Wednesday March 8

8:00 am - 3:30 pm  Workshops - click here for more details

Thursday March 9

Halving Maintenance Related Downtime - Integrating PM Optimization and Reliability Assurance
by Steve Turner, OMCS

Most companies restrict the use of RCM to the most critical plant items and see it as a complex resource intensive process.  For this and other reasons, RCM is often seen as a method that should only be applied in organizations that are nearing the best in class of maintenance excellence.  With modern PMO methods this proposition is outdated. Research also shows that the implementation of RCM only coverts 1/3^rd of the improvement opportunity.  To obtain the other 2/3rds requires the integration of the CMMS, the RCM / PMO analysis and the elements of data collection and review and incident management (Reliability Assurance).

Learn how to implement a full Reliability Assurance program that can halve maintenance related downtime in between six and twelve months and learn from the case study material presented.  This short course will have plenty of discussion time.

What I Wish I Had Realized at Go Live – Learning’s from SAP PM Renewal Efforts
by Lorri A. Craig, Reliability Solutions

At the CMMS-2005 conference, Reliability Solutions, Inc. presented the SAP PM Effectiveness Audit process designed to develop the value model for reliability improvement using the SAP PM tool. With several of the audit processes complete, the learning’s from these audits provides a unique insight into the opportunities that still pose significant opportunities to manufacturing organizations.

Maintenance organizations that are adapting their work to enterprise software systems face specific challenges that often are often not obvious at first glance. This 90 minute work session will summarize the major issues that face SAP PM Installations and some of the suggestions that have helped put these organizations on the road to reliability success.

This short course will discuss why we need a CMMS/EAM system and how it's being used beyond just a Work Order system in places such as Arnold Engineering Development Center. In addition, how maintenance best practices are implemented using EAM system effectively to improve plant reliability. What are the challenges we are facing and our future plans will also be addressed.

This session focuses on leveraging EAM to provide data in actionable format to implement best practices.

9:00 am -10:00 am  Refreshment/Snack Break and Expo

10:00 am - 10:45 am Learning Zone Session

As experience grows in using RCM to improve maintenance performance, it has become evident that a significant proportion of failure modes are related to human error. In order to effectively manage these failure modes it is important to gain an understanding of how and why human errors occur. This paper will present an introduction to understanding and managing human error within the RCM process including: 

• How our minds work – short & long term memory
• How much information do we successfully process?
• Corporate levels of error
• The blame game
• Slips, lapses and deviations
• Factors affecting performance
• Strategies and tactics for managing human error within your RCM program

Asset Basic Care programs use operations, maintenance and/or lubrication staff to physically inspect and verify the operating condition of work areas, processes, and fixed/mobile assets. Asset Basic Care is a commitment to ensure the health of assets with a thorough care regimen. Early indications of failure using predictive maintenance tools are more evident in assets that are clean, well operated and properly lubricated.

This learning zone session demonstrates why Asset Basic Care is a solid foundation for a successful overall reliability program.

11:00 am - 11:45 am Learning Zone Session

Reliability-Centered Maintenance and Root Cause Analysis:  Complementary Tools that can be used together to Prevent Problems and Improve Reliability by Douglas J. Plucknette, RCM Blitz^™, Reliability Solutions Inc. and Mark Galley, Cause Mapping^®, ThinkReliability  

As plants around the world focus on how to improve equipment reliability, reduce maintenance costs and prevent incidents and accidents, they will often begin looking and learning about various reliability tools they can apply to speed the road to improvement.

Reliability-Centered Maintenance and Root Cause Analysis are proven approaches to improve reliability within a facility.  These two tools can be used independently, but there are also some important benefits by understanding how RCA and RCA can be used together.  Reliability Solutions, Inc., the provider of the RCM Blitz^™ methodology, and ThinkReliability, the provider of Cause Mapping, have worked together with clients to show the connections between these two powerful reliability tools.

