reliability improvement efforts are feasible and reasonable
Use equipment failure statistics properly - Fig 1
Fig. 1. Life spans of machinery commponents and ..
Use equipment failure statistics properly - Table 1
 Table 1. Machinery availability / reliability.Industry covered: HPI Basis:8,760 hr/yrYear: 1996 DowntimeForced outage     IMR&O,Forced DT,Proactive Mtc.,MTBF,I..
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