Building on the Dale Carnegie® Principles from the famous book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, we can progress to the next set of principles.

Using his key principles as a guide, we can bring about change within our organization. In the previous post, we covered how to build authentic and meaningful relationships.

If you have not read that post, yet, please go back and do so before reading on.

I was part way through my Dale Carnegie® course when I was challenged to make a change at work by using one or two of the principles below.

We were struggling with being able to complete our weekly PMs because we had to support the production line changeovers. Dwelling on this, I approached the skilled trades that were preparing to perform a changeover. I asked them about the changeover, and what were the sticking points.

I allowed them to do a great deal of the talking. I listened to the challenges they had and why the changeovers took so long. [Read more…]

by Mike Sondalini Leave a Comment

Radar Level Detectors

Radar level detectors are becoming a popular technique for tank level detection of liquids.

The radar sends a sub-millionth of a second pulse from an emitter and the return signal is detected at a receiver.

The reflection’s time lapse is measured and electronically converted to a distance from the liquid surface. Installation peculiarities need to be understood and appreciated in order to provide a reliable operating set-up.

Keyword: antenna, spurious reflection, reference plane, emission cone. [Read more…]

by Doug Plucknette 1 Comment

10 Things a Maintenance Supervisor Can Do to Improve Reliability

A few months back, I wrote a blog resulting from a conversation I had with a group of Maintenance Technicians who were attending the International Maintenance Conference (IMC) in 2011.

While the group was enjoying the conference and learning some new things, the general consensus was that they felt they would not be able to apply the tools and techniques they were learning because “management will say they support reliability, but when it comes right down to it, talk is cheap.” [Read more…]

by James Reyes-Picknell Leave a Comment

Teamwork Produces Superior Results

Welcome to part nine of my 10-part series of blogs called “Uptime Insights”, where we explore a journey of excellence in maintenance.

To stay on top, managers must implement strategies that keep operations performing at high levels. In these articles, I will show you how to achieve excellence in maintenance – a critical business process in any capital intensive industry.

Uptime Insights Part Nine:

Teamwork Produces Superior Results

There’s an old saying that, “two heads are better than one”.

Teamwork has been proven time and again to produce superior results. It is the basis for many successful methods like RCM, PMO, RCFA, Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) and various quality improvement programs like Six Sigma.

The importance of your people has already been stressed part 2.

Choosing excellence goes beyond that – the use of self-organized teams brings the best out of your people, delivers enhanced productivity and superior results. [Read more…]

by James Kovacevic Leave a Comment

Become a Friendlier Person for your Reliability Culture

Dale Carnegie founded his training program in 1912.

Over 100 years later, the same course is taught to students, business people, and leaders. The course is not just about public speaking, but building relationships, influencing people to your way of thinking and finally becoming a leader.

In 1936 he wrote his famous book, How to Win Friends and Influence People.

It is from this book, that the principles to winning friends and influencing people were born. Using his key principles as a guide, we can bring about change within our organization.

How these principles enable a Reliability Culture will be covered in this and the next two posts. [Read more…]

by Mike Sondalini Leave a Comment

Valuable Secrets in Every Work Order Report

The work order report is the maintainer’s opportunity to advise the engineer what problems exist with equipment out in the plant.

It can also provide an accurate record of what was found during the repair. This makes it important that work order reports are completed in detail and are reviewed by managers and engineers.

Keywords: CMMS, computerized maintenance management system, breakdown, corrective, work order, implementation. [Read more…]

by Doug Plucknette Leave a Comment

RCM Leaders and Followers

Funny how times change.

When I first began speaking at conferences in 1999 some of the statements I made regarding how to most effectively manage a Reliability Centered Maintenance program were publically criticized by practitioners of other methodologies.

Sixteen years later it seems that those who were at first critical of RCM Blitz® seem to have adopted nearly every change I made to make RCM easier to Manage, Facilitate and provide a return on investment (ROI) for the time it takes to train people, perform the analysis, implement the results, and perform the RCM tasks. [Read more…]

by James Reyes-Picknell 2 Comments

Managing Failures Before They Occur

Welcome to part eight of my 10-part series of blogs called “Uptime Insights”, where we explore a journey of excellence in maintenance.

