All Member Open Forum

Team,

I transitioned out of the Army in June and immediately took on reliability leadership for Fiserv's plastic manufacturing site in Nashville. It has been a wild shift. In the military I had a logistics machine that made everything feel easy. Now I'm learning how much of that I took for granted.

I'm enjoying the challenge though. Building vendor relationships, expanding my network, and tightening up inventory, environmental, and tool accountability have been solid wins. I'm also pushing hard to overhaul our PM program so it's more predictive instead of reactive. The part I'm still working on is stepping into bigger strategic responsibilities. I'd love insight from folks who have already walked this path.

If anyone has cheatsheets for hot work, confined space, or working at height, I'd be grateful.

How have you used quality and safety programs to strengthen your reliability efforts?

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Charles Robertson
Technical Engineer Manager
U.S. Army
Clarksville TN
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Hi Charles, I had a similar experience coming from submarines and now appreciate the US Navy Supply Corps for the genius that it is. 

I've no idea what situation you're facing but what got me grounded was:

-admitting to self that someone else might own MRO on the P&L, but I was the only senior manager that really cared about how effective it was and needed to understand and adjust how it worked. I adopted it, at least informally, same like planning and scheduling.  

-walking through parts issue to a work order with my technicians and listening to their pain. In person, at the cage window. 

-walking through parts receipt and reorder with the storeroom techs and listening to their pain. In person, inside the cage. 

-integrating MRO into the work order and outage planning workflow. Insisting that parts be issues to a work order and posting my KPI of this. 

-run, do not walk, to get a copy of "Managing Maintenance Storerooms" by Michael V Brown (an engineer, so not the normal supply chain MBA fluff. It's a small book, but very practical.)

-SMRP Body of Knowledge MRO KPIs: start to use them. Don't overreact at first, just start to observe. Don't get distracted by saving money. Investment will come first.  Make it useful, then efficient. Use your Lean tools. 

-SMRP Conference Proceedings and other library articles: there are great case studies for the interrelationship between MRO practices and reliability: how to store bearings, rotate motors, don't let electronics or polymers age on the shelf, basically "store in a cool, dry place" (also...clean, without vibration). 

-Records of parts issue are the first, most fundamental, cost-conscious step in event analysis if you don't have good failure reports. Even if you have failure reports...check it against what MRO issued. 

-The metal dumpster is the source of truth!

Regards, 

Karl 

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Karl Burnett
Reliability Engineer
Ge VERNOVA
Anderson SC
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