Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail

The competitiveness of the U.S. economy depends on changes inside firms, particularly their willingness to take risks in reshaping four key relationships. Competitiveness, it turns out, depends on new kinds of collaboration.

The last of the ‘baby boomer’ generation are now retiring from the workplace. As they walk out of the door of your business for the last time, they are taking with them a lifetime's experience from old-school apprenticeship programmes to a lifetime of fault diagnosis and learning in the ‘university of life.’ That experience is what helped your business grow, become successful, and kept your customers happy and returning with repeat orders! So, what can be achieved in the time before valued employees retire for knowledge capture and knowledge transfer so your business can maintain momentum?

Contrary to what most people think, paint plays a significant part in constructing and maintaining structures. Commercial and industrial painting is a complex process that involves protecting the substrate from environmental factors, enhancing its aesthetic appeal, and ensuring longevity. If you're working on commercial or industrial projects, choosing the right paint is absolutely crucial for achieving the results you want. Two of the most popular paint options are oil and latex, each with its unique properties.

Effective pump maintenance allows industrial plants to keep pumps operating well, to detect problems in time to schedule repairs, and to avoid early pump failures. Regular maintenance also reveals deteriorations in efficiency and capacity, which can occur long before a pump fails. Wear ring and rotor erosions, for example, can be costly problems that reduce wire-to-water efficiency by 10% or more. The amount of attention given to maintenance depends on how important a system is to a plant’s operations.

This is the 2nd installment of an 8-step process to enable you on your journey to Operational Excellence. Once you have identified areas for improvement you must develop and implement your improvement plan.

Why us, why now? In years past, the engineer, manager or superintendent was responsible for improvement ideas. Maintenance people were "hands" hired to do what they were told. Today, organizations are lean and mean; we need the capabilities of all maintainers. The downsizing craze, however, has left everyone in a managerial role with too many tasks and too little time. There's no one left to cut costs!

Air Canada has opted for a “pit crew” concept for its Dreamliners, with five to eight employees descending on each arriving aircraft. Having more employees on hand results in a speedier turnaround, which is good for passengers and boosts aircraft utilization, according to Alan Butterfield, the carrier’s vice president of maintenance and engineering. “Utilization of your fleet is hugely important,” Butterfield said in an interview at YVR.