on Maintenance Reliability

I’ve always been proud to say that the first customer I provided RCM training and consulting for was Whirlpool in Findlay, Ohio.

Having just presented at SMRP’s annual conference in Denver, Colorado, I received an e-mail from Kirk Wolfinger who at the time was Whirlpools’ Maintenance Manager. Kirk wanted to know if I could come to Findlay and help his team get started in Reliability Centered Maintenance.
I was that one phone call that gave me the courage to leave Eastman Kodak and start my own company. [Read more…]

I’ve been proving RCM Facilitator Training for over twenty years….

I ran into an old friend at a conference recently and after we chatted about the things going on in each of our lives he asked me a series of questions that caught me a bit off guard.

How much longer do you plan to work?

Don’t you get sick of the travel?

You’ve been teaching and facilitating Reliability Centered Maintenance for over twenty years, doesn’t doing the same thing all the time get boring?

Have you ever thought about teaching other courses just to change it up a bit?

What motivates you to keep doing what you’re doing? [Read more…]

The first person I selected to write about is one who I consider a mentor. I met Marc Zimmerman in February of 1981, at the time he was a Journeyman Pipefitter in Kodak’s Polymer Department and I remember watching him work, making precise gore cut fittings and just being in awe of craftsmanship it takes to calculate, lay-out, cut and assemble these pieces. [Read more…]

I’ve always considered myself to be somewhat lucky in life. I survived being hit head on by a car when I was five years old. I grew up in a small town in Upstate NY that had little to do in the form of entertainment but a lot to offer those in search of a sound middle class life. While I still live in that same town it has transformed from a farming community to a suburb of Rochester. I have raised my children in this same town my parents and grandparents called home and my grandchildren are being raised here as well. While life is good in our Village whose slogan is “Someplace Special” the opportunities available to my generation aren’t what they used to be. Today, it’s tough to be lucky.

When I look back, I don’t have to think too hard to know why life turned out so good. I learned a trade. [Read more…]

When I started to develop the RCM Blitz™ methodology over twenty years ago, the one thing I knew that would help to ensure successful Reliability-Centered Maintenance analysis was to develop a way that would guarantee every implemented analysis would provide a return on investment. The answer to this was simple enough, if you’re looking to improve safety and reduce health, safety and environmental incidents we should focus on critical assets that are struggling to maintain their inherent designed reliability. The best way to identify the best candidates is by measuring the OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) of your top critical assets. [Read more…]

In past articles I have often referenced Dr. Aubrey Daniels and the use of Behavioral Psychology and Analysis in the workplace. In the late 1980’s I was fortunate enough to attend a 2-week course in Performance Management put on by Dr. Daniels and two of his associates where we learned the importance of measuring behaviors as opposed to results. To say that this course was enlightening would be an understatement as it was in this class I first learned why we need to measure leading indicators as opposed to results. [Read more…]

In nearly 40 years I’ve seen it all, from those who are proud to be the best to plant sites that are in such a deplorable state, you hope you get through the tour without some type of injury, fire or explosion.

The first thing I learned when I began providing Asset Management and Reliability Centered Maintenance services as a consultant was how lucky I was to have worked my first 19 years for a company who took Employee Health, Safety and Environment seriously. In that time, I don’t remember ever wondering if the people I worked with or the Managers I worked for considered Health, Safety and Environment as the top priority. It was stated almost every day and reinforced with every job we performed through lock-out, tag-out procedures.

[Read more…]