How to Ensure Your Attendance at A Conference Delivers An ROI

As the kids go back to school, maintenance, reliability, and asset management professional resume their professional learning.  This learning usually takes place at one of the numerous world-class conferences available across North America and internationally.  These conferences allow professionals to observe and connect with the latest tools, technology, and techniques in our amazing profession.

Sometimes it is difficult for the maintenance, reliability, and asset management professionals to get the approval or funding to attend the conference. Some organizations look at these events as a week of vacation, where there is little to no value from attending the conference.  Changing this perception is not an easy task, but can be started by having an intention for the conference.
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What Good Is The Data If You Don’t Know What To Do With It?

As maintenance, reliability, and asset management professionals, we are in an amazing time.  We can collect virtually limitless amounts of data on the condition of our assets.  With this data, we can determine the exact condition of the assets, predict when the next failure is likely to occur and how it will occur.  Besides, with all of this data, we can move to prescriptive maintenance, where the maintenance actions are determined based on the asset condition, not a predetermined strategy.   I’ll touch more on prescriptive maintenance in next week’s post. [Read more…]

Understanding What Comes After Predictive Maintenance

Imagine being able to adjust your maintenance actions on the fly to provide the exact maintenance where and when it is needed.  However, you are not reacting to significant changes in the condition of the equipment (like PdM), but instead, you are taking many sources of information in real-time from the equipment using Internet of Things (IoT) and using analytics to analyze and understand the condition of the equipment.  This allows for a flexible maintenance strategy in which maintenance is only applied when and where it is needed.  This virtually eliminates the traditional PM Schedule.  This type of maintenance is available now, and it is called Prescriptive Maintenance. [Read more…]

Unlocking the Hidden Cash Flow in Your Organization

Imagine not have the right spare parts to make a repair, or maybe you don’t have to imagine it.  It has already happened.   Now imagine having to go through the storeroom and throw out $300,000 worth of parts because they were obsolete.  Once again, you may not have to imagine it. [Read more…]

Proper Storeroom Layout Will Enable Long-Term Success

You begin your day by looking for a part in the storeroom.   You are looking for a common bearing used on multiple pieces of equipment on the site.   You look up the part in the CMMS and it does not have a bin number associated with it.  You walk into the storeroom and beginning going through the “bearing section”.  Only the bearing is not there.  You wander over the equipment section and find it buried in the equipment specific drawer, but you know that it is used elsewhere.  Is this the best way to organize materials, by equipment? [Read more…]