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 saved one company over $3,000,000.
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“Networking: Best-Available Adult Education (Part I).
As a brief recap, in Part I, I described a long-ago conversation with a reliability manager who wondered if, among other things, technical or professional societies were training their members effectively. He also wanted to know if the incremental proficiency of society members had been worth the monetary and time-related expenditures made by employer and employee, and could any “value added” from membership/participation, (including attendance at regional evening meetings) be assessed and/or quantified? My answer then, as now: yes on all counts.
GENERATING TRUE VALUE
Education in the form of training one’s reliability and maintenance professionals (and other technical personnel, for that matter) is most effective if a trainee can be convinced to attend local or regional evening meetings of technical societies such as ASME, The Vibration Institute, SMRP, and others. These meetings typically take place every two or three months (if not more often) and are attended by motivated individuals whose aim it is to learn from others.
Real training, however, is a two-way street. It must be well defined, supported in equal measure by employer and employee, requires motivation and effort by all concerned parties, and likely represents a 50-50 investment in the employee’s and employer’s personal time. The present and future value of such training is intuitively evident. Its value has been documented. I know that from personal experience.
Many decades have passed since I met Charlie at a regional ASME evening meeting in Houston. He was a principal machinery engineer at a company that competed with mine. During the meeting, we had a chance to talk about compressors at our respective plants.
A few weeks later, I called Charlie with a question on intermittent high vibration causing downtime and repair of a 9-stage machine at my site. The OEM always claimed that our plant was the only one to ever report such problems. Charlie cleared this notion up quickly by telling me that vendors occasionally thrived on misinforming the misinformable. He also explained that his 9-stagers were cured after replacing a certain load-between-tilt-pad bearing with a locally designed, load-on-tilt-pad, bearing.
RETURN ON INVESTMENT
I had invested four hours of personal time, $19.75 on a meal, plus $5.59 for driving 43 miles at $0.13/mile. The company reimbursed me $25.34 and moved me into a higher salary grouping. Management seemed pleased to have saved in excess of $3,000,000, and I kept on networking.
I believe similar experiences and value-adding opportunities related to technical and professional societies and their memberships haven’t always been perceived as sufficiently urgent. Yet, there’s been ample evidence to the contrary over time, and it continues to steadily increase.TRR
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Heinz Bloch’s long professional career included assignments as Exxon Chemical’s Regional Machinery Specialist for the United States. A recognized subject-matter-expert on plant equipment and failure avoidance, he is the author of numerous books and articles, and continues to present at technical conferences around the world. Bloch holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering and is an ASME Life Fellow. These days, he’s based near Houston, TX. Email him directly at [email protected].
Tags: reliability, maintenance, training, workforce issues, professional development
