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Rooted in Reliability: The Plant Performance Podcast

A weekly Maintenance and Reliability podcast covering common industry challenges and what you can learn from them. Each episode dives deeper into critical issues and explains how you can begin correcting theses maintenance flaws today. Sharing new tips and techniques to help you achieve industry best practice and shining a light on widely debated maintenance topics with special guest experts.

Your host and founder of High Performance Reliability James Kovacevic, will take you on a weekly tour of his 13+ years of shop floor experience, along with special guest that lend an expert look inside your maintenance departments problems and concerns.

Plane, train, or automobile, however you’re traveling to work Rooted In Reliability is compatible for listening on the go.

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271 – Developing Operational Standards with George Williams and Joe Anderson

271 – Developing Operational Standards with George Williams and Joe Anderson

271 – Developing Operational Standards with George Williams and Joe Anderson

Welcome Joe Anderson and George Williams back to the podcast. They are the founders of ReliabilityX and are consultants as well as trainers. 

Briefly about them and Reliability X:

Reliability X covers all aspects of reliability; both operational and maintenance, coaching and currently creating online classes.

Joe Anderson has been in the pharma and food industries for 25 years before moving to consultancy.

George Williams has a background in pharma and medical devices rising from a technician over the years to a global reliability manager.

In this episode we covered:

  • What are operational standards?
  • Why would we need operational standards?
  • Who develops standards?

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270 – Where to Start with DfM & DfR with Fred Schenkelberg

270 – Where to Start with DfM & DfR with Fred Schenkelberg

270 – Where to Start with DfM & DfR with Fred Schenkelberg

Welcome Fred back to the podcast. Clients are starting to realize that they have to design their systems properly while paying attention to certain tradeoffs. However, tell us where they should start; whether to design for reliability or maintainability.

Before starting, the team has to look at their business goals and decide whether the acquisition of any system or a piece of equipment assists to that end. It has to be a business decision.

Pay attention to:

  • The environment of usage
  • The cost of ownership; is it going to be profitable?
  • The usage rate of the tool
  • Type and quality of the tool

In this episode we covered:

  • Understanding the tradeoffs is essential while keeping the important things in mind. Where do we place time and resources? Reliability or maintainability?
  • Once they have chosen to rely on data and experience? Where do they start in designing for maintenance or reliability?
  • Create basic standards. Otherwise, the advanced things like the right model shall not matter. Basic aspects such as a complete bill of material that can be uploaded on to the CMMS, documentation should be taken into account.

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269 – The Capabilities Trap with Simon Jagers

269 – The Capabilities Trap with Simon Jagers

The Capabilities Trap with Simon Jagers

Welcome Simon back to the podcast. Simon is the founder of Samotics and has been involved in technology throughout his Career. Today we will talk about capabilities trap. Although briefly, tell us more about you:

Involved with technology, our guest focuses on: machine learning, and the conversion of data into information.

In this episode we covered:

  • What is a capabilities trap?
  • It basically refers to sacrificing everything for the short-term, right?
  • Why should we be aware of capabilities trap? How do we manage it?

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268- Understanding & Communicating the Value of PMs with Rick Clonan

268- Understanding & Communicating the Value of PMs with Rick Clonan

Understanding & Communicating the Value of PMs with Rick Clonan

Welcome Rick Clonan who has been in maintenance for 30 years working both in defense and industry. More about Rick:

Currently at SMRP working as implementation and training manager.

In this episode we covered:

  • How do we communicate the value of PdM and PM?
  • What is/isn’t a PM?
  • What about PMs with instructions to “inspect and replace if necessary”?

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267 – Managing Up with Bobby Lee

267 – Managing Up with Bobby Lee

Managing Up with Bobby Lee

Welcome Bobby Lee who has been involved in maintenance engineering working for different companies in various capacities.

Bobby Lee started out as a maintenance apprentice and has risen through the ranks as a maintenance engineer for over 9 years.

In this episode we covered:

  • What does it mean to manage up?
  • Why would someone need to manage up?
  • Give examples of moments that you had to manage up?

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266 – Asset Modeling with Dane Boers

266 – Asset Modeling with Dane Boers

Asset Modeling with Dane Boers

Welcome Dane Boers who is the founder of Modeler. Our topic will be asset modelling.

More about Dane:

Dane started his career in mining then moved to consultancy before starting Modeler. The company was started to make reliability more efficient and automated because of the repetitive work he had observed.

In this episode we covered:

  • What is asset modeling?
  • What is an asset class?
  • Does asset modeling take into account the failure modes in the operational context; what’s impactful and what’s not?

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265 – Moving from Paper to a CMMS with Jeff O’Brien

265 – Moving from Paper to a CMMS with Jeff O’Brien

Moving from Paper to a CMMS with Jeff O’Brien

Welcome Jeff O’brien who is the cofounder of Zoidii CMMS

Jeff has worked with CMMS in manufacturing and consultancy for years and has currently launched their own application.

In this episode we covered:

  • What prompted you to start your own CMMS?
  • Why would organizations transition from a paper-based system to CMMS?
  • How do organizations decide to make the transition?

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264 – Crucial Decision with Ryan Sitton

264 – Crucial Decision with Ryan Sitton

Crucial Decision with Ryan Sitton

Welcome Ryan Sitton to the podcast. Ryan is the founder and CEO of Pinnacle Engineering and has spent a lot of time around reliability and production engineering. Notably, he is the author of “Crucial Decisions”; a book that we will discuss in the episode and how it applies to maintenance and reliability.

