IMC-2017 Learning Session - 38:33
by George Mahoney, Merck

There is a Simpson’s Episode where Lisa Simpson gets gum in her hair. Over the course of 2 minutes, about 10 different characters give her suggestions on how to get the gum out. In the end, she got the gum out, but she had to shave her head to do it.

The video can be seen here.

This situation is not much different from what you would find in the Energy World. While in the maintenance world you need to “force” people to begin Reliability projects, the Energy World is much different. Everyone you know is lending advice on energy reduction ideas from LED lighting to Chiller Optimization to Solar Arrays.

These ideas lead an Energy Manager (who is also often the Reliability Manager) to jump from one initiative to the next without ever getting much done.

In addition, these ideas never seem to focus on improving equipment reliability. Not only does this cause energy waste for existing assets that have defects, it also can lead to new assets being installed without a focus on maintenance or reliability.

In this presentation, we will talk about how we got people to focus on “reliability first” on their Energy Management journey. We will discuss how reliability became the base of our Energy Roadmap and how it enabled the implementation and sustainment of all the other steps along the way. In addition, we will talk about how we linked our Energy and Reliability initiatives together so they could be easily learned and implemented. Most importantly, we linked them together so they wouldn’t have to compete for the same time and resources.