Because the cause-and-effect principle is at the heart of both reliability-centered maintenance and root cause analysis there are some opportunities to utilize common information and avoid duplication.  This paper explains the relationships between RCM Blitz™ and Cause Mapping and gives examples of how organizations have been using the two approaches to prevent problems and improve reliability within their facility.

Case study of integrating Reliability Decision Making tools with SAP".

This case study looks at solving the integration problem of Reliability Decision making tools and SAP. Illustrates the two way flow of information, whilst maintaining data integrity and single data source sitting in the ERP.

Anyone who has had to manually load maintenance plans out of their RCM decision making tools will appreciate the seamless launching of plans direct to SAP/MIMS Ellipse.

CMMS, by itself, does not guarantee optimal inventory management practices. Gonnella Frozen Products in Schaumburg, IL wanted to improve its inventory management practices but did not know how to move forward. Desire to automate inventory management processes and to make them more efficient existed, however, a missing link existed. Recognizing this, Gonnella Frozen Products made a strategic move and partnered with an outside CMMS consulting firm to create Best Inventory Management Practices, CMMS Training, Workflow Analysis, Standard Operating Procedures (SOP’s) and Barcode Implementation

Now, Gonnella Frozen Products takes full advantage of the inventory management features of its CMMS and has achieved reduced downtime by having available parts on order. In addition maintenance technicians now find parts quickly and easily. The workflow of reordering parts has been optimized and bottlenecks and redundant procedures eliminated. Stocked parts are automatically reordered. Join us to learn more about the journey!

11:45 am  – 1:00 pm Lunch and Expo

12:45 pm  – 1:15 pm Technical & Commercial Innovations Sessions

RCM Analysis using JMS Worksaver Software
by Nick Jize JMS Software

Learn how RCM WorkSaver^TM can help you implement your RCM program more productively. This full function RCM tool meets all RCM standards. The Classical 7-step process as well as the abbreviated RCM method can be rapidly performed. A typical RCM analysis can be performed in one-third the time. Feed forward innovative features provide increased accuracy and consistency by automating many labor-intensive steps.

FMEA, Logic Tree, and Task Prioritization are just a few of the features included in this tool. Fully documented analysis reports can be generated at a push of a button. A task packaging step is also included to help you organize and implement your RCM decisions. This session will include a short demonstration of these features.

Ivara’s Maintenance Task Analysis (MTA) is a Work Identification Methodology that delivers an operating asset reliability program. Using Ivara EXP reliability software and MTA, you can develop a technically-based Asset Reliability Program and then quickly put it into action as part of a proactive asset reliability process.

In today’s organizations, the majority of work that is performed in maintenance is not the right work—it’s comprised of work based on manufacturer’s recommendations or a “we’ve always done it that way” approach. Identifying the right work is a crucial cornerstone of any successful asset reliability program.

A free 7 day knowledge base evaluation code will be provided for all conference attendees.

1:30 pm – 3:00 pm 90 Minute Short Course

The authors represent some 50 years of experience in applying the RCM methodology to over 75 systems for various industrial and government clients. In this process, we have learned many "do's and don'ts" about how to successfully achieve useful results. This paper will highlight some of the more important Lessons Learned developed from this experience.

I am often questioned about the feasibility of copying the information from one analysis and pasting it into another. “This will save both time and money and should provide an equal level of reliability across all of our assets.”

This idea of developing a maintenance strategy for one asset and applying it to similar assets seems very attractive, but it’s also often the first crucial mistake companies make when trying to start an RCM program. Common sense leads them to assume a pump is a pump, a motor is a motor and pipe is pipe. If we expect our pumps, motors and pipes to perform the similar duties, they should intern deliver the similar levels of reliability. In the rush to make the RCM cycle faster they forget to consider just how different these identical components can be and in the end discover the maintenance strategy that works well for one asset will not work at all for another. Worse than this, they might also believe that it was the RCM process that failed and tell others “we tried RCM and it didn’t work”!

Can you ever template information from one RCM analysis and use it in another?

