In 1999 I left a 19-year career at Eastman Kodak to start my own Manufacturing Reliability Consulting Company. Looking back 23 years I really had no idea what I was getting into, but I was confident that I had something to offer companies that other consultants didn’t.

Keeping it honest, layoffs suck.

They suck for the targeted employees and they suck for their immediate supervision and management.

In 1981 I was hired by our area’s largest employer at the time as an incoming apprentice. The day I was hired my soon to be wife and I celebrated she as a schoolteacher and I now had lifelong employment.  We could now get married, buy a home, and start a family. In three years it took for me to complete my apprenticeship and for her to complete her master’s in education, we did just that.  Life for this young family couldn’t have been better.

And then the layoffs started. 

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With twenty plus years of working with companies around the world, I’ve been witness to some incredible improvements. From a small company that was still working with paper work orders to large companies who struggled to make sense of their CMMS, the common thread for those who realized success was the discipline to implement and perform their RCM (Reliability Centered Maintenance) tasks.

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics data released in December of 2020, 5,333 Americans died on the job in 2019. While 40% of these deaths were cause by transportation incidents and 15% were attributed to workplace violence, nearly 2400 on the job deaths were a direct result of one of the following causes;

·        Falls, trips or slips

·        Contact with objects or equipment

·        Exposure to harmful substances or environment

·        Fire or explosion

With over twenty years in the Manufacturing Reliability Consulting business, I have been approached at least a dozen times to align or partner with other companies who sell services and or equipment that don’t compete with the services I provide. While our community consists of thousands of individual companies around the globe, if you’ve worked in our world for more than five years and attended two to three of the major conferences each year, you’ll notice many of the same faces but often wearing a different shirt.

A friend I have been mentoring for quite some time now asked me recently if I had a set of personal expectations I hold myself to. As part of our conversation, I quickly came up with 4 or 5 things and then later on sat down to list out the expectations I try to live by.

I think my parents set the groundwork for what I would consider my list of personal expectations. My Mom and Dad had sound values and I think it’s those values that influence our expectations. With that said, here is my list;

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If you have attended any Maintenance and Reliability conference in the last several years, chances are you have seen a presentation on the struggles of RCM implementation. Most present that over 70% of companies who attempt to get started with Reliability Centered Maintenance fail to implement the recommended mitigating tasks identified in their analysis.

The 15 things your new “Smart Machine” won’t tell you.

1.     It won’t tell you that someone failed to lubricate it

2.     It won’t tell you that they put the wrong type in

3.     It won’t tell you if they under filled it or overfilled it

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…]