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Reliability reduces waste of time, talent and resources

Reliability reduces waste of time, talent and resources

By Robert Apelgren • on October 23, 2009

Following along with my last blog, “Reliability is a green initiative”, I would like to talk about waste reduction. Waste is seen in many different forms in manufacturing. Some of these wastes include physical, time and talent. Physical waste is anything that is left over from the process

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Bringing the message of lean to Africa

Bringing the message of lean to Africa

By Jim Huntzinger • on September 18, 2009

I just returned from a trip to the country of Zambia in Africa. I was there visiting and helping some close family friends that are missionaries. John and Kendra are not typical missionaries. While they do have a very nice training center which is used for a Christian pastor school, family activities

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Why PM attainment needs to be a shared metric at your plant

Why PM attainment needs to be a shared metric at your plant

By Ned Mitenius • on July 23, 2009

Preventive maintenance (PM) is a cornerstone of reliability-based maintenance. It’s no surprise then that PM attainment has become a key performance indicator (KPI). But it may surprise you that in many organizations, maintenance is NOT primarily responsible for this KPI! Maintenance always has

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The ‘White Glove Story’ and dirty little TPM secrets

The ‘White Glove Story’ and dirty little TPM secrets

By Rex Gallaher • on June 11, 2009

Several years ago, a group called the Maintenance Excellence Roundtable met on the West Coast to present what it had accomplished during the previous year and where it was headed for the coming year. We were privileged to have Robert Williamson in attendance, and he told us a story that stuck with me

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Plant maintenance: Is it just like the tale of Sisyphus?

Plant maintenance: Is it just like the tale of Sisyphus?

By John Crossan • on June 10, 2009

I stumbled across some music trivia lately, that the old rock band Chicago finally had its album “Stone of Sisyphus” released last year. One of the more famous “lost” albums, it was originally recorded in the early 1990s but had languished for years, available only in illegal

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Keep maintenance simple: Use senses and sensibility

Keep maintenance simple: Use senses and sensibility

By Robert Apelgren • on June 8, 2009

What good is it to have advanced maintenance techniques if they have no real benefit over simple basic maintenance? Now I am not saying go and throw away all of your fancy toys. What I am saying is that you don’t have to have advanced tools for every maintenance task. I have seen many maintenance

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