Yes, it can be done and it can save both time and money, but there are several things that need to be considered before you copy the maintenance strategy from one analysis and past it into another. I like to say Reliability-Centered Maintenance is relatively simple process with several subtle complexities that lulls people in to making common mistakes.

Accelerating Implementation & Use of Maximo by Steve Richmond

Whether you have a Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) or an Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) System, at some point, you will use it for regularly capturing Maintenance activities of some type. Many will find that real work only begins at the end of the System search, selection, and hardware/software installation. With so many avenues to take in terms of what you use first in the application, which do you choose, and how do you start?

We will focus on bringing the system up for capturing work orders, and posting their charges to equipment, within the facility. This will at least get you started in an organized approach to getting things done within the system, and capturing history, as you go forward with other areas of the implementation.

 We will begin with a brief overview of the implementation flow and then proceed through a workshop to dig directly into key areas of implementation, as well as a review of several tools and responsibilities along the way:

Equipment Data Collection – what data to collect; required vs. desired and why

Minimal Configuration and Tailoring – show differences from the COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) version

Repair Work Orders

• Manual Work Order form – no entry in computer until work is done
• Training on how you should train personnel to report a problem – something few companies actually do

Show work order life cycle steps of reporting problem, assigning work, reporting work done and keying it in 

We will close with sample methods of analysis, and where you may start in identifying what the system is doing for you, and tools available to assist you that you probably have at your disposal already.

Unleashing the Power of the EAM As a Reliability Improvement Tool by Bill Keeter, Allied Reliability

Enterprise Asset Management Systems (EAMS) have proven themselves to be important financial management tools for a wide variety of organizations.  As EAMS’s have matured they have become more useful to maintenance organizations as works management tools.  This presentation will explore expanding the role of the EAMS as a part of the Failure Reporting Analysis and Corrective Action System (FRACAS) needed to improve asset performance through time.

The FRACAS is an important part of any Reliability Improvement Effort.  Information gathered and analyzed with the FRACAS becomes the driver for improving PM and PdM tactics with Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) efforts, improving equipment designs and maintenance strategies with Availability Simulation, and for driving Root Cause Failure Analysis programs.  Properly implemented failure reporting schemes in the EAMS make them a powerful repository for information needed in these improvement efforts.  During this 90 minute presentation you will learn how to generate good failure reporting schemes for use in your EAMS or CMMS.

3:00 pm – 3:30 pm Expo refreshment/snack break

3:30 pm – 4:00 pm    Keynote: Leading a Reliability Culture by Brigadier General B.G. Stringer

5:00 pm – 8:00 pm Mardi Gras Hospitality Night

Friday March 10

7:30 am -  9:00 am    90 Minute Short Courses

Reliability Centered Maintenance has been difficult. Historically RCM has been cumbersome, expensive, and very difficult to implement. Note the common theme is how RCM was in the past! Implementing an RCM program has for the most part been shrouded in confusion and unfortunately, its image has taken on an aura of perceived complexity. I plan to change that. In fact, that is why this presentation is titled “RCM – A New Beginning.”

It has been conservatively estimated that over 60% of all RCM programs initiated are never successfully implemented. There is a reason for this. In fact there are many reasons. I have written my book titled “Reliability Centered Maintenance – Implementation Made Simple” because I found that most of the existing information on RCM is very difficult to understand and assimilate, and even more difficult to use as a tool for implementation by the layperson. RCM is a very powerful reliability tool but as long as it remains mostly non-user friendly, its full potential is limited. This short course will discuss many of the pitfalls and problems often associated with RCM in order to provide you with the knowledge to avoid these obstacles so that you can readily implement an affordable premier RCM program for your plant or facility, on your own, without the need for any outside expertise, and without the need for special training of any kind.

When we think about maintenance strategies, the words predictive, preventive, corrective, and breakdown spring to mind. There is however an important class of tasks that we do to ensure that our equipment and Plant remains safe and productive. These tasks are based on a Detective Maintenance strategy. They help us win our licence-to-operate and ensure long term viability. With machinery and Plants becoming increasingly more complex, the proportion of such tasks in the total maintenance program is growing.

