by Bob Williamson, CMRP, CPMM, MIAM, Editor | Dec 23, 2019 | Newsletter Column, Workforce Issues
“Unplanned equipment downtime and changeovers are eating up our productivity. Our equipment has to perform better, be more reliable. We need to change the way we operate around here.” When the above type of directive comes from top management, there’s no doubt...
by Heinz Bloch, P.E., Editor | Dec 20, 2019 | RAM Tools & Methods, The Bloch Files, Workforce Issues
It was a regular routine. In the few decades from 1960 until 2000, during my daily drives in to work, I would make it a point to spend time deciding what to tackle once I arrived. Then, on my drives home, I would mull over what I had (or had not) accomplished on a...
by Heinz Bloch, P.E., Editor | Dec 14, 2019 | RAM Tools & Methods, The Bloch Files, Workforce Issues
This article is the final installment of a two-part discussion on networking and adult education that I began in my Dec. 2019, 2019, newsletter column for The RAM Review. It provides closure to the cliff-hanger at the end of Part I: how a single networking contact...
by Bob Williamson, CMRP, CPMM, MIAM, Editor | Dec 7, 2019 | RAM Tools & Methods, Safety Matters, Workforce Issues
“D’ya think I’m stupid? Checklists are for dummies.” “I know what I’m doing. I’ve done it for years.” “Why would I ever need a checklist?” These types of remarks sum up what, even now, is a widely held view among maintenance and reliability teams on many plant floors....
by Bob Williamson, CMRP, CPMM, MIAM, Editor | Nov 30, 2019 | Maintenance Management, RAM Tools & Methods, Workforce Issues
There are huge, and growing, opportunities to improve what we do in the workplace, including, among other things, safety, productivity, quality, efficiency, effectiveness, equipment performance, and reliability. But the desire to improve and the words “improve it” by...
by Heinz Bloch, P.E., Editor | Nov 30, 2019 | RAM Tools & Methods, The Bloch Files, Workforce Issues
To recap, in a recent article, “Workforce Appreciation and Achieving Plant Goals” (Nov. 23, 2019), I discussed how, in early 2000, the Canadian consulting company Systems Approach Strategies (SAS) developed a training course that brought W. Edwards Deming’s “14...
by Bob Williamson, CMRP, CPMM, MIAM, Editor | Nov 25, 2019 | Newsletter Column, Workforce Issues
In the past, when businesses experienced labor shortages, they would beef up advertising, expand recruitment efforts, and speed up their on-boarding processes. That was when companies were looking for skilled and semi-skilled labor and unemployment was hovering...
by Heinz Bloch, P.E., Editor | Nov 23, 2019 | RAM Tools & Methods, Safety Matters, The Bloch Files, Workforce Issues
While a plant’s efforts in areas related to reliability, availability, and maintenance (RAM) indicate appreciation for equipment assets, who or what beyond the HR department makes it a point to show similar “appreciation” for the site’s human assets? To put it in...
by Heinz Bloch, P.E., Editor | Nov 11, 2019 | Newsletter Column, RAM Tools & Methods, The Bloch Files, Workforce Issues
If you’ve ever wondered how good Reliability Managers groomed their successors in the 1960s and 1970s, read on. I have written and spoken about this topic many times over the years. The following information is taken from a one-day teaching and networking session...
by Bob Williamson, CMRP, CPMM, MIAM, Editor | Nov 8, 2019 | RAM Tools & Methods, Workforce Issues
“We keep having equipment problems, not the same equipment all the time, but the same causes on the same shift, almost every time. We know what we need to do from a reliability perspective, but we can’t get anybody else to change the way they do things. How do...
