I just ran across this video - please watch it when you have the opportunity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpzvaqypav8&feature=youtu.be&t=17m26s With the passage of ISO-55000, infrastructure is clearly becoming a serious issue. This video gives us a humorous - yet pointed look at the topic of asset care. Maybe we should make a movie... :) Continue reading

Did you ever have one of those mornings when your alarm clock was your worst enemy? It is going off and all you can do is think about sleeping a little longer. If it has one, you are repeatedly hitting the snooze button, trying to make the reality of morning go away. You know that one more tap on the snooze button will make you late for work. On Wednesday, September 24, 2014 Frank Jordans of the Associated Press set off the alarm clocks of the industrialized world. He wrote an article “German Employers Struggle to Find Apprentices”. The tag... Continue reading

Once upon a time there were procedures. These procedures were tied to the company’s overall business objectives, so it was important for the health of the company’s business for these procedures to be accomplished. If these procedures were not properly accomplished, there was a risk that something bad could happen to the company. These procedures were documented to insure employees could understand them and could accomplish tasks repeatedly and consistently. The various functional departments in the business could now prosper and all of the stakeholders would be satisfied. However, next came the management optimization philosophies. Departmental managers liked these philosophies... Continue reading

Once upon a time there were procedures. These procedures were tied to the company’s overall business objectives, so it was important for the health of the company’s business for these procedures to be accomplished. If these procedures were not properly accomplished, there was a risk that something bad could happen to the company. These procedures were documented to insure employees could understand them and could accomplish tasks repeatedly and consistently. The various functional departments in the business could now prosper and all of the stakeholders would be satisfied. However, next came the management optimization philosophies. Departmental managers liked these philosophies... Continue reading

Now that ISO-55000 has been published, many individuals and organizations are questioning if they should adopt it. Here is one more reason for companies to investigate ISO-55000 and see if it has application in their business. It is Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular No. A-119 (http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/circulars_a119) . What is the purpose of this document? It clearly states in section 1 that “this Circular directs agencies to use voluntary consensus standards in lieu of government-unique standards”. ISO-55000 is considered a voluntary consensus standard. Some other points in the circular that I found interesting: 1. Section 6 – “All federal... Continue reading

Regulatory Agencies, Insurance Companies, and Lawyers. Almost everyone is familiar with the way the Jeopardy game is played. The answer to a question is given and it is up to the contestants to figure out the real question. While this may seem easy, it often is quite difficult. For example, consider the three entities listed at the start of this blog. What do regulatory agencies (OSHA, EPA, FDA, etc.), insurance companies, and lawyers have in common? On the surface, one might say not much. However, that is about to change. Sometime about January 15th, 2014 the ISO-5500X series of standards... Continue reading

Recently I was engaging in some mindless entertainment watching “Dances with the Stars” on the television. An interesting event took place, a favorite dancer of the judges was voted off. The dancer that stayed (Bill Engvall) was less skilled, but hugely entertaining, and clearly a fan favorite. The judges and those who appreciate skilled dancing were outraged – the rest of us were entertained. Now why mention this in a “Maintenance/ Reliability” blog? Because there is an interesting lesson here. On the dance show, the contestants are given two scores – one by the judges for their actual dance. The... Continue reading

I am just getting ready to conduct the Benchmarking workshop for the SMRP conference Indianapolis on 10/14. As I am reviewing the workshop content, I ran across an interesting point in the “Best Practices Benchmarking” textbook written by Sylvia Codling. In setting the stage for the rest of the book’s content, on page 10, she makes this point –“The advantage of benchmarking, which looks at processes rather than outputs, is that many diverse businesses share a certain number of processes”. So reflecting on that point for a moment, how often do we find benchmarking effort that focus solely on numbers?... Continue reading

