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.

Yes, I think that most maintenance organizations are overstaffed, not necessary with their own staff, but they use more total maintenance hours than necessary. Total maintenance hours include your own internal hours, overtime hours, and contractor hours. As an example a newsprint mill or a linerboard mill making 600,000 tons recycled paper per year on two machines is very good at less than 0.3 total maintenance hours per ton while most operations we have been working with are using about 0.5 total maintenance hours per ton.  

Leadership is vital to the success of all companies. It is a journey that requires reference points to ensure leaders remain on course and continue to grow. Almost all companies need more deliberate and focused leadership development. They need leaders who inspire people to follow. This is especially true when implementing successful work processes. This article describes the needed steps, as well as the roles and responsibilities required, for implementing successful work processes and a leadership structure. 

I wrote this column for those who want to improve equipment reliability but feel as if they are stuck in “budget jail”. Assuming your fiscal year starts January 1, November and December is the time to plan your jailbreak! Most of you understand what I mean by budget jail. In fact, you are probably in the process of trying to pick the lock. For those who don’t know what I mean, I’ve listed some signs of what a budget jail look likes…

Fluid monitoring programs have long been a challenge within the reliability and operations community. For these programs to be implemented properly, the samples must be taken at intervals more frequently than assets or personnel are available. Best in class reliability programs have found success addressing this challenge by implementing online fluid or oil monitoring programs.

Over the last few years, the continuous improvement of maintenance strategies is taking place at an incredible pace. The rapid influx of accessible data has the industrial world living in exciting times. As the industry just begins to scratch the surface of what the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) can deliver, there is a tremendous opportunity to displace antiquated ways of carrying out asset management.

Maintenance management as an important part of corporate strategy and a profession did not always exist in the form we see it today. It is a concept that has evolved worldwide, especially within the last 50 years with even more glaring advancements happening during the last decade or so. What started as the sole responsibility of engineers and technicians has now grown to become a backbone of business operations as organizations realize the impact maintenance can have on their efficiency and bottom line.

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.