Tag: Leadership

ReliabilityX Blog

The Importance of Proper Job Plans in CMMS and EAM Systems

In today's industrial environment, the efficiency and reliability of maintenance operations are crucial. This is where Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS) and Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) systems come into play. These systems are designed to manage the maintenance function by tracking maintenance work, parts used, failure codes, and more.  The Role of Proper Job Plans  Proper job plans are essential for the effectiveness of CMMS and EAM systems. They create standardized, repeatable, and consistent work processes, ensuring that maintenance tasks are performed efficiently and effectively. Key components of a proper job plan include labor, labor hours, parts, services, and tools.  …Read more  »
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Read More
ReliabilityX Blog

Overcoming Challenges in Implementing a CMMS or EAM System

Implementing a CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management System) or EAM (Enterprise Asset Management) system can be a complex process fraught with challenges. However, organizations can effectively navigate these hurdles with the right strategies and tools.  Common Initial Hurdles  One common hurdle is unintentionally forgetting to involve key stakeholders. For instance, if the implementation's focus is on work management and the storeroom, it's possible to overlook the supply chain team or even operators. This oversight can lead to significant issues down the line.  Importance of a Clear Strategy and Roadmap  Without a clear strategy and roadmap, scope creep can quickly take over, …Read more  »
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Read More
ReliabilityX Blog

Creating a Departmental Plan: Your Roadmap to Success

In any organization, departmental success is key to overall success. To achieve this, it's essential to have a clear roadmap that outlines your department's goals, priorities, and strategies. A departmental plan serves as this roadmap, guiding your team towards success and ensuring alignment with the organization's objectives. In this blog, we'll explore the importance of creating a departmental plan and provide a step-by-step guide to help you create one for your team.  Why You Need a Departmental Plan  A departmental plan is essential for several reasons:  Clarity of Purpose: It provides clarity on your department's purpose, goals, and priorities, ensuring …Read more  »
Tags: , , , ,
Read More
ReliabilityX Blog

A Guide to Developing a Supervisory Skill Set in Maintenance

Supervisors in maintenance play a crucial role in ensuring the efficient operation of equipment and facilities. To be effective in this role, they need a combination of technical knowledge and management skills. Some key management skills necessary for a supervisor in maintenance include:  Technical Proficiency: A strong understanding of maintenance principles, practices, and techniques is essential for effectively supervising maintenance operations. This includes knowledge of equipment, systems, and processes relevant to the organization.  Problem-Solving Skills: Maintenance supervisors must be able to identify and solve complex problems related to equipment breakdowns, maintenance processes, and safety issues. This requires critical thinking and …Read more  »
Tags: , , , ,
Read More
ReliabilityX Blog

Mastering Maintenance Leadership: The Blueprint for Strategic Business Planning

In the realm of maintenance leadership, strategic business planning isn't an option; it's a prerequisite for success. The dynamic interplay of technology, industry standards, and organizational needs demands a clear roadmap for navigating the complex landscape of maintenance and reliability. Here, we delve into the significance of maintenance leadership in business planning and how it paves the way for optimal asset management and operational excellence. The Fusion of Leadership and Strategy Maintenance leadership transcends the role of maintaining equipment and preventing breakdowns. It requires a strategic vision that aligns with the organization's overarching goals. Successful maintenance leaders operate as change …Read more  »
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Read More
ReliabilityX Blog

Mastering Lubrication Excellence: Building a World-Class Lubrication Program

In the industrial landscape, the humble lubricant might seem inconspicuous, but it plays a pivotal role in ensuring the smooth operation of machinery, reducing friction, and extending the life of critical assets. Achieving lubrication excellence isn't just a matter of choosing the right oil; it's about developing a comprehensive program that encompasses the best practices, advanced technologies, and a culture of precision. In this blog, we will explore the methods to build a world-class lubrication program that's the cornerstone of operational success. Understanding the Importance of Lubrication Excellence A world-class lubrication program is more than just routine maintenance; it's a …Read more  »
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Read More
ReliabilityX Blog

Cultivating Excellence: The Art of Building a Reliability Culture

In the realm of industrial operations, a culture of reliability isn't just a preference; it's a necessity. It's the bedrock of efficiency, safety, and sustainability, providing the fertile ground for organizations to thrive and adapt in an ever-evolving world. In this blog, we will explore the methods and principles that guide the development of a reliability culture, the essence of operational excellence. Understanding the Reliability Culture A reliability culture is a shared commitment within an organization to consistently deliver on promises and expectations. It's about instilling a mindset where everyone, from top management to front-line employees, values reliability as a …Read more  »
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Read More
ReliabilityX Blog

Building Credibility: The Cornerstone of Professional Success

Credibility, often described as the currency of trust, is a quality that sets the foundation for professional success. It's the attribute that influences how others perceive your competence, reliability, and integrity. Whether you're an individual striving to advance your career or a business aiming to gain the trust of your clients, credibility is your guiding star. In this blog, we'll delve into the methods of developing and enhancing credibility to help you stand out in your professional journey. Expertise and Knowledge Building credibility begins with expertise. The more you know about your field, the more you can contribute meaningfully. Continuously …Read more  »
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Read More
ReliabilityX Blog