In my last blog, I referenced a recent Harvard Business Review Blog, (http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/06/what_inspiring_leaders_do.html?goback=%2Egde_1886721_member_254905125). While discussing being inspirational as applied to maintenance and reliability managers, one might question whether they must “have” or can develop inspirational skills? The article indicated that being inspirational can be a developed leadership skill. For example, the article pointed out that the 310 leaders who set out to improve their ability to inspire, the group raised their overall test scores from the 42% level (below average) to the 70% level. This provides evidence that being inspirational is a leadership skill that can be developed. The article... Continue reading

In a recent Harvard Business Review Blog, (http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/06/what_inspiring_leaders_do.html?goback=%2Egde_1886721_member_254905125) leadership traits were examined in an attempt to find out what made some leaders more effective than others. Many common traits were typically found in good leaders, such as: They set stretch goals with their team They spent time developing their subordinates They engaged in highly collaborative behavior They encouraged those about them to be more innovative I had to stop at that point in the blog and wonder how many maintenance and reliability managers display just these four traits? For example, how often do maintenance and reliability managers share departmental goals... Continue reading

The USA Today just ran an article on the annual cost of operating an average automobile for 2012 driving 15,000 miles. (Larry Copeland, April 16, 2013). The article had a couple of very interesting quotes: “The biggest percentage increase this year was in maintenance costs, which grew by 11.26% to 4.97 cents per mile, on average, for sedan owners.” “The maintenance cost estimates are based on the cost to maintain a vehicle and perform needed repairs for five years and 75,000 miles, including labor expenses, replacement part prices and the purchase of an extended warranty.” “Since last year's study, there... Continue reading

In my last blog, I presented some of the financial findings in the Center for Green Schools report. There was an additional article published in the LA times focusing on the school conditions in LA compared to the report. You can find the article at http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0313-lopez-disrepair-20130313,0,7138841.column?page=1 (it is a two page article – so don’t overlook the second page) It is interesting to consider that the school district there has over 35,000 work orders in its backlog. Maintenance personnel are referred to as “triage doctors” – I wonder if that is the same as the more common terms such as... Continue reading

Last week, (March 12th to be specific), the Associated Press published an article based on a startling report by the Center for Green Schools. In case you missed the article, it stated the following about US school (K-12) buildings: It would take $270B to bring existing school buildings back to their original condition It would take $542B to update and modernize the same buildings The same report highlights the fact that in 1995 a similar study was published, showing that it would have taken $112B to restore existing buildings (at that time). So, despite having this information about building deficiencies,... Continue reading

The February 2, 2013 issue of the New York Times carried an article “Raging (Again) Against the Robots”. This article again highlights some of the issues that were raised in my last few blogs; (re)Training the workforce and jobs. The article highlighted several points from the book “Race against the Machine” (another of my recommended reads – the Amazon Kindle version is very economical). There are several great points made in the NYT article and the textbook. One in particular was “If a job can be reduced to an algorithm, it will be”. Both the article and the book point... Continue reading

When was the last time you read about someone from your local school district tour an industrial facility? When was the last time a local school official, such as a school board member, a principal, or a superintendent visited your plant or facility? When was the last time that one of these officials reached out to your company in an attempt to understand what skills your company’s employees need to be successful? If your answer is “a long time”, then how can they produce a graduate that is “employable”? Let’s put this in a different context. What if a company... Continue reading

There was a great article in the New York Times on 12/25/2012. The article was titled “Pay in Oil Fields, Not College, Is Luring Youths in Montana”. It was written by Jack Healy. My thoughts were deeper than the article’s reporting on the employment boom in Montana; they were about the push and shove that is going on between the educational system and industry today. The background on the situation is the fracking going on in Montana has created a growing job market for skill trades personnel to support the assets/ equipment that is being deployed. The article pointed out... Continue reading

