Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast

Chris Williams, the Executive Director of the Voluntary Protection Programs Participants’ Association (VPPPA), shares his expertise on workplace safety. He previews the Safety+ Symposium, emphasizing its role in modern safety practices. Listeners learn about the rigorous path to achieving VPP certification and the continuous improvement necessary to maintain it. The discussion highlights immersive learning experiences at the symposium, including sessions on AI in safety and hands-on visits to companies, making it a must-attend event for safety professionals.

In this sponsored episode of Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast, Thomas Wilk, chief editor of Plant Services, is joined by Maureen Gribble, North American sales enablement leader for UE Systems, and John Gould, director for global business development for condition monitoring at Flir. Ultrasound and infrared thermography tools are increasingly used together by maintenance teams that want to get a fuller picture of asset health. In this podcast episode, sponsored by UE Systems, Tom talks with Maureen and John about the ways these tools are being used in the field, including hybrid tools like acoustic imagers, as well as what the future hold for the partnership between Flir and UE Systems.

Fluid sealing is critical to the safe, reliable, and efficient operation of industrial equipment across industries like oil and gas, petrochemical, power generation, and manufacturing. In this podcast, we’ll explore how fluid sealing practices have evolved to meet modern demands for environmental compliance, equipment longevity, and cost-effectiveness. We’ll discuss the latest material advancements, emission-reduction technologies, and digital monitoring tools that are reshaping the landscape. Listeners will gain insights into how companies are balancing traditional reliability practices with the push for sustainable solutions, such as low-emission mechanical seals, advanced gaskets, and innovative air seal designs. We'll also touch on common challenges end users face today — from supply chain constraints to skills gaps — and how industry leaders are adapting their approaches. Whether you're an engineer, maintenance manager, or reliability professional, this episode offers a practical look at the future of fluid sealing.

Cam Mackey, president & CEO of the International Safety Equipment Association (ISEA), explains why every heat-related death in the workplace is preventable, and offers some tips on how to best protect workers from heat stress.    https://www.osha.gov/emergency-preparedness/guides/heat-stress

The Eastern half of the United States is experiencing record high temperatures. It's summer and all, so some heat is to be expected, but that doesn't make it any easier for the workers in factories or the people trying to maintain the national power grid. Discussing worker safety and power availability in the hot summer are: Dave Blanchard, editor-in-chief of EHS Today Robert Schoenberger, editor-in-chief of IndustryWeek Jeff Postelwait, managing editor of T&D World We discussed how to spot signs of heat stress and how the nation's obsession with ChatGPT may lead to blackouts.

The company’s chief engineer and transformation leader Bradly Walker joins Smart Industry’s Scott Achelpohl and IndustryWeek’s Dennis Scimeca to chat about Texas Pride’s technology renaissance and how it’s helped the manufacturer evolve its sales, warranty, and production processes from legacy Excel spreadsheets and paper-based systems.

In this episode of Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast, Thomas Wilk, chief editor of Plant Services, is joined by Brian Hronchek, principal trainer and consultant with Eruditio, to discuss a topic in the air these days: PM optimization. These efforts start with the question, “What is the outcome that you want?” And that outcome is for the seasoned technician and the new technician to be able to return exactly the same results when they do the same inspection on a mechanical asset. Key takeaways PM optimization starts with clear goals: inspections should yield identical results from both seasoned and new technicians. Many PMs lack value—use metrics like PM/PdM yield to identify and improve or eliminate ineffective tasks. Aligning maintenance with planning and scheduling reduces downtime and prevents reactive repair chaos. Trimming bloated PMs and focusing on useful inspections can boost uptime, cut stress, and streamline production.

John Dony, CEO and co-founder of What Works Institute, explains why policies, procedures and other accommodations for neurodivergent workers can make work safer for everyone. 

Large language model (LLM) AIs have captured the world's attention with their ability to interpret plain-language and convert simple queries into machine language. But, the big advances in manufacturing design and execution are going to rely on updated hardware, says Deb Golden, chief innovation officer at Deloitte.  At Siemens recent Realize Live event in Detroit, Golden sat down with IndustryWeek Editor-in-Chief Robert Schoenberger to talk about where companies can leverage manufacturing technologies to gain an edge. And at just about every turn, the conversation returned to hardware.  AI is giving companies a better view of their operations? “We’re in such a rush to make humans think better, faster, quicker. The only way we could do that is with compute time and space,” Golden said. “We have to know the health of the actual hardware that [manufacturing processes are] operating on. I don’t care where that [compute] hardware is, if it’s sitting on prem, if it’s sitting in the cloud, if it’s sitting literally in outer space on the satellite.”

Joe Kuhn, CMRP, former plant manager, engineer, and global reliability consultant, is now president of Lean Driven Reliability LLC. He is the author of the book “Zero to Hero: How to Jumpstart Your Reliability Journey Given Today’s Business Challenges” and the creator of the Joe Kuhn YouTube Channel, which offers content on starting your reliability journey and achieving financial independence. In our monthly podcast miniseries, Ask a Plant Manager, Joe considers a commonplace scenario facing the industry and offers his advice, as well as actions that you can take to get on track tomorrow. This episode explains why running time-based and condition-based maintenance in parallel is a costly mistake. Key takeaways Condition monitoring won't be perfect at first—expect a learning curve and commit for long-term gains. Avoid running time-based and condition-based maintenance systems together—it wastes resources. Pair condition monitoring with root cause analysis to drive real business impact. Protect condition monitoring resources from daily disruptions—require plant manager approval to reassign.