I’ve seen it twice this year and it concerns me. In twenty years of working with companies to improve manufacturing reliability I would like to believe that those of us who care are leaving a mark. It’s the days I’m about to describe that make you wonder.

I created RCM Blitz™ over twenty years ago as a tool that would help companies identify a complete maintenance strategy to improve and achieve the inherent designed reliability of their critical assets. Prior to entering the world of consulting, I had completed and implemented several RCM (Reliability Centered Maintenance) analyses on critical assets at Eastman Kodak company. With each analysis we completed, I gained knowledge and confidence that the process when adhered to and implemented, could improve the reliability of even our worst assets. In the same two years of proving the process I also learned something very important.

I got a call last week from a friend I used to work with who called just to catch up on what I had going on in life. After a few minutes of conversation on what each of us had going on he asked me what I thought of the phrase “Precision Maintenance.”

I must admit, I was a bit confused by the question. I told him I think a lack of precision maintenance might me the leading cause of failure for nearly every company in the world. I don’t think we spend nearly enough time training and certifying tradespeople in precision maintenance techniques and that the reduction in skilled trades apprentice programs has made the problem worse.

While I have a very uncommon last name, I come from a big family. The picture below is the family my grandparents grew by having three sons. Thomas (my father) whose family is dressed in red, Walter dressed in white and Robert (Mike) dressed in blue had 16 children between the three of them and as a result if you live or know someone who lives around Spencerport, New York there’s a good chance they know a Plucknette or two.

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I’ve spoken with a few of my customers over the past couple of weeks, one who happens to be in the food business was cranking and working overtime to meet the increased demand that resulted from folks stocking their homes, the other two were labeled non-essential and were preparing to shut down for the foreseeable future. [Read more…]

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Nearly 10 years ago, on an early morning trip to Rochester, New York’s Public Market, my wife and I walked by an old quonset hut where I could see an artist was using a cutting torch to heat and shape a piece of metal. With his back to the street, the light emanating from the torch outlined his body in a flashing smoke-filled halo. While I focused on this image, my wife Leslie was eyeing up the Artists’ work that was proudly displayed outside his shop.

“He does nice work, we should stop on our way out of the market and look around.”

That day would be the first of many trips we would make to the Lasting Art shop.

John Grieco is a Firefighter, Business Owner and Artist from Rochester, NY. If you live in the Rochester area or for that matter, anywhere in Western, New York, you have seen some of John’s amazing metal work. [Read more…]

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.

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In continuing this year’s theme regarding common questions on relevant topics, today I have the 5 most common questions people have been asking me about the Industrial Internet of Things. Like every other article or Blog I have posted in the past I encourage you to all to jump into the conversation by asking questions or providing comments to my questions and answers. [Read more…]

When is the best time to do an RCM analysis on your equipment?

While RCM Blitz™ can be applied at any time in the asset lifecycle, the best time to do an RCM analysis is in the design phase of a capital project. Reliability Centered Design is much more than a thorough RCM analysis on a critical asset, it also uses [Read more…]