On the website for Nuts, Bolts, and Thingamajigs, there is an interesting white paper. It can be found at http://www.nutsandboltsfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/WP-MFG-Predicament_FinalSecure.pdf . This white paper highlights the growing skills shortage in manufacturing. One statistic shows that while 78% of Americans feel that manufacturing is essential to the US economic prosperity, there are major shortages in the number of qualified workers that can fill current manufacturing personnel shortages. The article goes on to show that 52% of teens have little or no interest in a career in manufacturing – and another 21% are “ambivalent" about it. With so small of a percentage... Continue reading

I had the opportunity to take the “Behind the Scenes” Tour during the SMRP conference in Orlando. It was a great tour and a lot of fun. Many good behaviors by the Disney organization were observable on the tour. However, there was one comment made by the Disney Facilitator that really impressed me. It was: “The Attention to Detail Makes the Difference between Being Good and Being Great” When you think of that comment, stop and think about the maintenance organizations in most companies. Are they paying attention to details – or are they just getting the job done and... Continue reading

With the growing popularity (at least internationally) of PAS-55 and the DIS (Draft International Standard) version of the proposed ISO-55000, questions begin to arise as to where responsibility should reside for the asset management function. It is the opinion of this author that without an organizational structure to support asset management, it will fail as so many other asset based strategies have throughout the past decades. Why such a strong opinion? The following realities in most companies today highlight my point. 1.) Life Cycle Management has been a staple for most engineering courses that have been taught since the 1960’s.... Continue reading

When we think about Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) it is basically assets managed at the enterprise level. However, how many corporations manage their assets at an enterprise level? There are many corporations who have individual plants that do well managing their assets. In reality, most plants continue to be fragmented in their approach to asset management. For example, consider the plant, where the operations manager, the maintenance manager, and the engineering manager develop a weekly schedule to utilize the plant’s assets. As the week begins, the schedule is closely followed. However, on Tuesday, on 3rd shift, the operations shift foreman... Continue reading

What if you had a rich uncle who recently was deceased and in the will you find out that you were left this business that was worth about $1M. What would you do? Most likely you would want to visit the company and meet the people who were currently running the business. You would probably want to see the financial ledger. You would likely want to see the P&L statements for the last several years, as you tried to clearly understand the business and what customers it serves. As you delved deeper into the business, you would want to see... Continue reading

While going through some archived copies of Harvard Business Review, an article caught my attention. It was titled “What do you mean I can’t write?” The author connected a manager’s ability to be promoted with their ability to write. While addressing the term “Readability” he made the point that no matter how well written an article is, if the reader does not have any background in the topic, they will not understand it. The author used the comparison of a Doctor and a Mathematician. One would find an article in the New England Journal of Medicine to be fascinating and... Continue reading

I just read an interesting article from Harvard Business Review (5/18/12) by Joel Stein titled “Boringness: The Secret to Great Leadership”. Joel is the author of a new book “Man Made: A Stupid Quest for Masculinity”. During his research for the book, he found that most leaders he interviewed were quiet listeners who let other people make most of the decisions. He said most leaders he interviewed were not particularly charismatic – or funny-or they were not the toughest guys in the pack – they were in fact, a little boring. He discussed one fire fighter Captain who had his... Continue reading

When discussing roles and responsibilities for maintenance and reliability organizations, I often get push-back from companies that want their people to be “self directed”. Often comments such as “They don’t want us telling them what to do” or “They know their jobs without us telling them what to do” are heard when discussing organizational alignment. However are these statements really true? An interesting article by Tammy Erickson in Harvard Business Review (HBR Now 04/04/2012) made this observation: “Collaboration improves when the roles of individual team members are clearly well defined and well understood… Without such clarity, team members are likely... Continue reading

In the article, 10 Amazing Life Lessons You Can Learn From Albert Einstein, one of the lessons is “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value". The article comments “Don’t waste your time trying to be successful, spend your time creating value”. One might wonder how reflecting on this lesson would impact a maintenance and reliability professional? Perhaps focusing too much on achieving a number, like a specific KPI, would distract someone from looking at the big picture, such as the value a maintenance and reliability business function can create for an organization. Consider one common... Continue reading