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Articles: Reliability Leadership

A Vision of Enterprise Reliability

Looking Into the Future of the Industry

by Dennis Belanger


What is the ultimate vision for enterprise reliability?  If you’re like me, occasionally you find yourself drifting off into a day dream.  One of the recurring day dreams I’ve been having for the last 10 years involves this question.  I often lapse into deep thought, pondering, “How is all of this reliability and maintenance stuff supposed to work?

Are You a Reliability Linchpin?

by Bill Barto

Author's Note: I want to acknowledge that the general premise for this article is the book by Seth Godin titled, "Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?" This book is a game changer. After I read it, I was compelled to include it in all aspects of my life, including my career as a reliability engineer. If this article resonates with you, I strongly suggest you get a copy of the book and read it cover to cover.

There is no lack of good information available for improving reliability in your organization. It usually comes in the form of tools to learn and tasks to complete. Learning the proper way to critically rank your assets or create a fault tree is important, but only the start to making a real difference in your company. The hard work is finding ways to exceed expectations and make significant and meaningful cultural changes.

Australian Reliability

Lessons We Can Learn from Australian Companies in Their Journey Toward Reliability and Operational Excellence

Ron Moore

IMC-2012 Conference Speaker

Introduction
My first trip to Australia was in May 1995. It was exciting and rewarding. I found Australians to be friendly, fun loving, open to new ideas and very interested in reliability. And still do. We have much in common with Australians. I've been going there now three to four times per year ever since then, making four trips per year most years and have now been there more than 60 times. It's a long trip, but every single trip has been very gratifying and rewarding. If ever I were kicked out of the United States for some bizarre reason, I would go to Australia first and ask if they would let me in. More importantly, while all the companies there continue to have considerable opportunity for improvement, their industrial operations have made remarkable progress in their journey toward reliability and operational excellence.

‘Big M’ and the Performance Culture

Managing Maintenance for Production Reliability

by James Davis, PE, CMRP

About 30 years ago, the Plant Engineer of an ITT Rayonier paper mill in north Florida called me into his office and announced that, as a reward for a job well done, I was being given the position of Plant Maintenance Engineer.  This was a bit confusing at first, as I was a mechanical/civil Project Engineer at the time, in a 38 year old facility that had never had a Maintenance Engineer.

Change Is Good, You Go First

Operator-Driven Reliability Best Practices Series

Dave Staples

In our continued series, we focus on the topic of change management. The better job a company does putting in an infrastructure to deal with the elements of changing the operator's role, the more likely ODR will continue enhancing asset and process reliability.

Crisis Compels Change

Crisis Compels Change

Crises, such as the ongoing economic crisis in the US and world, will compel change. As we all know change can be good, or bad. We can take a positive approach to these times and use the situation to bring about radical, yet positive change, that while painful at times, will assure our future prosperity. There is great risk in this approach – we can overreach and make bad decisions that damage the prospects for that same prosperity. The challenges that most manufacturing businesses face are huge, and they will be compelled to change, particularly those who have long languished under poor management.

Determining an OEE Goal Based Upon Customer Takt Time

Rich Jansen

What is the basis for your current overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) goal? Is it clear to you and is it one in which employees in the organization have a motivation to achieve?

High Operational Autonomy + Low Financial Autonomy: A Formula for Failure

By Ron Moore

Background and Introduction
During a recent meeting, a mid-level manager with a large petroleum company was asking my opinion about which manufacturing and industrial companies were the best in the world. My reply was that most large organizations had manufacturing plants that covered the spectrum ranging from very poor to excellent, but none that I had direct experience with stood out to me as being consistently excellent in their manufacturing practices across the board, that is, in most all plants. As part of that discussion, he also asked "How much autonomy do site managers have (in the organizations you've seen)?" I had to think for a moment, at which point I said, "They have very little financial autonomy, and nearly complete operational autonomy, a recipe for highly variable performance, and ultimately, failure." I'll explain my view.

How Does Plant Management - and Possibly Corporate Management Enable Unreliability?

When I was a production superintendent at a DuPont nylon plant, I was returning to my office with my mind full of thoughts from a staff meeting. I walked into the central control room still distracted by the issues from the meeting. All of a sudden, I found myself face-to-face with the central control operator and in making small talk I casually asked him, "What rate are you running?" He mumbled something and went back to his work. I thought that I was distracting him from his job, so continued on to my office. The next day, my two assistants came to me and said that I had put enormous pressure on the control room operator the day before.

How to Build an Award-Winning Maintenance Reliability Program

by Westar Energy Team

Westar Energy began changing its approach to power plant maintenance more than a dozen years ago. The transition from a traditional utility culture to a modern, reliability- focused organization is still a work in progress. Today though, the company makes use of predictive maintenance technologies, data and reliability tools to drive strategic improvement.

Loyalty

In 2012, Tim retired from Cargill Inc., where he was Worldwide Reliability and Maintenance Leader and has been involved in Cargill's reliability improvement processes for the past 20 years. Cargill Inc. is one of the world's largest food and agricultural processing companies with over 1,200 processing facilities and 139,000 employees worldwide.

Timothy Goshert

"Being Loyal" is a popular phrase used for many years in our society, workplaces and lives. Airlines, hotels and automobile companies, among others, have loyalty programs designed to give frequent flyer and/or guest benefits for continued use of their products and services. These programs are designed to create win-win relationships and to benefit both parties.

Maintenance and Share Price—Mutually Dependent

(Editors note:  This article was originally published in the SMRP Quarterly, 1994 and stands the test of time - Terry O)

At first glance, it would probably seem illogical to most people to put maintenance and share price in the same phrase. However, it would also be wrong, as it has been for decades, to presume that they are not mutually dependent. In many organizations, maintenance is driving share price, but the CEO isn't even aware of it.

Moving from a Repair-focused to a Reliability-focused Culture

Summary
This paper will discuss the five key elements required to successfully transition from a traditional, repair-focused organisational culture, to a proactive, reliability-focused culture, and reap the rewards of increased performance of both equipment and people.

One Out of Many…Pointing the Whole Organization in the Same Direction

By: Dr. Peter G. Martin

Although huge quantities of technology and intellectual property have been invested into the efficient and effective operation of industrial plants over the past century, many plants are still not operating to full potential. At least part of the reason for this has been the lack of focus on the value that the human assets can generate given a supportive, collaborative and empowering environment in which to perform. Mobilizing the valuable human assets to approach their full performance potential has been proven to result in a new operational paradigm which maximizes the business performance through all plant assets. This new paradigm is labeled "asset performance management".

Operator-Driven Reliability Best Practices Series: “Leadership Wanted”

Dave Staples

Whether leadership is recruited or cultivated within your own organization, successful operator-driven reliability (ODR) programs rely on it. Leadership can come from many places in your organization's structure, from top management to the frontline operators.

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