More about Ryan:

He has a mechanical engineering background and has worked at a gas company called Oxy and also worked as an Energy Regulator for the State of Texas. He has a PhD in Data Science and is the founder of Pinnacle Engineering.

Data Science has become an inevitable necessity in that; data plays a crucial role in what we tend to accomplish in our daily activities.

In this episode we covered:

  • What is a crucial decision? What makes it different from other ordinary decisions in a facility?
  • What types of crucial decisions brought about the issues we saw in Texas Big Freeze?
  • How does risk assessment fit into decision making? Do we underestimate or overestimate risk?

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263 – Leadership with Rob Kalwarowsky

263 – Leadership with Rob Kalwarowsky

Leadership with Rob Kalwarowsky

Welcome Rob back to the Podcast. You were the founder of Rob’s Reliability Project and later started working as a co-host of the Leadership Launchpad Podcast and Dismantling the High Performance Narrative. Although, tell us more about yourself.

Rob- Having worked in reliability for ten years- transitioning across manufacturing, mining, and presently in an oil pipeline, it is clear that the biggest gap in the industry is in leadership. This became apparent after the observation of shop floor teams in different sites. Some leadership teams rarely listened to them and that drove a lack of psychological safety.

In this episode we covered:

  • What drove you to this ?
  • What is your definition of leadership?
  • Why is leadership important to culture change?

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262 – Why AI Fails with Matt Kirchner

262 – Why AI Fails with Matt Kirchner

Why AI Fails with Matt Kirchner

Matt is the Chief Product Officer at Atonix Digital and is involved with AI, works on software packages, analytics etc. More about Matt:

He has a background in mechanical engineering and started off in a large firm where they offered remote monitoring services to power generating customers. They oversaw reliability and operational performance. Over time, the company started investing in software tools to facilitate better and more efficient monitoring. The firm then split and now a portion of it only focuses on operational intelligence tools.

In this episode we covered:

  • What is operational intelligence and how is it different from reliability or preventive maintenance programs?
  • Why do many organizations miss operational intelligence in reliability?
  • How do companies benefit from operational intelligence?

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261 – Why is it so hard to get Lubrication right with Bennett Fitch

261 – Why is it so hard to get Lubrication right with Bennett Fitch

Why is it so hard to get Lubrication right with Bennett Fitch

Welcome Bennett who is the Director of Product Development at Noria Corporation.

Bennet has a background in Mechanical Engineering and worked in an oil analysis laboratory. Currently focuses on lubrication product development and has consulted for many plants enough to notice the common challenges

In this episode we covered:

  • Why do organizations struggle with lubrication?
  • What are the small things that make the biggest difference?
  • How do we overcome current restrictions on training due to pandemic?

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260 – Practical Implementation of Technology with Simon Jagers

260 – Practical Implementation of Technology with Simon Jagers

Practical Implementation of Technology with Simon Jagers

Welcome Simon back to the podcast. He is the founder of Semiotic Lab; a company involved in predictive technology maintenance. Previously, he talked about monitoring electrical systems using online monitoring and wireless sensors. Our podcast today is about the practical implementation methods to optimize the benefits of these technologies in reliability. However, tell us more about what you do.

The focus has been on reliability using energy monitoring to improve sustainability for our clients. This has led to serving clients in the US, Canada, and has given us 3 global partners.

In this episode we covered:

  • Why is implementing technology difficult for many organizations?
  • What does a good implementation process look like?
  • How do you decide on the assets on which to pilot these processes?

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259 – Learning in COVID Times with Bill Leahy

259 – Learning in COVID Times with Bill Leahy

Learning in COVID Times with Bill Leahy

Welcome Bill to the Podcast.

He has held different talks and training sessions around leadership, change management, PMs and many others.

Today, we’re tackling important points such as:

  • Should companies be investing in training during COVID-19 pandemic?
  • What are some of the topics that are being grasped quicker than before?
  • How will training be after the pandemic?

… and so much more!

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258 – Remove Wasted Time and Frustration from the Maintenance with Zachary Yost

Remove Wasted Time and Frustration from the Maintenance with Zachary Yost

Let’s welcome Zachary Yost who is an integration lead at CNS. Our main topic will be the removal of wastage in the maintenance work process.

Zachary will give us insight on:

  • What were the goals in trying to streamline the work process?
  • How did you come up with the solutions to these inefficiencies?
  • How does the planning process compare prior to the changes and after?

… and so much more!

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257 – Reliability Misconceptions with Fred Schenkelberg

257 – Reliability Misconceptions with Fred Schenkelberg

Reliability Misconceptions with Fred Schenkelberg

Welcome Fred to today’s episode. Our topic will be the misconceptions surrounding reliability. What is reliability?

The English dictionary defines reliability as the characteristic of trustworthiness or being able to adhere to a schedule and deliver as needed.

On the other hand, reliability in engineering encompasses functionality, probability of success, duration of continued delivery of that success, and work environment.

Fred will give us insight on:

  • What is implementing reliability?
  • What is the disconnect between all these activities (tools) and decision making?
  • So does it require understanding the data and engaging the people?

… and so much more!

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