Exemplary Maintenance Leadership: The Backbone of High-Quality Operations

In the world of industrial and manufacturing enterprises, where precision and reliability are paramount, maintenance leadership stands as the unsung hero. Behind the scenes, these individuals and teams are the custodians of high-quality operations, ensuring that machinery hums with efficiency, downtime is minimized, and standards are not just met but exceeded. Let's take a closer look at the essence of exemplary maintenance leadership and why it's the cornerstone of a well-oiled operation. The Role of Maintenance Leadership Maintenance leaders are the linchpin of a successful operation. Their responsibilities encompass a wide array of crucial functions, from managing preventive and predictive …Read more  »
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Read More
ReliabilityX Blog

Self-Ownership Part 5

This mindset I have and bring to my client’s struggling businesses did not get built overnight. It took years of conscious concentration to develop the discipline that says basically, if something goes wrong, it was probably my fault. Either I didn’t plan or predict a problem, or I didn’t solve the problem before it happened a second time; but now the burden is on me to solve it. Luckily I have a few tips on how to develop a self-ownership mindset. First is to change your inner dialog, how you speak to yourself. If you wake up every day and …Read more  »
Tags: , , , ,
Read More
ReliabilityX Blog

Self Ownership Part 4

The focus on attention to detail is one of the most critical portions of self-ownership. Everyone can walk by trash, but when the leader does it, it’s sending a message. The focus on attention to detail, especially in contracts, is best illustrated by the famous rock group, Van Halen. Rock stars are able to put seemingly insane requests into what they need from the venues they perform at, and Van Halen was no different. After all, they’re the reason venues can charge hundreds of dollars per seat, they can choose to be picky. They had a giant contract for whenever …Read more  »
Tags: , , , , ,
Read More
ReliabilityX Blog

Self Ownership Part 3

Think back to the restaurant mess we talked about a few pages back, who was responsible? The lesson for grown-ups (and more importantly executives and business leaders) from The Boy Who Cried Wolf is that the boy was at fault when he lied the first time, but the person who was really responsible for the sheep being lost was the shepherd who left his flock with a boy who he knew couldn’t be trusted. After the first false claim of a wolf, the boy should have been told the consequences of lying about a wolf. After the second false claim, …Read more  »
Tags: , , , ,
Read More
ReliabilityX Blog

Self Ownership Part 2

A good mental framework to have is that instead of you pushing towards accomplishing goals, you think about what things you have to “pull” to get to the end game. The subtle shift in the thinking will position you to find more creative solutions to problems. A very frequent problem with management who doesn’t really know how to solve problems is saying things like “work harder”. If we just turn up the Hard Work Dial to 11, then the problems will go away, obviously. Instead if we looked at what is stopping the success and actively worked on removing those …Read more  »
Tags: , ,
Read More
ReliabilityX Blog

Self Ownership Part 1

Here’s a common situation that most of us have experienced in our careers or education: You’re working on a project with a tight deadline, the task is do-able, but difficult. Everyone has their specific tasks assigned, and the whole team is working together on a final document to turn in. Your section is the financial analysis portion of the project. The sections all reference each other, none of them can stand alone and have a chance at making sense together. Three of your four teammates are working on final editing of the document the night before it’s due, when the …Read more  »
Tags: , , , , ,
Read More
ReliabilityX Blog

Self-Discipline Part 3

We’ve spoken enough about the psychology of self-discipline, let’s get into actionable steps, things that are easy to remember and implement on a day to day basis. If writing some of these down on a post-it note help remind you, do it. Let’s talk about developing determination - we have six steps that can help improve how determined you are, and how to avoid losing willpower. Give everything 100%. This doesn’t mean that you’re going to change your diet from garbage to perfectly clean overnight, but you won’t give 25% effort and expect 100% results. Avoid distractions that derail from …Read more  »
Tags: , , , ,
Read More
ReliabilityX Blog

Self-Discipline Part 2

Self-discipline can be broken into two portions: the will to get the actions turned into habits, and the ability to create incentives to keep the habits going, long after passion fades away. The first thing we need to do is set some clear goals, which you can take from the personal development plan we created earlier. Next we’re going to look at the time audit we did where we broke everything into ten minute sections. We’re going to act like project managers for our days, and we’re going to micro-manage our time (to start) to make sure that our time …Read more  »
Tags: , , , ,
Read More
ReliabilityX Blog

Self-Leadership-Part 3

We now know how to audit our time, to assess our self-leadership, but we can help even further explain how to become more effective and efficient leaders of ourselves. The first thing we need to do is be empowered to make our own strategy. This comes with a few requirements. First is the confidence to know that the rules are changing, which means the limits that we had on our previous strategies: real or fake, internal or external, all of them have to be re-assessed with fresh eyes. Like everything in life, it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than it …Read more  »
Tags: , , , ,
Read More
ReliabilityX Blog

