Reliable operations are far less expensive to maintain and operate and they produce more consistently. Yet most industrial operations are far from achieving high reliability. Getting there will require effort and that effort goes well beyond the maintenance department alone. They will need to change from reactive, break it then fix it thinking and un-informed cost-cutting measures that undermine reliability. They will need leadership, not management. Leadership is all about making change and taking your organization in new directions. It will be disruptive, or it won’t be much of a change. Leaders are the ones who rock the boat, managers will keep it stable. In choosing excellence you’ll be choosing a path of constant change and improvement. Leadership is needed – it’s about strategy, effective execution, and it’s about your people – without whom you will accomplish very little. If you want excellence, it begins with leadership. [Read more…]
Search Results for: Change Management
Most Commonly Underused CMMS Features
Want to achieve a worthwhile return-on-investment (ROI) from your software? Then it’s important to learn about some of the most commonly underused computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) functions. Many organizations do not use all of the features their preventive maintenance software provides, or don’t use the functions to their full capacity. In fact, a majority of plant maintenance managers feel they aren’t using their preventive maintenance software to its maximum capability.
Modern-day CMMS systems are crammed with various features, and users don’t necessarily need to access and master every feature of the system. However, it becomes a problem when users get so comfortable with their way of doing things that they avoid features they’re not familiar with. Especially if those features could potentially improve their productivity. Understanding what impact underutilized CMMS functions can have on your maintenance department will help you make the most of your software.
This is the Best Time to do your Corporate Planning Differently
Guest Post by Patrick Ow (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)
Steve Jobs envisioned a future state with computers on every worker’s desk. It will be a progressive culture where technology creates more opportunities for employees and a workplace without secretaries.
The future-state for Jobs was about “building tools that amplify a human ability”. He used the word “tools”, not “computers”, at the start of Apple’s life, which became hugely successful.
That is why Apple came up with the iPod, iPhone, and iTunes. These tools revolutionised the way we listen to music. Many people didn’t know they wanted an iPad until Apple showed them these tools. [Read more…]
264 – Crucial Decision with Ryan Sitton
Crucial Decision with Ryan Sitton
Welcome Ryan Sitton to the podcast. Ryan is the founder and CEO of Pinnacle Engineering and has spent a lot of time around reliability and production engineering. Notably, he is the author of “Crucial Decisions”; a book that we will discuss in the episode and how it applies to maintenance and reliability.
More about Ryan:
He has a mechanical engineering background and has worked at a gas company called Oxy and also worked as an Energy Regulator for the State of Texas. He has a PhD in Data Science and is the founder of Pinnacle Engineering.
Data Science has become an inevitable necessity in that; data plays a crucial role in what we tend to accomplish in our daily activities.
In this episode we covered:
- What is a crucial decision? What makes it different from other ordinary decisions in a facility?
- What types of crucial decisions brought about the issues we saw in Texas Big Freeze?
- How does risk assessment fit into decision making? Do we underestimate or overestimate risk?
Decision Points: How to Prepare for Big Decisions
Guest Post by Andrew Sheves (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)
A decision point is a moment when a significant choice presents itself and the decision made will result in a significant change of course that cannot be undone easily. Moreover, that same choice or option is unlikely to reemerge in the future. The essential elements are that the decision is significant, non-repeatable, and non-reversible.
The problem is that decision points don’t always announce themselves as clearly as the examples above suggest. Sometimes, the decision point looks a lot like other, similar moments except the context or consequences are very different. At other times, the decision point might get overlooked, mixed in with other less critical choices amongst a flood of activity. So it can be easy to overlook or miss the decision point. [Read more…]
263 – Leadership with Rob Kalwarowsky
Leadership with Rob Kalwarowsky
Welcome Rob back to the Podcast. You were the founder of Rob’s Reliability Project and later started working as a co-host of the Leadership Launchpad Podcast and Dismantling the High Performance Narrative. Although, tell us more about yourself.
Rob- Having worked in reliability for ten years- transitioning across manufacturing, mining, and presently in an oil pipeline, it is clear that the biggest gap in the industry is in leadership. This became apparent after the observation of shop floor teams in different sites. Some leadership teams rarely listened to them and that drove a lack of psychological safety.
In this episode we covered:
- What drove you to this ?
- What is your definition of leadership?
