education!! Educate yourself. Knowledge is power!! When you have the knowledge, the skills and the experience you have the power to make the right decisions, if not the right decisions then at the least very educated ones. It seems the Maintenance and Reliability world is driven by vendors or consultants, touting how their way is the best way, sometimes the only way. How do you overcome this bias, educate yourself? Understand the terms. There are several ways. First and foremost, in my belief, is to read. Read everything on the topic you can, this is the most cost effective route today, it doesn’t require the travel and lodging required to get to a conference, it can be done in the comfort of your office or home couch, you can highlight the points that make the most impact on you in the book for future reference. Maintenance and Reliability Best Practices is the best I have read on the most complex of topics you will run across in the maintenance world, with some very good points to be reckoned with. There are a multitude of magazines with many articles, with tons of links to supporting material.
Second, there are a ton of good blogs on the web on this topic (set up your own web page to capture the important ones, so when you log on during the day there they are with the latest updates, this was pointed out to me and it works). Third, attend webinars, they are usually free and are put on by vendors or are supported by vendors to promote their product, but there are kernels of information in all of them, again you can stay at home, spend your hour or so listening, again cost effective rules the day. Four, attend a conference, there is nothing like the interaction with the practitioners who are so desperately looking for the magic that will make their program work, forgetting they are the magic. Meeting others struggling to make it happen is the most invigorating thing out there, many friendships will be struck and a ton of e-mail will follow. Good luck with your program. Geoff Generalovic has been a maintenance electrician for 37 years. He has implemented and improved a PdM program in a major steel mill’s Hot Mill and now applies the techniques learned there all over the local plant’s business units.