The Importance of Documentation in Precision Maintenance

Thursday, 28 December 2017 by Madelaine Hallman-Kenner

Why Proper Documentation Will Lead to Sustainable Improvements

Imagine being able to look back and see what settings the equipment was last ran at for a particular SKU. Or being able to look back at the last three alignment inspections and see that slowly the alignment is drifting. What could you do with this type of information? You could perform Root Cause Analysis to see why the alignment is...

Maintenance and Reliability Engineers: How Are They Different, and How Many Should I Have?

Tuesday, 26 December 2017 by Shon Isenhour
So another common question that manufacturing maintenance folks ask when designing a new reliability organization is about the Maintenance Engineer (ME) and how he is different from the Reliability Engineer (RE) and how many of each they should have. We could dive into the details of the accepted responsibilities of each but I have a nine page job role comparisons that include planners, REs, and...

A Balanced Improvement Strategy

Wednesday, 13 December 2017 by Shon Isenhour
Guest Post this week from Darrin Wikoff

Graduate of the Month: December 2017

Tuesday, 12 December 2017 by Madelaine Hallman-Kenner

We want to congratulate our December Graduate of the Month, Douglas White of Amazon!

Graduate of the Month: November 2017

Thursday, 09 November 2017 by Madelaine Hallman-Kenner

We want to congratulate our latest graduate of the month, David Browning from ourinspired Blended Learning curriculum for Reliability Engineers!

Facts and Statistics on Growth, Skills, Reliability, and Manufacturing

Monday, 23 October 2017 by Shon Isenhour
Today's blog post includes many facts and statistics that I have collected while preparing to present at the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufactures Reliability Conference this week. This is the group formally known as NPRA and if you are going to be their look me up. These tidbits are from various recent magazine articles and studies and will help you communicate the need for both education...

More Preventive is Not Necessarily the Answer

Tuesday, 26 September 2017 by Shon Isenhour

More is not necessarily better when it comes to preventive maintenance you have to find the right amount done right with the right tools.

Leadership, Fast Cars, and Road Blocks: Three things leaders need to know about project roadblock removal.

Thursday, 14 September 2017 by Shon Isenhour

Leadership is about road block removal. Your team may be the best in the world at what they do but certain issues can stop them cold every time. They may be like a garage full of incredibly fast sports cars eager to get the job done, but someone has to open the garage door to get them started and remove the roadblocks along the way that prevent them from demonstrating their full potential. In the...

So is it a Planner, a Scheduler, or is it a Planner/Scheduler?

Monday, 11 September 2017 by Shon Isenhour

Recently, I had an interesting conversation about staffing the maintenance planner and scheduler roles with in a facility. The question was centered on whether a site should have the two disciplines split or if they should be combined. The answer in my mind is… it depends.

Here are my thoughts on criteria that affect the planner/scheduler organizational structure:

Size of the maintenance...

iBL Graduate of the Month: September 2017

Wednesday, 06 September 2017 by Madelaine Hallman-Kenner

We have a new iBL Graduate of the Month. Congratulations Timothy Sagraves from Weyerhaeuser for a job well done on your iBL Maintenance Manager curriculum.