- Why is leadership important to culture change?
TLC 002 Leadership Connection Interview with George Parada
Leadership Connection Interview with George Parada
The Leadership Connection Host, Doug Plucknette, interviews reliability leader George Parada in Episode 2 of this series. George has spent his career working in the food and beverage industry and is currently the Global Asset Management & Ops Readiness Manager at Facebook.
The Root Cause of a Failure is Always a Decision
We often get sucked into drawn-out conversations (or heated debates) about the ‘true’ meaning of words. Especially when it comes to sports. Was James Harden (a basketball player) in the ‘act of shooting’ when he was fouled? It matters – because if the answer is ‘yes’ he gets up to three free throws. So what does the ‘act of shooting’ mean and who decides it? There will be endless debate over beers about what this means. Perhaps largely dependent on which team you support.
At the end of the day, it usually doesn’t matter. You can debate it as much as you want, but the referees have already decided what happened on the court. It is done. It is over. You can disagree with them. But nothing changes the score. [Read more…]
Defining & Achieving the Reliability Culture
“There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things, because the innovator has for enemies, all of those who have done well under the old conditions, and luke-warm defenders in those who will do well under the new.”
– Niccole Machiavelli
This quote is appropriate when we seek a paradigm shift towards a proactive culture, after spending our careers trained to become the best ‘react-ors’ or responders, we can be. I encourage you to read this lengthy article to the end for a surprise and to ask you a couple of questions about your experience with reliability. [Read more…]
The Storeroom Layout: Setting Up Yourself For Success
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…]
QDD 006 HALT! Watch out for that weakest link
HALT! Watch out for that weakest link
HALT (Highly Accelerated Life Test) uses the weakest link mentality. We apply stresses beyond what our designs would normally see in the environment to make something fail. It’s meant to be an iterative test program where you are testing, analyzing the results, determining the root cause, fixing the design, and then testing it, again.
Listen-in to the podcast or read the transcript to find out more about its roots, why you should perform HALT (or not), when in the design process it’s best (hint: really early), and who likely needs to be involved.
A Solution for the Changing Nature of Work
Guest Post by Stephen Miller (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)
Much is being written these days about the future of work and the problems it presents. This piece presents one way we could manage this constantly evolving situation.
The world is changing rapidly in so many ways, primarily, but not limited to technology, geopolitics and climate change. There is no attempt to assign priorities here; these factors are all intimately connected and affect the outcome in concert. [Read more…]
Are you on the right track with the right…
Are we on the right track with the right train? Your job is to improve reliability and you have a plan. It focuses on bad-actors, having the right data, cleaning up some parts data that is known to be causing delays in work execution, a bit of training in reliability methods, and your adding engineers. You are certainly on the right track with your plan and the actions you will take should indeed make some improvement. But are you on the right track? [Read more…]
Uptime: Choosing Excellence
The original edition of Uptime had “process re-engineering” as a 4th level at its pinnacle. It reflected what was then widely regarded as an approach to obtain beneficial change quickly. But, since the 1990’s that approach, was abused and used as a smoke-screen for downsizing or right-sizing as many would prefer to call it. That was never intended by the originators of “Business Process Re-engineering”, but it is what happened. It was lopped off the top of the pyramid in the 2nd edition – process re-design belongs as a result of strategy, not as a panacea for poorly designed and executed process. Processes should be revisited BEFORE implementation of IT / IM and occasionally it should all be reviewed as part of good governance, just like audits. The fundamental processes of good maintenance management practice are already described in this book’s chapters – how they appear on flow charts or value stream maps is up to each user. The third tier in Uptime (1st edition) was about Continuous Improvement, but it contained methods that were both more fundamental in their importance and more sophisticated than the tweaking that “continuous improvement” implies. [Read more…]
10 Keys for Maximizing the Benefits of your SPC Program
Statistical Process Control charts have been called the Voice of the Process. Progressive manufacturers utilize control charts to “listen” to their processes so that potentially harmful changes will be quickly detected and rectified. However, not all SPC programs deliver to their highest capability as there are many elements to get right to achieve maximum utility. Highly effective SPC programs combine technical competencies, such as using an appropriate chart and sample size for the application, with effective management techniques such as enabling operator buy-in and involvement. This article identifies ten keys that unleash the power of SPC. [Read more…]
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