Marshall Institute - Insights from Marshall Institute (Page 2)

Maintenance & Reliability Tips: February 2020

> "Maintenance is a core value driver at almost every location, but we often don't act like it or are we even aware of it. To be considered vital and necessary for productivity, maintenance must establish and execute a reliability strategy that is indistinguishable from the plant

Asset Management

Asset Management: 5 key points to consider to ensure that your assets directly impact the output of your organization

I want to take few minutes today to think about asset management and how critical it is to the function of an organization. Asset management affects the capacity of the organization to deliver its products or services to its customers. Less reliability equals less output in an organization over a

Time Management

Time Management: Do we really plan our time?

I want to thank everyone that responded to last month’s E-newsletter and blog article about the A3 Planning Tool [https://insights.marshallinstitute.com/a3-planning-tool/]. It was helpful to hear that many of you thought you could use this tool and how you thought it would keep you on track

Time Management

Time Management: A3 Planning Tool

During one of my recent class discussions while talking about time management, a tool I commonly use came to mind. This tool is called an A3: a structured problem-solving and continuous-improvement approach, named for the A3 paper size typically used. An A3 can be very difficult or simple. I believe

Dale Blann

Our Friend, Mentor, and Leader

Dale R. BlannOn Tuesday, December 3rd, 2019, Dale Blann, our friend, leader, and mentor, passed away. His grace, patience, calm, and integrity will be missed by all of us that were blessed enough to have shared some time with him. Dale had a brief, but aggressive illness, and faced this

Planning and Scheduling

Do Your Planners Have the Training they need to be Effective?

Are you considering the implementation of Planning and Scheduling in your Maintenance group? Maybe you have already started the process and chosen the Planners to take you forward in your Continuous Improvement Process. In either case, strong consideration should be given to the types and levels of training your Planners

Maintenance Tips

Quick Tip: Benchmarking Studies

One of the recommendations for TPM/TPR implementation is to conduct a benchmarking study. This means comparing your company or plant against other companies or plants. By studying what they are doing well, we can emulate (copy and refine) their actions. One of the things we need to consider is

TPM/TPR

Qualities of Effective Meetings and Good Teams

Team meetings are important as a source for decision-making, consensus building, and problem-solving for TPM/TPR Equipment Improvement Teams. The following are some rules in conducting good meetings. Attention To Content and Process To accomplish work in meetings, members must agree on what they will be discussing, as well as

Reliability Strategy Workshop (Video)

Author and Marshall Institute facilitator, Dr. John L. Ross Jr, shares key topics, take-aways, and participant value from our newest seminar, Reliability Strategy Workshop.

Thomas J. Furnival

Part I: Developing the Leadership Mindset: Set your Mind, Manage your Destiny

Are you progressing in your career as well as you wanted? Are you getting the results you expected from projects? Are your working relationships as productive as they should be? If you answered 'no' to any of these questions, then I may just have a solution.

Thomas J. Furnival

Industry 4.0: Are the Robots Taking Over?

Where do you stand on the future of jobs in Industry 4.0? Do you think robots are going to take over? Existing research shows that some jobs will be eliminated, but many will be affected as skills shift. My prediction is that as the world becomes more digital, our

Maintenance Tips

Quick Tips: Total Productive Maintenance

> When programs do not align with organization’s goals, they may receive support in the beginning, but if they don’t provide direct value to helping the company meet its goals and objectives, it will only be a matter of time before support and resources dry up. > The

Reliability Strategy Workshop

A New Workshop for a New Year…The Reliability Strategy Workshop

December 12, 2018 Marshall Institute, Inc. has released an exciting new seminar: The Reliability Strategy Workshop [https://www.marshallinstitute.com/eventTemplate.html?eventtemplate=28]. This valuable and informative strategy workshop complements the newly published workbook titled The Reliability Excellence Workbook – From Ideas to Action, which recently spent eight weeks as

Greg Folts

Boost Line & Machine Performance with Equipment Improvement Teams (Quick Tip)

Equipment Improvement Teams are critical to increasing line and equipment reliability and performance. However, to achieve their potential make sure you have prepared well and have executed the fundamentals properly! Equipment Improvement teams (EIT) can be critical to increasing the performance of a line or machine. To achieve significant results

Preventive Maintenance

Maintenance Improvement Fundamentals - Be the Change

There are some actions which must be taken at any plant if the maintenance contribution is to be improved. Indeed, some of the recommendations which follow should be implemented even in the absence of any corporate or top management directives! That is, they are well within the span of control

Greg Folts

Lessons of Operator Equipment Knowledge from the Boise State Police

Often when I talk to groups about the importance of operator training and skills, I relate a story that happened to me in Boise Idaho back in 1999. I use this real life missive to communicate the value of know how systems work as an operator.... I was conducting a

Mark Jolley

Organizing Your Emergency Maintenance

One of the best ways of improving our response time in critical breakdown mode is to have our tools and parts well organized. When a critical piece of equipment has gone down unexpectedly, we as maintenance professionals are forced into an EMT (Emergency Maintenance Technicians) role. We are expected to

Greg Folts

Sustaining TPM: Build Internal Expertise

So far, in the Sustaining TPM video series we have discussed the importance of gaining consensus on strengths and opportunities and building a persuasive case for change. This next and equally important topic is building internal expertise . For those currently embarking on your TPM implementation journey, let's assume

Mark Jolley

Basic Equipment Care Savings - Capture and Report

A Basic Equipment Care Workshop (BEC) is a powerful event. It can literally transform people’s behaviors and way of thinking – turning skeptics into believers. BEC events usually consist of a cross-functional team whose goal is to improve the reliability of a specific piece of equipment. This is done by

Supervising Maintenance

Maintenance Supervisors – Are They Set-Up for Success or Failure?

Is your organization proactive about training or do they opt for the “Baptism by Fire” approach? Too many facilities I visit have no formal training plans. A key position which training is often overlooked is supervision. The common misconception is that because the individual was a good maintenance mechanic or

Tracy Strawn

Maintenance & Reliability Consultants - Why Use Them?

Its very simple. There is an old saying attributed to a wise man from long ago. I will paraphrase it, "A prophet is not welcome in his own town". Unfortunately this piece of wisdom is true in most businesses today especially when viewed from the lens of the

Maintenance Improvement

Managing Maintenance Resources Productively

Peter Drucker, "guru" of modern management, says that the task of a business, any business, is to make resources—labor, material, capital—productive. The work of management, he says, is to manage those resources through planning, organizing, integrating, measuring, and controlling activities appropriate to that purpose. The most

Supervising Maintenance

Frontline Supervisors are Key to Continuous Improvement

Supervisors and team leaders are crucial to Continuous Improvement (CI) efforts. The reason is that often it is a frontline supervisor who provides personnel time to participate on the CI teams as well as the production equipment for the Basic Equipment Care (BECWs) workshops. Supervisors do this at the expense

MRO Storeroom

Controlling Maintenance MRO Inventory Materials and Spares

Companies can realize significant savings by controlling inventories of maintenance materials. Two points should be understood by all persons involved with developing and instituting a maintenance MRO inventory control system: 1. Inventory control does not necessarily mean that inventories should be kept at a minimum and or current dollars in

Cost Cutting as a Maintenance and Reliability Strategy

Cost cutting is the antithesis to improvement. I am constantly amazed that everyone I speak to realizes the inherent problems with adopting a cost cutting strategy in the midst of an economic downturn. Nevertheless that is the exact course many companies take when faced with dwindling profits, disappearing margins, and

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