Managing a business efficiently means that we have to manage risks well. In turn, this requires that our safety devices and systems work on demand. It is possible to arrive logically at the required availability of the items in question and find suitable detective maintenance strategies. While analysis is relatively easy, there are several hurdles in implementing their results. These challenges can be met by a range of solutions. They are not universal and need to be tailored to each situation.

The word pro-active is very popular, especially in the maintenance context. Detective Maintenance strategies are pro-active. More importantly, they are essential to long term success.

Connecting Reliability to Asset Management by Sean Fancey,  Luscar Mining, Ricky Smith, CMRP, James Nesbitt, Ivara  

Join 3 Reliability Leaders in a dynamic presentation on a unique and smart way to improve reliability – one system at a time.  The seemingly impossible challenge – of changing the approach to asset management from reactive to proactive – becomes very doable.    

Many companies feel like they’re fighting a constant battle –having invested in an EAM system or Predictive Technologies or RCM, but find they are still reacting to breakdowns, dealing with unplanned downtime, and not maximizing on their potential or capacity. These are all symptoms of a reliability problem.

 This session follows a case study of a large mining site that went through this evolution and discusses how companies today can realize value and achieve success by focusing on the asset reliability process supported by the right practices, tools, and by taking a simple, practical approach – improving reliability one system at a time.  

Luscar Mining is one of Canada’s largest coal producers and recognized reliable supplier of quality coal products. The company operates 10 surface mines with the capacity to produce more than 40 million tons of coal annually. Luscar has successfully improved asset reliability and sustained an overall performance improvement.

MRO Excellence – Equipment Available to meet Customer’s Expectations by Kevin Lewton, MET DEMAND LLC

MRO Storeroom management is directly tied to the customer service level of your factory.  If you have the highest skilled army and best trained officers, but food, water and ammunition does not reach them, when and where they need them, the battle is lost.  Most businesses have lost focus or decreased the priority on ensuring good and quality management of a MRO Storeroom.  This has resulted in a skill shortage of storeroom professionals, who can execute proactive maintenance, logistic and cost control activities.   

This short presentation will raise attention to this growing skill deficiency in today’s businesses. An inefficient storeroom can be the root cause of possibly 25% of the plants unplanned downtime and can lead to large losses of productivity in the maintenance department.  This short training course will discuss these losses and some of the general causes.  Specific subjects are: business basics, roles and responsibilities of the different functions around a storeroom, tools for spare part stocking decisions and how to get organized and implement a storeroom improvement plan.  

The craft gap for maintenance technicians is well known.  MRO Storeroom’s personnel have the same skill gap but is not widely recognized in industry. The low number of storeroom workers compared to other positions, a miss perception of the storeroom function or a low priority may be the reasons why this issue hasn't been recognized.  The reason doesn’t matter.  What does matter is that without these few skilled resources to support your operation and maintenance departments. Productivity will suffer.  The question to ask, are we managing this issue at our facilities and within our company?  This short course is intended to provide some insight on how to move forward.

9:00 am -10:00 am  Refreshment/Snack Break and Expo

10:00 am - 10:45 am Learning Zone Session

When talking about creating the perfect PM task it will be discussed how Chemical Lime (the US division of Lhoist) was able to improve reliability and capacity by over 200,00 tons by using RCM tools such as RCM Turbo. Chemical Lime uses rotary kilns and lots of material handling and crushing equipment to make it's products. This type of equipment is very hard to maintain and is also capital intensive. It will be discussed how Chemical Lime was able to set up teams to develop first like equipment PM's and then move to special and unique equipment. This project not only changed the way maintenance was done in the US but has now been exported to Europe in hope of achieving the same goals there.