Self-Leadership-Part 2

Self-leadership is the constant step of focusing on forward motion, and taking out your compass to make sure you’re always still heading north. Constant action in the wrong direction can be just as harmful as standing still, sometimes worse. This is a constant three step process. As your journey keeps moving forward, you need to keep checking your sails to make sure the wind is moving you in any direction: this is self-leadership. Next, you need to make sure you’re constantly checking the compass for due north: this is self-awareness. Finally, having the courage to look at your compass and …Read more  »
Tags: , , ,
Read More
ReliabilityX Blog

Self-Leadership-Part 1

Let’s do a quick recap of where we’ve come from. First we had to figure out where you are on your journey to success, in a totally honest way, which we covered in the chapter of Self-Awareness. Next we had learned how to hold ourselves accountable for what got us to where we are today. We discussed how to create a personal development plan to map out our different responsibilities in life, what those mean in specific, day-to-day terms, and how to monitor and measure our success on aiming for and achieving those goals. We’re able to quantify success in …Read more  »
Tags: , , ,
Read More
ReliabilityX Blog
Accountability

Self-Accountability Part 5

Step Three: Develop good habits We will talk much more about this in the section on Self-Discipline, but good habits are building blocks that will get you to where your personal development plan, that we built in step one, is heading. The first thing to focus on when starting to develop good habits is to remove bad ones, and one of the worst habits is creating excuses. Excuses are like layers to an onion, once you peel one excuse back, you find a new bad habit every time you look closer. If you turn in a report at work that’s …Read more  »
Tags:
Read More
ReliabilityX Blog
Accountability

Self-Accountability Part 4

Step Two: Be Honest With Yourself Self-accountability is meaningless without honesty. It can be difficult to be honest with yourself, because then you’re pulling away all the excuses and rationalization that stand between you and what you want, but it’s the only way forward. This is a two-part process, the first part of which is simply putting your ego aside and realize that you don’t know everything. No one does, and it might be a tough pill to swallow, but you aren’t the exception. Having the courage to admit that you don’t know everything opens the door to the second …Read more  »
Tags:
Read More
ReliabilityX Blog
Accountability

Self-Accountability Part 3

A great tool to help diagnose where these problems come into play is using the four quadrants from Stephen Covey’s great book, “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” or sometimes called “The Eisenhower Matrix” after the famous General and President. The quadrant is displayed at the left. Take any task that you need to perform and grade it on the two questions that follow. Is this urgent? – does this task require immediate attention or there will be negative consequences? Tasks that are urgent are like running water over a burned finger or paying rent on the first of …Read more  »
Tags:
Read More
ReliabilityX Blog
Accountability

Self-Accountability Part 2

Step 1: Know your role and your responsibilities The first step in creating more self-accountability is to start by making an assessment of what your role is and what those specific responsibilities are. If you’re a father, your role and responsibilities are very different than if you’re the head of an emergency room, or if you’re coach of a basketball team. Every area of your life can have different roles, but the responsibilities of being a father, for example, can impact the responsibilities of being an entrepreneur. You will need to think about how late nights in the office can …Read more  »
Tags:
Read More
ReliabilityX Blog
Accountability

Self-Accountability Part 1

In the last blog, we discussed why Self-Awareness is the starting point for any real change. If you aren’t able to honestly know where you are, you’ll never get on the proper path towards where you want to go. The next step in making forward progress is understanding how you got to where you are. This is where self-accountability comes into the conversation. Simply put, self-accountability is the understanding that you are the combined result of all of the decisions you make, and actions that you take. Throughout life, there’s roughly a 90/10 split on how much of life is …Read more  »
Tags:
Read More
ReliabilityX Blog
The only thing that limits you is your ego

Why Do We Not Want Help?

In many dealings throughout my career, including myself, it seems common place that people do not want to admit the need for help. From physically, mentally, in life, or in business, our ego’s seem to always keep us from reaching our full potential. As It Relates to Business When it comes to business world, why do we allow ego to kill our businesses? Truly successful people understand their need for help. They understand what their gaps are and the need to use others to close them. Outside help is the help that is normally needed. If the organization had the …Read more  »
Tags:
Read More
ReliabilityX Blog
practicing piano

6 Principles for Continuous Improvement

Today, I believe that we seem to overcomplicate certain elements of growth and improvement. Continuous improvement is one of those things. We repackage and rebrand things to create the perception that without us, it can’t be done. This is the consulting world in general. Is this really the case? I believe with these few principles and actual execution, your organization can see improvement. Below are a few of those principles: Principle 1 – Focus is on small, incremental improvements, not large paradigm shifts. Everyone is hoping for the magic bullet that will magically drive a mystical change within the organization. …Read more  »
Tags: ,
Read More
ReliabilityX Blog
reliability leadership

Reliability Leadership

One can read thousands of books on leadership and maybe even train and practice enough to gain skills which help them influence others or manage people but does that make them a leader? Classes I’ve taken, books I’ve read, and approaches I failed at have all served me well in gaining understanding but to say doing these things can “make” a leader is something else entirely. Many of the folks who lead others are neither in leadership roles or qualified, whatever that means. They are people who think and act genuinely without hesitation because it’s simply who they are at …Read more  »
Tags:
Read More
I am here to learn I need help