Doug Plucknette — inactive contributor

I no sooner accepted the meeting notice for a public training event in Europe that my mind began to race. The dates were setting off bells in my head for some reason so I pulled out my cell phone and checked my calendar.

The only thing now scheduled for those dates were the training events in Europe yet for some reason I still could not let go of the thought that I had something else scheduled for those dates. [Read more…]

I’m currently working with a large company on a continuous improvement project that started a few months ago with a detailed analysis on some of their critical assets. Within one weeks’ time we had a list of over 250 recommendations that needed to be implemented and performed in order to recognize an improved and sustained level of productivity that would provide a quick return on investment and lower the unit cost of their product.

Two months ago I was highly confident they would jump right on completing the recommended tasks. [Read more…]

Just for fun a few months back I wrote a blog on what I listed as the 5 worst inventions in last 10 years. I looked over that list today and was astonished to find out that I did not list the Web-based meeting as one of these inventions. Those who have known me for years know that I really despise non-value added work and over the last 5 years according to my calculations I have wasted a full 6 months of time attending web meetings. Time that could have been spent working on great idea or invention the entire world has been waiting for while I was listening to someone read through a list of agenda items that could have been sent in an email.

The result however is a blog post on the 5 critical mistakes of Web Meetings! (Please be sure to read on for my 5 rules for web-based meetings!) [Read more…]

I can remember attending my first Maintenance and Reliability Conference, while it was over twenty years ago I was excited to go and find out what other companies were doing to improve.  I can remember looking at the agenda and feeling a bit overwhelmed, there were so many different presentations to choose from sometimes I had a difficult time selecting which one to attend at a given time slot. [Read more…]

I have told my own children for years now that I didn’t find the job that I loved until I was around 35. Truth is I was around 35 when I figured out what I enjoyed but I didn’t really enjoy doing it until around 4 years later when I had the courage to leave the large company I had worked at for 19 years and start a business of my own.  Working on my own I developed a product, had to market and sell that product to build a brand name.  I had to make sure that every customer engagement was a shining example of success and efficiency because I not only wanted more business, I wanted my customers to tell everyone they knew that when it came to RCM (Reliability Centered Maintenance) I was not only the best bargain, I was one of the best in the world. [Read more…]

Clean, Green & Reliable – Improving Equipment Reliability and Reducing Energy in Manufacturing Facilities

I first became interested in manufacturing reliability nearly twenty years ago working as a maintenance mechanic who had a personal interest in improving the reliability of individual assets by searching through our maintenance history for areas where we were spending the most time and money in regard to emergency/demand work orders.  Using the history we had in our database we used the 80/20 approach to identify the 20% of our assets where we spent nearly 80% of our maintenance budget.  Once we identified a system or asset to work on we would use a cause-map or root cause analysis to identify the potential causes of our equipment failures, understanding these causes we would then look to identify potential redesigns to eliminate or reduce the frequency of equipment failures. [Read more…]

10 Sure Signs Your Company Just Doesn’t Understand Equipment Reliability!

In honor of the fast approaching holiday season, let’s start the week off with a laugh or two, I have listed some of the sure-fire signs that your company may not be ready for this reliability stuff. I have to say that in my first 5 years working as a consultant, I wasn’t prepared for some of the things folks would tell me while working on site, and there were times I actually laughed when I should have just bitten my tongue. I once asked a manager if their equipment was reliable; he pondered the question a minute and replied, “It is some of the time.”

Tell me: how do you not laugh when someone says that with a straight face? [Read more…]

5 Tips on How To Maintain Reputation & Integrity

My father taught me at a young age that your name is everything and if you want to be successful in life you have to ensure that when someone hears your name in conversation or reads your name in print that the first thing they think is positive.

The world hasn’t changed from the time he told me that over 40 years ago, in fact today it’s even more critical because we now have the internet and social media.

Good news travels fast.

Bad news travels 100 times faster!

Understanding this, here are 5 tips on what your company can do to build and maintain its reputation and integrity. [Read more…]

Just a bit of humor as we push to the end of another work week!

I turned 55 a few weeks back and just yesterday someone asked me how old I was. I had to stop for a minute to think and when I replied 55 the young Engineer who asked me the question sat back in his chair and said; “Wow! That means you have been working in the Reliability Engineering field like 35 years!  I can’t imagine the changes you have seen in your career!” [Read more…]

When I entered the working world in February of 1981 I was ready to set the world on fire, I had been hired into an apprentice program at Eastman Kodak Company in Rochester, New York and while some would recognize this as an entry level position, I was determined to make a difference in how this company operated its business. [Read more…]