Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast

The Society for Maintenance & Reliability Professionals (SMRP) is a nonprofit professional society formed by practitioners to develop and promote excellence in maintenance, reliability, and physical asset management while creating leaders in the profession. With over 6,250 members worldwide, SMRP provides value for individual practitioners and professionals looking to expand their knowledge and skills and build more business connections with others. The SMRP Annual Conference is a maintenance and reliability event that brings together more than 1,000 attendees from all over the world. The conference also provides professional development, networking and tour opportunities. Thomas Wilk recently spoke with Adrian Messer, leader of strategic accounts for UE Systems, about what to expect at this year's SMRP Conference in St. Louis.

Per Hong is a partner at Kearney focused on Strategic Operations, and the lead partner for the company’s relationship with the World Economic Forum relationship. He has a 25-year career working with clients across a range of industries to mitigate disruption in their global supply chains and help them build long-term strategic advantage. In July, Kearney and the World Economic Forum released a report titled “The Resiliency Compass, Navigating Global Value Chain Disruption in an Age of Uncertainty”, and he spoke with Editor in Chief Thomas Wilk about some of the key findings.

With an expected 2.1 million unfilled U.S. manufacturing jobs by 2030, resulting in a potential negative impact to the economy of more than $1 trillion, the industry’s ability to attract and retain younger workers is an urgent issue. All eyes are on Generation Z, the generation of young adults who are just starting to make an impact in the workplace. What might attract them to industrial jobs? What motivates them? And what might make them stay? A research study of 1,000 U.S. respondents aged 18-24 was conducted in June by Parsable, and found that the COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on Gen Z’s perception of manufacturing. For example, more than half of respondents (54%) said they had not considered frontline manufacturing as a potential career before the pandemic; of those, 24% are now open to exploring it. Lawrence Whittle is the CEO of Parsable, and has been extensively involved in the manufacturing technology space throughout his 25-year career. Plant Services spoke with Whittle about findings from the Parsable study, and his thoughts on generational attitudes toward industry.

Based on research conducted this year by Plant Services, it is still a challenge for industrial facilities to recruit skilled workers, although it is getting somewhat easier to retain people once they come on board. Chris Pepin is the founder of Progressive Reliability, a company dedicated to decreasing turnover and simplifying the hiring process. Chris and the Progressive Reliability team specialize in recruiting direct hires, contract experts, and subject matter experts in the maintenance and reliability space. Their approach is to focus the majority of the vetting process on intangible and untrainable traits, ensuring that the right candidates are paired with the right opportunities, eliminating the noise and frustrations that stem from poorly matched talent. Plant Services recently spoke with Chris on key issues currently facing the industrial workforce, and some of the challenges involved with recruiting maintenance and reliability professionals.

One of the hottest topics on the minds of MRO professionals this past year has been how to add remote asset condition monitoring into their mix of daily maintenance work. Tim White, CMRP, is a Senior Manager at T.A. Cook focused on providing services related to Digital Asset Performance Management. Previously he worked in the industry as a Global Director for Asset Management, responsible for 83 sites across the globe. Plant Services Chief Editor Thomas Wilk had the opportunity to ask White for his thoughts on the renewed industry focus on condition monitoring and digitalization.

Most plant managers and operators know they need clean, dry compressed air at the point of use at the required pressure to avoid scrap rates and production equipment downtime. But do they know how much is enough? In this episode of The Hidden Costs of Compressed Air series, speakers Justin Aycock and Neil Mehltretter discuss how the problems of over treating air and running at unnecessarily high pressures are usually overlooked, and how to find the right balance. The discussion includes how piping and storage can affect the different dimensions of air quality.

As the world seemingly shut down due to COVID-19, the teams at Eruditio, Fluke Reliability, RDI Technologies, and UE Systems came together to develop ways to continue to connect, engage and educate the reliability community. What started as a series of webinars quickly morphed into a larger initiative and thus the inaugural Leading Reliability Virtual Conference was created. Now, the Leading Reliability team is thrilled to announce a live and in-person conference happening August 25-26 in Clearwater Beach, Florida. This conference will bring together reliability professionals from around the globe to discuss best practices in asset availability, reliability, safety, quality, and maintenance. Thomas Wilk recently spoke with Maureen Gribble, Greg Perry, Shon Isenhour, and Jeff Hay from the Leading Reliability team to discuss the upcoming event, including session topics and technological advances that will be showcased at the conference. Agenda, speaker, and registration information is available at www.leadingreliability.com.

Manufacturing is currently moving out of the time of COVID crisis, and many plants report that they are increasing their digital/automation budgets. Kevin Starr works in the digital service space within ABB for North America and, in particular, the process industries component, and has been involved with every step of service and reliability for the past 34 years. Plant Services Chief Editor Thomas Wilk had the chance to talk with Kevin recently about the digital changes currently taking place in industry, and the extent to which they are being driven by COVID considerations.

Kevin Price is technical product evangelist and product strategist at Infor, a global company that provides enterprise software products for every aspect of business. In these roles, Kevin is globally responsible for product strategy functions for the Infor EAM, Infor MP2, iProcure, and Energy Performance Management product families. He also is a longtime contributor to Plant Services, having written several articles and presented on many of our webinars. Thomas Wilk recently spoke with Kevin on how maintenance conversations are evolving from enterprise asset management (EAM) to asset performance management (APM), and why reliability is taking on new urgency in our current post-crisis moment.

Operation New Uniform, founded in 2014, has established itself as a trendsetter in the veteran service organization space. The mission of the organization is to ensure all U.S. Veterans have a successful transition after service by treating each Veteran as an individual, serving as many Veterans as possible without reducing quality, and meticulously tracking the results and successes of our Veterans. Plant Services editors Thomas Wilk and Anna Townshend recently had the chance to talk with co-founder and executive director Michele McManamon and Dr. Kim Bynum, ONU’s director of Veteran training and transition, about what it takes to graduate more than 350 alums from the program, and the skill sets possessed by Veterans that impress employers in industry.