It is said that in business, people are the greatest asset. It’s not just the people, but the knowledge they possess. If this is true, why aren’t businesses acting accordingly? Operations are automating and expectations are that the business can produce more with fewer and fewer people. Acquisitions and mergers persist in our competitive, global economy. With this consolidation, people are often the first to be cut in the interest of cost reductions and improving the bottom line for shareholders. Training and other investments in people are viewed as discretionary expenses, often rationalized away. This reality is complicated by a developing demographic trend - the work force is aging and retiring.

A recovery in the U.S. domestic manufacturing sector is under way that is stronger than the recovery in the general economy, largely due to industry taking the brunt of the decline in the downturn, according to the Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI U.S. Industrial Outlook: Industrial Recovery Gaining More Solid Footing (ER-696), a quarterly report that analyzes 27 major industries.

Lloyd’s Register has certified EDF Energy Networks against the BSI Publicly Available Specification 55 (PAS 55-1) in a rigorous process of assessment which benchmarks best practice in asset management.

Xenics, Europe’s leading developer and manufacturer of advanced infrared detectors and customized imaging solu¬tions covering the IR spectrum from LWIR into the visible realm, continues to grow and innovate its way out of the current recessionary climate. Xenics is extending its range of products to the very promising high-volume security and high end thermography markets. At this year’s SPIE DSS, Xenics will highlight its substantial innovations by showing high quality products such as the Onca, Xlin and Meerkat families.

Joint effort will extend the opportunity for interoperable wireless technology in the smart home.

To meet the needs of electrical testing professionals seeking technologies that will help to enhance their company’s efficiency, effectiveness and reliability, Megger is presenting two free one-day seminars in Anchorage, AK. The seminars address some of the most important and costly issues relating to substation maintenance, and include extensive practical presentations.

Swagelok has been in business for over 60 years, manufacturing the highest quality valves and tube fittings. We are also a privately held company with sales distributors and warehouses throughout the world that supply excellent support and service. Swagelok has been a successful company as viewed by its end-customers, having the highest quality products on the market. Our manufacturing model is machining, processing and assembly, with over 1000 different work centers. Over the years we have been able to utilize redundancy of equipment to mask our downtime issues. Unlike a process plant, we have many options with this redundancy to make or assemble a specific product. As we started to implement Lean Manufacturing throughout our supply chain we made good progress in reducing our costs and the number of touch points. However, when we started to measure overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) on our machines we realized we had some major issues with machine downtime. A decision was made as part of our overall Lean initiative to create and implement a new maintenance program that would address our machine deficiencies. We researched different types of approaches to improve our maintenance programs. After some benchmarking and interviewing different consultants, we felt that the Reliability Excellence approach offered by Life Cycle Engineering (LCE) met our requirements. We felt that their methods and best practices would fit in best with our culture and our Lean journey. LCE came to Swagelok in 2007 and did an assessment of where we were in regards to maintenance - basically how reactive were we? The results of the audit were that we were on the high end of a reactive or emerging maintenance program scoring 353 out of a possible 1000.

The Centre for Automation and Robotics Research (CARR) opened at Sheffield Hallam University in Sheffield, U.K.

The Manufacturing Game has developed a short 16-question survey based on Joseph Campbell’s concept of a Hero’s Journey.The survey is designed to facilitate the story writing process, and it guides the writer through the writing process. They provide this survey to maintenance and reliability professionals for their own use.  Clients may opt to use the written story internally or share their success with others by approving it for publication in external publications such as the our quarterly TMG newsletter or a monthly magazine like Uptime Magazine. See the list below for the 16 questions in the survey, as it relates to writing about Action Team successes.

From a leadership perspective we, at Ledet Enterprises, think it is important to provide proper rewards and recognition to succeed at improving organizational performance. However, we think different rewards are important in the different domains. Strangely enough, it appears that the Reactive domain has the rewards built into the work itself. When equipment breaks or won’t do the job, there is a lot of satisfaction derived from the act of restoring the functionality of the equipment. There is overtime for the hourly employees who are needed to take the equipment down, restore the functionality, and get it running again. These are the typical “overtime heroes” who wrestle with the equipment and get “pats on the back” from everyone because they were able to repair the equipment and get it running again. There is innate value in restoring equipment to serve the purpose it was intended to serve. The problem with this mode of behavior is that it has many hazards associated with it. The most obvious ones being the risk of hurting people and the environment because of the chaotic way things happen in the reactive mode. While this chaos is stimulating and creates some excitement in life, it can easily become overwhelming for employees. This basic mode of operation is a fight between the equipment and people to see who will win or lose with the equipment taking the initiative.