More Articles
Best-selling checklists?
As an unrepentant checklist fanatic/junkie, I recently had to pick myself up off the floor in an airport newsstand (not a bookstore, but a newsstand!). There with all the romance novels, Dan Brown books and the latest silver-bullet management books was The Checklist Manifesto by Dr. Atul Gawande. A best-selling
Follow-up, performance matrix frequently absent from CMMS process flow
Many organizations are using their computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) as a recordkeeping tool. If that’s all they want, a spreadsheet perhaps can suffice. A correctly used CMMS is a tool that goes way beyond recordkeeping. By not fully utilizing the CMMS, maintenance operations are
Expert advice on how to deal with difficult people
One of the first people to study difficult employees in the workplace and to assign specific characteristic descriptors to these groups of people was Robert M. Branson. In 1981, he wrote a book called “Coping with Difficult People.” In this book, he identifies seven categories of difficult
A game plan to resolve conflict in the workplace
Conflict in the workplace seems to be a fact of life. We’ve all seen situations where different people with different goals and needs have come into conflict. And, we’ve all seen the often-intense personal animosity that can result. Organization leaders are responsible for creating a work
Reduce or eliminate waste through training
Following along with my blog “Reliability is a green initiative”, I would like to talk about waste reduction by training. Waste is seen in many different forms in manufacturing, and many of these wastes can be reduced or eliminated through training. Training is one of the first costs to be
Lean maintenance: Is it a new concept or another ‘acronym’?
It seems as if new weight loss programs and products come out every week. The latest I saw was a plastic wrap that you place around your stomach called “Sauna Fit”. If you strap it around your stomach, you will sweat and lose weight. Brilliant! I’m thinking that you’ll probably
Flavor of the day: Terror isn’t just for airplanes anymore
Christmas Day. Terror in the skies! A bomb and a terrorist pass through airport screening undetected. If not for a failure to detonate, there would be many lives lost over American soil. It will certainly seem that I am rambling off-subject for a maintenance blog as I talk about terror in the skies (and
Tips for maintaining a complete and accurate equipment registry
The equipment registry is one of the most important tools in your kit when it comes to maintenance and reliability. It can be the foundation of your planned maintenance, lubrication, training and repair programs, plus it helps with regulatory compliance and safety programs. Your spare parts management
Why improvement efforts fail
Why do improvement efforts fail or perhaps not sustain the gains? There are many reasons, but those most often stated are “lack of commitment” and not “following the process”. But why is there lack of commitment, and why aren’t processes followed? Here are a few of the reasons
Improvements must be generated, implemented on a daily basis
I heard a radio interview some time back with Neil Sedaka. If the name is no longer familiar, he is probably one of the most successful songwriters of all time. His songs, more than 1,000 of them, (while not all are my favorites), are performed by many different and famous artists. How does he write?
