Workplace Safety Awareness Council Blog

In the past I've quoted or mentioned my good friend Joel Leonard over at SkillTV (www.SkillTV.net). He's known in certain circles as the "Maintenance Evangelist" and he really does get out there and "preach the good word" about maintenance and reliability.

Well Joel has created a new article entitled: The Ten Commandments for Todays Reliability Pros, and since we have so many plant maintenance folks onboard and maintenance and reliability have a direct impact of a safe workplace, I'd thought I'd share his article in ten commandments style! Good stuff Mr. Leonard - good stuff indeed. . .


With the rash of recent headline disasters traced back to maintenance and operational functions, don’t we need to elevate our reliability performance standards? From rail track sensors sending faulty signals in DC causing two trains to collide, killing and injuring several passengers; to an explosion at a meat processing plant traced to contractors venting natural gas, killing 3 and injuring dozens; and even an ammonia leak burning a workers lungs inside out at a chicken processing plant, shouldn’t we respond?

As companies are cutting corners to save money short-term, as we transition to new workers while baby boomer generation retires, and as we implement more and more sophisticated equipment, our challenges are steep and perhaps are at biblical proportions.

These results are purposely not etched in stone to provide flexibility to adjust to the continual changes in advanced technology and new strategies. However these should serve as a guide to help current and future reliability pros garner more support and understanding from executive and operational leaders.

• Thou shalt make Maintenance & Reliability a profit contributor for the collective good of the entire company.
• Thou shalt know the critical equipment whose products delight customers while keeping the land, air and water clean and pure.
• Thou shalt schedule moments of rest and repair for the critical equipment.
• Thou shalt maintain the critical equipment to appease the spirits of Quality and Operations.
• Thou shall not falsely worship reactive maintenance or implement fix it when it breaks mentalities.
• Thou shall not covet maintenance that serves no useful purpose.
• Thou shall not steal uptime away from production in times of upheaval and crisis.
• Thou shall not take the life of equipment with poor practices.
• Thou shall not place false equipment history in the asset bible (CMMS).
• Thou shallt convince top execs that reliability and maintenance is to be supported not just managed.
• Thou shalt not wait until tomorrow to document your work, for it shall never get done
• Thou shalt not assume anything when investigating a failure, lest you overlook important details
• Thou shalt not allow emotions to determine the focus of your work, instead sort by criticality
• Thou shall not allow anyone to misuse the good name of Maintenance in vain and blame it for the shortcomings of the organization as a whole. Respect maintenance, it is critical to the success of any organization and should not be seen as just an overhead or cost center.
• The stores are a holy sanctity, thou shall respect them and keep them full, use suppliers to consign the stock where possible to reduce cost and Develop relationships with key suppliers, treat them as your partners.
• Thou shall respect thy skilled tradesmen, do not allow your trades to die, train well the young and develop the old in modern techniques.
• Thou shall not covet another’s processes, take time to review and benchmark then adopt the best bits. Remember the basics, sometimes good people and good tools are all you really need.

Oh, you may have noticed that there are actually 18 listed above. The responses were so good that could not shrink to ten. And after-all, since I don’t have to lug huge stone carved tablets down a mountain, why not have more?

Your success largely is dependent on your ability to create solutions, manage performance and develop miracles to achieve profits in a down economy, meanwhile keeping your business environment safe. Since you have god-like responsibilities, you choose which commandments to follow. Now it is your turn to add, change or delete to advance your organization.

P.S. If you like the article, give Joel a shout at Joel@SkillTV.net - tell him we sent you!

Labels: Joel Leonard, Maintenance, reliability, Safety, www.SkillTV.net