Managing your inventory levels correctly can mean the difference between machinery that has broken down and is slowing down the assembly line or a smoothly running machine that is boosting productivity. In today’s competitive industry, no company can afford downtimes and delays in production due to missing parts. With increased competition, companies depend on their supply chain to be leaner, healthier and faster than the competition. The thing to remember about inventory control is that it’s about striking a balance between too much stock and too little. If you have too many tools and spare parts on hand, you’re wasting company funds that could be better utilized elsewhere.

Some plants have planners, schedulers and supervisors, while others have stop planners and daily planners separated. A few keep electricity and instruments from mechanical planners, while some plants are more bare bones. It makes a big difference if the planner can 100% dedicate his or her time to planning, instead of having to take care of purchasing orders, train workers in the CMMS, attend improvement meetings, and so on. It’s the same thing with the supervisor role. Can he or she focus on their team or he/she expected to run a few improvement projects and renovations? The more we tack on to these roles, the less time will be left for leading their workers.

Ignorance is contagious and you are the only one to save the day, according to maintenance expert Joel Levitt who shares the ten things your management needs to know NOW.

I believe that most training efforts are wasted unless the training is focused on the training needs of each individual. After going through training, a person should immediately apply the new skills. As the saying goes, “If you do not use it, you lose it.”

If you work in any aspect of manufacturing today, there is no doubt you are aware of a significant revolution underway. It is a new era for the industry, dramatically evident when you take a look around any reasonably maintained and updated manufacturing facility. What is driving this revolution, albeit a slow industry shift from a machinery-based environment to an information-based one? Quite simply, it’s technology and the big data that results from it.

With so many advancements in world-class technology, many maintenance leaders have failed to set a strong leadership foundation. All too often, they get distracted with starting predictive maintenance and oil analysis programs because these are the hot topics and buzzwords. Instead, maintenance leaders, prior to doing anything, must first gauge what their organizations need and set goals to achieve them. The type of leadership role can vary from manager to reliability engineer to predictive maintenance leader. However, the main focus is to lead others to get results.

I have especially seen the need for “know WHY” training when companies start including operators in inspections and other maintenance work. Often, we do the training for operators, but suggest that maintenance craftspeople attend so they can become the future instructors. It is very common that the craftspeople themselves then discover that they also need “know WHY” training!

When you think about the productivity of your workforce, a number of questions come into play. Are you meeting your daily goals? Have you correctly set benchmarks? Have the proper safety procedures been established and well-communicated with your team?

The phrase “It’s just common sense” is used quite often to describe conclusions or circumstances that are obvious to most people, at least those within earshot.  However, W. Edwards Deming, a well-respected management guru and quality expert, famously said ‘There’s no such thing as common sense.  If there were, it would be common.’  So, I suppose we have our answer to the title question, at least from Deming’s perspective. That said, let’s explore this further, and perhaps try to begin to understand why he said this, and why so often we see instances where “common sense” is not applied. Maybe it’s just not as common as it should be.