Executive Perspective: Thank You!

Arthur L. Rice, President

That’s right. I want to thank our loyal readers, contributors and partners for a great run. This issue marks the end of Maintenance Technology’s special year-long 20th Anniversary Celebration. It also marks the beginning of our next 20 successful years of publishing. Projecting our future (and also being a grandfather), I think the words of Buzz Lightyear sum it up best: “To infinity, and beyond…”

Maintenance Technology was founded 20 years ago by a dedicated team of individuals who saw a need to serve maintenance practitioners by promoting Best Practices throughout industry. For the past two decades, that’s exactly what we’ve been doing—delivering the best-read, most-preferred, monthly, independent and audited publication in the market to ever-savvier, increasingly hard-working maintenance and reliability professionals across virtually all industry sectors. Supported by practitioners, industry experts and suppliers who are willing to share their knowledge, skills, experience and technologies/methodologies with you, this powerful, high-quality editorial is now—and always will be—designed to help our readers successfully meet their capacity assurance needs.

Although many things have changed over the past 20 years, Maintenance Technology has stayed the course, never deviating from our primary mission and strategies. We serve our readers. We engage our readers. We listen to our readers. Doing so has led us to grow in some unexpected and exciting ways.

Five years ago, we developed and began presenting Maintenance & Reliability Technology Summit (MARTS) an annual professional development program that has become one of the premier learning and networking events for the maintenance and reliability community. In 2004, we began publishing another standalone magazine, now known as Lubrication Management & Technology, dedicated to improving industrial lubrication programs. More recently, we have begun producing regular quarterly supplements like Utilities Manager and The Fundamentals, focusing, respectively, on energy efficiency and a backto- basics approach to maintenance and reliability. These are just a few of the many things that have helped Maintenance Technology maintain its position as the leading publication in our market. Along with other yet-to-be-determined offerings, they will be among the things that help us grow and better serve you and future generations of maintenance and reliability professionals over the next 20 years.

Because we could not have gotten where we are today without the help of many individuals and organizations, we put a lot of stock in giving something back “to the good of the order.” For example, while building Maintenance Technology into the publication that it is today, we were one of the founding entities of the Society for Maintenance and Reliability Practitioners (SMRP). We also continue to be strongly involved in industry activities such as MER (the Maintenance Excellence Roundtable), NAME/FIME (the North American Maintenance Excellence Award), STLE, ARC, MIMOSA and FSA (the Fluid Sealing Association), among others. We view our participation in these diverse types of initiatives as something that truly helps set a reader-driven publication such as Maintenance Technology ahead of the pack—and that’s a place we always want to be!

It’s been a tremendous 20 years. All of those involved with Maintenance Technology, including past and present staff, contributors, associations, valued advertising partners and you—our loyal readers—deserve my heartfelt appreciation. Again, thank you all! MT