Doug Plucknette — inactive contributor

Ask 10 people to tell you what Precision Maintenance means. While some will use a few of the same words or give a few similar examples of what they think Precision Maintenance is you are going to get 10 different answers.

While few would argue the importance of Precision Maintenance, I find it interesting that in the world that offers Certifications in Asset Management and Equipment Reliability (CRE, CRL, CMRP) you won’t find an agreed-on definition of what Precision Maintenance means. [Read more…]

One of the curses of Reliability Centered Maintenance and Root Cause Analysis is a great Facilitator makes the process look easy. So easy in fact that after watching a good facilitator lead one event we’d like to believe we could jump right up and facilitate the next one with no training or assistance. In Mentoring RCM Blitz™ facilitators during the certification process we work to perfect 2 dozen skills with the hope of turning out great facilitators. The skill we typically spend the most time working on is writing failure modes.

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I’m using this week to get my office in order. This morning I found this series of drawings I did back around 1987. While I know my old friends from Building 317 will get a kick out of this, I also know that we weren’t the first and won’t be the last team of people who worked to make our plant a better place to work.  I also know the last slide from this series is missing that showed the team alone saying “If you want to know how it happened, it pays to give credit where credit is due.” [Read more…]

With 2016 having come to an end, I thought it would be fun to start 2017 with some laughs about when your company realized it was time to focus on reliability.  I have a 3-person team who will vote for the best submission on Friday the winner will receive a signed copy of my book Reliability Centered Maintenance Using RCM Blitz™ [this is a reposting of Doug’s article and let’s see if he has another book to give away.) [Read more…]

As I work with teams of operators and skilled trades people performing RCM analyses at companies around the world at some point in time as we are discussing the failure modes and effects I might ask the question; how does your company ensure that the skilled trades people working on your assets are actually qualified to work on the equipment?

This question is often met with a look of confusion. [Read more…]

The condition that occurs when an Engineer, Supervisor, or Manager who once had responsibility for the reliability of your assets gets promoted or transferred to the operations side of the group.

Symptoms of Reliability Amnesia

1.      Ignoring information from Condition Based Technologies that clearly show a major component is in the process of failing. The subject may be overheard saying something like “I can’t afford to stop the line now, if we do I won’t make my production goals.” [Read more…]

Old School Team Building

I’m facilitating an RCM Analysis this week in a second-floor conference room that overlooks a company courtyard complete with manicured landscaping, picnic tables, park benches and walking path complete with distance markers. While this park like setting has been mostly empty the first few days this week today there is a group of 30 people milling around. Some small groups of 2 or 3 are clustered together talking and most everyone is checking out their smart phone for various unknown reasons. I can’t help but wonder what is going on so I ask the team I’m working with why so many people are in the courtyard. [Read more…]

I want my customers to be successful, every one of them. Yet there are times I can see the writing on the wall and I know as hard as I might try to show them a clear path to what it takes to be successful they have their own plan. Some of them are so complex that people become confused just trying to make sense of them, and others get so hung up in the minutiae of even the simplest of steps like listing a 3 part failure mode they will word-smith themselves to a point where folks just give up. I find myself asking “why do people have to make what is really so simple into something that appears to be complex?” [Read more…]

I was taking questions from the audience following my presentation at a conference last spring when a young lady stood up and asked me if I could give my Elevator Pitch.

She must have noted the confused look on my face because she repeated herself this time adding further details.

“If you were riding an elevator with someone and you had a quick minute to sell your RCM services what would you say?” [Read more…]

Those who know me well know I am a voracious reader.  From newspapers and magazines to business related books and novels it’s a rare site to find me without my Kindle or some type of printed reading material.  Lately I have noticed a number of articles on the reasons why your best employees are leaving your business and I have to say I saw this problem trend coming more than a decade ago. [Read more…]

Having visited hundreds of manufacturing plants in the last 17 years, someone recently asked me if there were any traits the most reliable plants all had in common. I have listed below the top 6 signs of a reliable plant. [Read more…]

I’ve been told that humor, especially New York sarcasm doesn’t go over too well on LinkedIn.  That as a regular contributor of articles, blog postings and hopefully useful updates one should try avoid attempting to use humor as a teaching tool.

Well those who know me well know I also don’t always follow the advice of those who somehow believe we all learn the same way, think the same way and therefore do things the same way.  I’m a guy who believes that while common sense might not be that common, when you explain why something makes sense most of the audience will get it.  For the others who still don’t understand I of course bring data.

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Yet another example of why it’s important to understand the failure modes that make your system vulnerable to complete shutdown. Delta Airlines is learning this lesson the hard way today after having to inform customers around the world that all of its flights would be on hold or even canceled due to a “system wide outage”.

Delta listed the cause for the outage as a power failure near its world-wide office location in Atlanta, Georgia while those at Georgia Power believe it was the failure of Delta’s equipment that caused the power outage.

While each company points the finger at the other, the reality is Delta’s customers around the world are sitting at airports or at home wondering when the problems will be resolved and when Delta will be able to accommodate their travel needs.

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