Practical Plant Failure Analysis (PDF)

A native of Northern New Jersey, Mr. Neville W. Sachs attended Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ where he received a Bachelor of Engineering degree, majoring in Mechanical and Chemical Engineering. After a variety of manufacturing, engineering, and supervisory positions, he joined Allied Chemical (now Honeywell International). From then until the Syracuse Works closed, he was heavily involved with plant reliability as an engineer and Reliability Engineering Department supervisor. While there, he was instrumental in developing one of the first large predictive maintenance inspection programs in the nation, served on a number of corporate technical committees, and received a patent for a device that demonstrates several of the mechanisms of fastener failures.

In early 1986, Mr. Sachs, a licensed Professional Engineer, joined with Philip Salvaterra to form Sachs, Salvaterra & Associates, Inc., (SS&A) a consulting "Reliability Engineering Department for Hire". After 25 years serving as the president of SS&A, the company was absorbed by Applied Technical Services of Marietta, GA and, in 2014 he returned to private practice.

Mr. Sachs has conducted thousands of failure analyses and taught hundreds of failure analysis seminars across North America and Europe. He is a past chairman of the Syracuse Chapter of the ASM, and is an active member of the National Association of Corrosion Engineers, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, National Society of Professional Engineers, and the Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers (STLE). In addition to being certified in several areas of nondestructive testing, his formal certifications include STLE's "Certified Lubrication Specialist".