RCM The Navy Way for Optimal Operations by Timothy M. Allen
 

In 1961 a U.S. Government sponsored task force reported its findings on the effect of scheduled maintenance and aircraft reliability. They stated “In the past, a great deal of emphasis has been placed on the control of overhaul periods to provide a satisfactory level of reliability. After careful study, the Committee is convinced that reliability and overhaul time control are not necessarily directly associated topics.” Further studies that also supported this precept led to a new discipline known as “Reliability Centered Maintenance”. This RCM discussion focuses on one of the principles of RCM - Hardware may wear out or have random failure - Random is more common – and the U.S. Navy’s findings in regard to this principle. In 1998 Naval Sea Systems Command activity SUBMEPP (Submarine Maintenance Engineering, Planning and Procurement) developed the capability to generate Age and Reliability curves utilizing maintenance feedback data. This provided the organization a new means to objectively measure the effects of planned maintenance to engineer optimal maintenance plans.   After three years of generating Age and Reliability curves, SUBMEPP is ready to report that the 1961 finding still holds true. In the majority of cases, there is no relationship between overhaul time and reliability.

Getting More Than Data Processing Out Of A CMMS James Huzdovich-Project Manager
Raven Services Corporation

Strategic decisions define the management action plan for a maintenance organization. The decision alternatives needed to support development of the strategic plan lead to identifying the information needs of the organization, and in the next logical step, the data required to develop the alternatives. Note that this is the minimum data set that will support effective strategy execution and as such defines the data collection, data processing function for the organization. One can now create an operating structure that will embody a diagnostic concept and allow the organization to implement a living strategy. An effective maintenance program ensues based on problem identification and corrective action at the operating level through action determination and feedback based on comparison to performance requirements, standards, and analytical results.

This presentation will address applicable analytical methods, performance indicators, and maintenance evaluation concepts based on data available in a typical CMMS. An evaluation guide addressing management prudence and diligence is also provided. This will aid maintenance managers in their strategy development to ensure they will do enough for their organization to succeed.

11:00 am - 11:45 am Learning Zone Session

In a recent survey of maintenance professionals, 75% of respondents wanted more from their CMMS system and 85% viewed their CMMS as very important or critical.  These figures reflect a broad sentiment that a CMMS can and should deliver more.  In this presentation, This session will demonstrate an approach to capturing huge business benefits from a CMMS revitalization effort.  Ken Bass will review revitalization from the perspective of a failure-modes-based maintenance strategy, covering the foundational data, skills and work processes needed to get the most from your CMMS.  Ken will also review the CMMS’ central role in a process of continuous maintenance process development, providing rich data to support RCM and RCFA and a platform for executing the work required from RCM and FMEA analyses.

11:45 am  – 1:00 pm Lunch and Expo

12:45 pm  – 1:15 pm Technical and Commercial Innovations Sessions

Condition-Based Maintenance Continuous Improvement by Howard W. Penrose, Ph.D., CMRP

The Maintenance Effectiveness Review (MER), is a process that has been utilized by the US Military for many years.  The process is used to periodically follow up on planned maintenance and implemented RCM processes to ensure that the resulting maintenance is appropriate and effective.  In this presentation, we will cover the basic principles of the MER process using Backfit RCM and how it can be applied in commercial-industrial reliability and maintenance programs for continuous improvement.

How RCM Is Influencing the Next Generation of Space Vehicles - Nick Jize 

Predictive and condition based technologies will be increasingly relied upon to make the next generation of space vehicles more reliable and cost effective. On-line condition monitoring and reliability-centered operations are also key to the development of these vehicles. Additional tools such as Model Based Reasoners, Discrete Event Simulators, Design for Testability, and others are being used to assess real-time system performance and compare conditions to those being predicted by simulations and baseline conditions. Sensor results are then used to compare actual data to model simulations. Anomalies are presented to the user with the most likely causes and a menu driven path to recovery. As recovery steps are taken, the simulation tools reassess if the initial diagnosis is correct and thereby continue or revise the recovery process.

