The Godfather of Reliability
Christer Idhammar and Andrew Daddo
Posted 05/04/2023
Special Guest: Reliability Hero – The Godfather of Reliability – Christer Idhammar
The Mainstream Community presents the Reliability Hero Podcast hosted by Andrew Daddo, he converses with maintenance and reliability practitioners, just like you. These individuals literally make stuff work on an industrial scale and keep economies moving. Why refer to them as heroes? Because asset management tamely describes the risky and important work they do on a regular basis, where a single misstep can cost millions of dollars and possibly lives. If few things excite you more than making equipment and machines do more than they were designed to do: faster, safer, longer, and more efficiently you’re going to want to listen to this episode.
This episode features Christer Idhammar, the founder of IDCON INC in Raleigh, North Carolina. You may know Christer as the Maintenance Guru or the Godfather of Reliability. When the words “maintenance and reliability” are mentioned often the first name associated is going to be Christer Idhammar. He’s been described as the Jack Nicklaus of golf. That’s who Christer is, over 60 years in the industry and he has become a well revered expert in all things maintenance and reliability. He started as a Swedish merchant marine and has really done everything from becoming a craftsperson, engineer, manager, consultant, educator, philosopher, reliability guru, to a successful company leader.
This podcast will touch on Christer’s experiences throughout the years and the philosophy his consulting firm, IDCON INC, uses for all of their clients. Several topics covered in his book, Knocking Bolts, are also brought up and I encourage you to read the memoir if you have the chance. It covers his experiences throughout the years traveling the world as a reliability and maintenance management consultant where Christer was instrumental in improving the field.
Christer Idhammar
Christer Idhammar started his career in operations and maintenance 1961. Shortly after, in 1985, he founded IDCON INC in Raleigh North Carolina, USA. IDCON INC is now a TRM company. Today he is a frequent key note and presenter at conferences around the world. Several hundred successful companies around the world have engaged Mr. Idhammar in their reliability improvement initiatives.
Awards:
- He received the coveted EUROMAINTENANCE Incentive 2002 award during the biannual EUROMAINTENANCE 2002 conference in Helsinki in June 2002. Among 19 member European countries he was nominated and received the award from EFNMS – European Federation of National Maintenance Societies – for outstanding achievement and worldwide accomplishments in the field of reliability and maintenance.
- In 2008 he received the Salvetti Foundation Best Speaker all categories award among 154 speakers at Euromaintenance 2008 in Brussels, Belgium
- In 2013 he received the “Best presentation award” among 120 speakers at Reliability 2.0 conference in Las Vegas.