now part of the last chapter of this book.
It has been a great honor to work closely with my editor Judy Bass at Industrial Press and compositor Patricia (Patty) Wallenburg at TypeWriting to make a collection of success stories and maintenance processes into the final version of The Maintenance Insanity Cure and make my dream come true. Without your guidance, this book would not have been possible.
Richard Rossow, thank you for graciously agreeing to write the Foreword for my book. I am grateful for your friendship and mentoring.
Special thanks go to Mike Peterson for all his computer knowledge and IT support to make all the files and figures meet the required specifications for all the readers to be able to enjoy and use.
My sincere thanks and appreciation go to Tom Ewing, Mark Bogle, Jeff Davis, Jerry Wilson, Ron Turner, Ron Broadwater, Mike Warner, Doug Brittain, Jeff Lee, and J. T. Pundt for sharing their insights; serving as mentors; testing, applying, and refining these processes; and being there for support as friends always are.
Roger D. Lee grew up in Louisiana but has lived in Texas, Tennessee, and Singapore and traveled all over the world. He has 43 years of experience in the chemical, refining, metals, and contracting industries with a wide variety of clients across the world. He now lives in Hockley, Texas, to be close to his children and grandchildren. He writes to share his experience and observations of life and to better appreciate all of God’s blessings. He is the president and founder of RDL Solutions, LLC., a general consulting firm dedicated to helping any-size plant or company improve efficiency, cost control, productivity, and reliability. He can be contacted at [email protected].
To help you feel better about your present situation, I will share a couple observations to show “what good does not look like”:
Feel better now? Both of these facilities were stuck in the insanity rut.
An example of a success story occurred at a co-polyester chemical plant in Malaysia. After two years of services, the demand for its product was increasing, but the plant’s reliability and work processes prevented it from meeting the new demand level. This example gives you an idea of how bad things can get if the proper start-up training and processes are not adequate to prepare your people for future growth.
We collected basic plant information to define the problems needing to be resolved. We learned that:
An improvement program was developed to achieve the following objectives for this site:
A two-man team completed a site assessment including interviews with all functions to build our presentation to obtain management commitment. Plant-wide communications were given to share the plan and strategy, including metrics to be tracked. An update schedule was established to monitor success during implementation.
During the first few weeks, we established a Site Leadership Team with a subteam for daily operations and maintenance interactions. New roles and responsibilities were shared for all functions and levels. New work processes that focused on planning and scheduling were rolled out. Expert resources were brought in to identify and resolve reliability problems. A major effort was focused on operator and mechanic skill enhancement. The initial Malaysia apprenticeship program training had been too general in nature for developing the required skills needed. It was a governmental program to train local farmers and fishermen to become industrial operators and mechanics. Subject-matter experts were brought in from similar operating plants in other locations to deliver on-the-job and classroom materials. Troubleshooting
