IMC-2017 Learning Session - 50:45
by Thomas Povanda, Merck/MSD

Global and multi-site organizations often struggle with focusing and leveraging their internal subject matter experts (SMEs) to collectively build an effective reliability program as well as where or how to start one.

Merck is currently implementing a multifaceted global asset & reliability management program across 20 of their large pharmaceutical manufacturing sites. Many of these sites have SMEs in specific technical areas (e.g. vibration analysis, elastomers, etc.) with extensive personal experience and understanding of best practices and to date, have provided information and knowledge on topics through their networks on an ad hoc basis.

As part of Merck’s strategic implementation to advance asset reliability and performance, they have successfully captured SME experience to build global asset & reliability management best practices by creating and utilizing Alliances and other knowledge sharing platforms. The engineering business process for Alliances includes organizing a small group of SMEs for a short-duration focused work effort. Alliances are short-duration teams that take a specific technical topic or identified need and work as a small project team to develop a working best practice solution over several weeks, and each alliance adds to a global repository for knowledge management purposes.

This presentation session will outline the approach and value of Alliances in developing and implementing reliability and maintenance best practices within a global multi-site organization citing specific examples.