Uptime Insights Part Eight:

Asset Reliability

Being proactive with your assets is all about managing failures before they occur.

You can reduce or eliminate the consequences of failure by forecasting what is likely to happen and deciding in advance about what to do about it. The advantage to doing this is that major business impact due to equipment breakdown can be avoided.

High performing companies manage proactively – they foresee and avoid problems.

It’s good for business! [Read more…]

by James Kovacevic Leave a Comment

5 Days to a Reliability Culture

What you can do to foster a reliability culture at your operation

Reliability culture is like clockwork — © William Warby

Improving reliability is easier said than done.

Often times you can develop great PM routines, improve equipment and have the right processes in place, but reliability doesn’t improve. Why is that?

It all comes down to people. People are the heart of reliability, whether they run the equipment or maintain it.

Changing people’s perception of reliability can be a very difficult task. So where do we start?

When trying to implement such change, you will often hear of change management and change framework.

This is a great exercise and contributes greatly to success. But what if you are a Maintenance Supervisor who needs a tangible action that you can run with? [Read more…]

by Mike Sondalini 2 Comments

Review: The Maintenance Planning and Scheduling Handbook by Doc Palmer

Book being reviewed is “Maintenance Planning and Scheduling Handbook 3/E” by Doc Palmer and published by McGraw Hill, presents the recommended way to plan for a maintenance crew.

Keywords: maintenance planning, scheduling, planner, performance, productivity, planner. [Read more…]

by James Reyes-Picknell Leave a Comment

Support Systems Improve Efficiency

Welcome to part seven of my 10-part series of blogs called “Uptime Insights”, where we explore a journey of excellence in maintenance.

Uptime Insights Part Seven:

Support Systems Improve Efficiency

Computerized systems are important and now seemingly indispensable tools for business. Just remember the last power failure you experienced and you’ll understand.

There isn’t much that isn’t computerized these days. Technology and its business applications continue to grow and proliferate. The world of maintenance is no exception.

Most maintenance work is not computerized, but it is complex and managing it requires sophisticated tools. Using those tools effectively will improve the efficiency with which you deliver maintenance services.

Use them poorly and you only add cost. [Read more…]

by James Kovacevic Leave a Comment

Do You Make This Critical Mistake? Find Out If You Are Contributing to Reactivity

What is the one thing that all operations have? If you guessed a breakdown hero or fire fighter, you are correct.

You know the person who swoops in like Superman and repairs a machine quickly. These breakdown heroes are the people who reduce the time to repair, but do they contribute to or reduce the reactivity of the site? [Read more…]

by Mike Sondalini 3 Comments

Polyethylene: Its Properties and Uses

Polyethylene is one of the most commonly used engineering plastics.

Its chemical resistance properties and ease of fabrication make it popular in the chemical industries. Its molecular structure provides the key to its versatility.

Keywords: HDPE, long chain macromolecule, thermoplastic, plastic welding. [Read more…]

by James Reyes-Picknell Leave a Comment

Achieving Cost Effectiveness with Performance Management

Welcome to part six of my 10-part series of blogs called “Uptime Insights”, where we explore a journey of excellence in maintenance.

Uptime Insights Part Six:

Achieving Cost Effectiveness with Performance Management

The work management process is essential to keeping costs under control in maintenance but how will you know if you are doing well if you don’t measure what you are doing and the results you get?

Performance management is another essential for maintenance management. Costs are important, results are important and so are the processes you use to turn costs into results.

Performance management is central to managing those processes so you get the most output for the least input – the greatest cost effectiveness. [Read more…]

by James Kovacevic Leave a Comment

Focus on the Foundation: It Will Sustain You

As Engineers, Craft and Maintenance people, we have a tendency to be excited by the technological advancements that become available.

This is not a bad thing provided we do not let them become the flavor of the month or take our attention away from what we are here to do. Enable Reliability and Maintenance.

Often we find much information on the advanced technical topics such as Reliability Engineering, Life Cycle Costing, or various CBM technologies. When properly deployed, these techniques allow us to further our success in Reliability and Maintenance.

But what about the foundations that make these interesting techniques successful? [Read more…]