I’m not an Engineer

Engineers want order. Everything should happen in a programmed sequence making an expected result predictable. It’s one of the traits that gives Engineers a reputation for being boring. When things happen out of order or sequence the engineers of this world become quiet while their brains churn out what they know the expected order should be and what might have occurred to upset the process. [Read more…]

The face you make when you know it’s supposed to be a team meeting yet the word you keep hearing most is “I”! Unless your working with a group of Optometrists it’s usually not a good sign!

I’m laughing at work! At the same time, I’m shaking my head and smiling because I’m sitting alone at my computer working on developing some maintenance plans for one of our customers. Strange as it might seem the laughter was brought on by a social media notification that today is the birthday of an old friend. Someone I used to work with, and thinking about this person I remembered all the laughs our group shared at work. [Read more…]

I’m sure you have all heard the phrase I wish I had a nickel for every time someone asked me this question.  If you follow LinkedIn at all someone poses this question to anyone willing to answer at least once a day and as a result they get opinions that list the benefits of a Top Down or Bottom Up continuous improvement process. [Read more…]

First things first, let’s get something straight, I am not an internet marketing genius.  I do however talk with dozens of folks like myself who have active websites, write regular blog posts and enjoy interacting with family, friends and even customers via social media.

As a result like everyone else I have my list of pet peeves, the things that on their own may not send me over the top but put a few of them together and you will find me talking to the computer screen or my cell phone in a language not intended for young audiences. [Read more…]

I’m participating on a conference call with a number of companies who made the commitment to begin a reliability journey.  Each have drafted a 3 year vision that includes quarterly goals or milestones they worked to achieve and I’m impressed that the first company to present appears to be on goal or even ahead of their target.

“We had a goal this quarter to certify 60 people across our three sites and in our first month 28 people have taken the exam and if all goes as expected we should have at least 20 of those pass the exam. Next month we have over 30 people signed up so I think we are well on our way.” [Read more…]

So I got to wondering today, is it just me or are there way too many pets on planes these days?

And, just so I can maybe avoid 1 or 2 hate replies I am a pet owner.  I have always loved all of my pets, I have spoiled them on occasion and we treat them like family.  I love coming home the unglued excitement of a wagging tail powerful enough to take anything not nailed down off the closest table but I have to wonder how much our pets really enjoy being dragged onto a flying tin can captured in close quarters for hours at a time only to have the doors opened to an environment where their owners speed walk to the nearest rest room but poor Jake still isn’t allowed to relieve himself? [Read more…]

The finger pointing in Flint Michigan has already begun and it’s likely to reach and cross several levels of Michigan’s government.  We have developed a society where it has become more important to find out who is to blame, than it is to find out what happened and how we can be sure it never happens again.

Regardless of what you may have read in the papers or seen on the news the effects of lead poisoning are real. Chronic lead poisoning over time like one would expect from a contaminated water source results in damage to every part of the human body and lasts a lifetime. [Read more…]

I no sooner accepted the meeting notice for a public training event in Europe that my mind began to race. The dates were setting off bells in my head for some reason so I pulled out my cell phone and checked my calendar.

The only thing now scheduled for those dates were the training events in Europe yet for some reason I still could not let go of the thought that I had something else scheduled for those dates. [Read more…]

I’m currently working with a large company on a continuous improvement project that started a few months ago with a detailed analysis on some of their critical assets. Within one weeks’ time we had a list of over 250 recommendations that needed to be implemented and performed in order to recognize an improved and sustained level of productivity that would provide a quick return on investment and lower the unit cost of their product.

Two months ago I was highly confident they would jump right on completing the recommended tasks. [Read more…]

Just for fun a few months back I wrote a blog on what I listed as the 5 worst inventions in last 10 years. I looked over that list today and was astonished to find out that I did not list the Web-based meeting as one of these inventions. Those who have known me for years know that I really despise non-value added work and over the last 5 years according to my calculations I have wasted a full 6 months of time attending web meetings. Time that could have been spent working on great idea or invention the entire world has been waiting for while I was listening to someone read through a list of agenda items that could have been sent in an email.

The result however is a blog post on the 5 critical mistakes of Web Meetings! (Please be sure to read on for my 5 rules for web-based meetings!) [Read more…]

I can remember attending my first Maintenance and Reliability Conference, while it was over twenty years ago I was excited to go and find out what other companies were doing to improve.  I can remember looking at the agenda and feeling a bit overwhelmed, there were so many different presentations to choose from sometimes I had a difficult time selecting which one to attend at a given time slot. [Read more…]

I have told my own children for years now that I didn’t find the job that I loved until I was around 35. Truth is I was around 35 when I figured out what I enjoyed but I didn’t really enjoy doing it until around 4 years later when I had the courage to leave the large company I had worked at for 19 years and start a business of my own.  Working on my own I developed a product, had to market and sell that product to build a brand name.  I had to make sure that every customer engagement was a shining example of success and efficiency because I not only wanted more business, I wanted my customers to tell everyone they knew that when it came to RCM (Reliability Centered Maintenance) I was not only the best bargain, I was one of the best in the world. [Read more…]

Clean, Green & Reliable – Improving Equipment Reliability and Reducing Energy in Manufacturing Facilities

I first became interested in manufacturing reliability nearly twenty years ago working as a maintenance mechanic who had a personal interest in improving the reliability of individual assets by searching through our maintenance history for areas where we were spending the most time and money in regard to emergency/demand work orders.  Using the history we had in our database we used the 80/20 approach to identify the 20% of our assets where we spent nearly 80% of our maintenance budget.  Once we identified a system or asset to work on we would use a cause-map or root cause analysis to identify the potential causes of our equipment failures, understanding these causes we would then look to identify potential redesigns to eliminate or reduce the frequency of equipment failures. [Read more…]