Creating a Planning and Scheduling Standard with Intelligent Automation

Typically, the maintenance community recognizes the importance of scheduling but lacks the resources to perform the task. One such resource is scheduling software – this is often underutilized due to a lack of awareness, operational knowledge, and adoption of its automated features, such as resource-leveling. Read More »

Technology is a tool, not a replacement for good practices. While it can accelerate maintenance improvements at your organization, it can never be an actual improvement by itself. If you want something to improve, you must do the work and do it well. Read More »

In this episode, Dr. John Ross with Maintenance Innovators joins Wes to discuss a topic commonly overlooked in the industry — the role of the storeroom in reliability. Join Wes and John as they chat about this crucial topic that plays a vital role in a facility’s lubrication program and its overall reliability strategy. Read More »

Condition-Based Maintenance helps organizations reduce maintenance costs, increase equipment reliability and uptime, and optimize their maintenance resources by avoiding catastrophic failures. But we must be careful not to use CBM tools and technologies in a reactive mode – if you are finding and resolving equipment problems within days of failure, then you are supporting a reactive cycle and not experiencing the additional benefits of improved planning and scheduling. Read More »

Everyone on the maintenance team has a mission; the planner’s mission is to complete job plans. Notice this doesn’t say the jobs must be perfect – this is an impossible task. Instead, planners should use the Deming Cycle, in combination with craft feedback and other available information, to produce better plans as time goes on. Read More »

When it comes to the human factor in asset management, you must keep in mind that engaged people see an opportunity in every problem, while disengaged people see a problem in every opportunity. It is your duty as a boss or manager to truly know your people, to listen to them and to value them. As your people feel empowered, your business will feel it, too. Read More »

Join Greg Christensen for a new episode of CMMSradio — recorded live from the 2023 Reliable Plant & Machinery Lubrication Conference held earlier this month in Orlando, FL. In this episode, Greg is joined by Shon Isenhour, owner of Eruditio, LLC.

Work management determines where a company’s successes and failures meet, and it’s not as simple as just buying the latest work-management tools or software and hiring big-name consultants to take care of the rest. It takes working knowledge of your business’s processes and procedures, along with input from employees across all departments, and balancing today’s technology with the basics of sound team management. Read More »

Working in a production facility that’s bottom line is dictated by reactive events can be a soul-destroying experience. When I was hired to work at PepsiCo’s first DORITOS® production facility in the United Kingdom, this was the exact situation I encountered. This is a story of reinvention and redemption for a PepsiCo plant that transformed from a reactive facility into a world-class organization known for its exceptional asset care standards. Read More »

Manufacturing is a highly demanding industry that relies on the hard work of skilled and dedicated professionals who have their own needs and expectations for working comfortably and efficiently. Accurately addressing these needs and expectations as management can greatly improve job satisfaction, workforce engagement and employee retention — key ingredients for boosting your shop-floor productivity. Read More »

A summer visit to the Sunshine State ushered in the Silver Anniversary of Noria’s Reliable Plant Conference in Orlando. Co-located with Machinery Lubrication Conference & Exhibition, this summer marked the 25th time Noria has played host to the conference, which features some of the biggest names in the maintenance, reliability and machinery lubrication industries. Read More »