by Bob Williamson, CMRP, CPMM, MIAM, Editor | Jul 25, 2021 | Newsletter Column, Plant Operations
I’ve been an advocate of manufacturing all my life. Growing up in manufacturing and maintenance, educated in and then teaching tooling and machine design, and spending nearly four decades consulting on and writing articles about the people side of...
by Bob Williamson, CMRP, CPMM, MIAM, Editor | Jul 18, 2021 | Asset Management, Plant Operations
In my July 11, 2021, “Dispatches From The Plant Newsletter” column (see link), I discussed how the global marketplace is currently confronting supply-chain shortages of just about everything these days. This situation has led to a perfect storm, one...
by Bob Williamson, CMRP, CPMM, MIAM, Editor | Jul 11, 2021 | Newsletter Column, Plant Operations
History has shown that counterfeit materials have tended to thrive whenever there are shortages of commodity materials and goods, accompanied by opportunities to charge exorbitant prices. Increased online marketing has also fueled the growth of counterfeit product...
by Bob Williamson, CMRP, CPMM, MIAM, Editor | Jul 3, 2021 | Plant Operations, Workforce Issues
Maintenance best-practices alone do not make a reliability-improvement strategy. Partnering with your plant’s work groups to aggressively pursue reliability excellence will pay off all the way around. High-performing, low-cost, competitive operations depend on...
by Bob Williamson, CMRP, CPMM, MIAM, Editor | Jun 27, 2021 | Beyond RAM
Editor’s Note: Bob Williamson is not just a respected RAM professional and busy member of The RAM Review team. Among other things, he’s also the Curator and member of the Board of Directors of the only “House of Flags Museum” in America (read...
by Bob Williamson, CMRP, CPMM, MIAM, Editor | Jun 20, 2021 | Newsletter Column
In an Oct. 30, 2020, article for The RAM Review, I wrote about my concern that the quest for electric vehicles will threaten the global environment more than maintaining a majority of fossil-fueled vehicles would (see link below). My concerns have only heightened...
by Bob Williamson, CMRP, CPMM, MIAM, Editor | Jun 13, 2021 | Newsletter Column
In January 2019, a railway collision near Copenhagen, Denmark resulted in 8 passenger fatalities and 18 injuries. What got my attention in the post-mortem report were the stated causes of the incident: improper loading, lack of lubrication, improper maintenance, and...
by Bob Williamson, CMRP, CPMM, MIAM, Editor | Jun 4, 2021 | Training & Qualification, Workforce Issues
Permit me to do some recapping here: In my May 31, 2021, newsletter column for The RAM Review (see link below), I brought up a report issued by the MIT Sloan School of Management’s Task Force on Work of the Future in the fall of 2020. It discussed the...
by Bob Williamson, CMRP, CPMM, MIAM, Editor | May 31, 2021 | Newsletter Column, Workforce Issues
The dilemma around workforce training persists today, as it has for decades. Same challenge, different situation. “If we train them, they’ll leave for a better job at another company, maybe even our competitor’s!” The other side of the dilemma: “If we don’t train...
by Bob Williamson, CMRP, CPMM, MIAM, Editor | May 23, 2021 | Training & Qualification, Workforce Issues
My recent series of discussions in The RAM Review (see links below) have focused on the topic of workforce-development strategies and planning. As I’ve mentioned before, workforce development is not merely training. In this article, I discuss how competency building...