RCM is used to prioritize how and where to insert diagnostic and predictive technologies. Functional based assessment using the 7-step classical RCM process direct the design team priorities and helps them optimally apply the technology.

This session will explore how these future looking technologies can be applied towards improving your plant performance today.

1:30 pm – 3:00 pm Short Course

While, knowledge of what has been experienced historically is useful, it is not an absolute predictor of the future. In fact, failure databases can mislead even well meaning maintenance practitioners, if used inappropriately.

This short course will attempt to illuminate a pathway so departments and individuals charged with establishing cost-effective maintenance programs can avoid the dangerously seductive traps set by what they think they see in failure databases, a simple answer to a perfect PM program.

This short course provides an overview of how to use the RCM Scorecard that was developed by participants at RCM-2005. The RCM Scorecard provides RCM users, participants & other interested parties with a “shopping list” from which metrics may be selected to help determine:

1) Whether or not to do RCM on a given system

2) Progress during analysis & implementation and to demonstrate how successful a given RCM Project is while it is in progress & during the period afterwards when benefits are realized

3) How successful project was in adjusting a maintenance program for a system after completion

4) Provide managers, supervisors or “champions” with a tool to measure:
* RCM project progress on a given asset or set of assets during analysis and implementation phases of an RCM Project

* Benefits derived from the RCM Project during and after it is complete

Provide anyone with a basis for comparison of differing approaches to RCM methodology

Full copies of the RCM Scorecard document will be provided in printed and digital versions

Let us share our MP2/industry knowledge with you.  We’ll show you how to make MP2 work for you, not visa versa.  During this course, the following subjects will be covered:

MP2 Reports and Graphs - Quickly and easily generate reports and graphs to reveal equipment costs, inventory value, and the type of work performed throughout the plant over a certain time period.  Learn how MP2 reporting and graphs supplies you and your company with the information needed for better decision making, resulting in minimized maintenance costs and maximized operating efficiency. 

MP2 Inventory module - Inventory control is a daunting task for many companies.  Learn techniques to simplify inventory control, such as auto-generating requisitions for parts and controlling parts with the use of a barcode solution.    

MP2 Work Order module - Create more meaningful equipment history by incorporating failure analysis when updating work orders.   

MP2’s Statistical Predictive Maintenance (SPM) module - Store and analyze predictive maintenance data.  Failures should be predicted and prevented, not fixed or reacted to. 

MP2’s Task module - Generate work orders based on usage rather than time.  Usage is tracked by performing regular meter readings, triggering PM’s at regularly scheduled intervals.  Why PM equipment that hasn’t been running?

MP2 Attachments - Learn the value of attaching multimedia files such as drawings, documents, and/or videos to equipment records, inventory records, tasks, and work orders to share knowledge within your plant and with new hires. 

Join us in unleashing the many capabilities of MP2.

This short course is intended to help anyone who is involved with organizing, planning, or executing shutdown work at a facility.  The topics which will be discussed are the five phases of a planned outage: Preliminary Shutdown preparation, Final Shutdown preparation, Execution of the shutdown, Commissioning, Start-up and Closure. Discussion will include the key components, roles, expectations, skills required and ownership of each phase. 

One of the most important aspects is the commissioning phase which is where the transition of ownership of the equipment is turned over from the shutdown coordinator to operations for production.  Most of the phases listed can be executed from the technical side by applying good project management practices.  Commissioning is the exception.

Commissioning phase should be approached from our customer view point because this is where the baton is passed and just like a winning relay team the critical moment is when one hand lets go and other closes. The functionality of good shutdown management is good start-up management with both being dependent on experience, organization, focus and leadership.  

3:00 pm - 3:15 pm Reliabilityweb.com Alienware Laptop, NASCAR^® Style Jacket and Apple iPod Giveaway - every attendee will have a chance to win a an Alienware Laptop, a customer designed Reliabilityweb.com NASCAR Style Jacket grand prize, RCM-2007 Conference pass 3rd prize and an Apple iPod^® as 4th prize.