Videos from the Mainstream Conference

One of my favorite conferences is the Mainstream event. The 2017 version was held this past May in Nashville, TN, (mainstreamna.com). “The maintenance, reliability, and asset-management conference for companies that care about people, leadership, innovation, and culture,” is how the Eventful Group organizers describe the conference. What makes the event work is that they hold true to the mission of serving “companies that care about people, leadership, innovation, and culture.”

To help you experience a small bit of what the conference had to offer, I collaborated with the Mainstream people to do video interviews with eight of the speakers who had stories that I found interesting. It was great fun to chat with each of the presenters about their experiences developing reliability cultures at their companies. While each of these interviews is only about 10 min. long, we were generally able to hit the high points and give you some thought-provoking material.

Here’s a little about each of the speakers I interviewed and what we discussed:

nRodney Pervier, of Boeing, Chicago (boeing.com), has responsibility for evaluating what must be done with his company’s many real-estate holdings. His program for collecting and analyzing data and using the Asset Condition Room approach to meeting and communication can be beneficial to anyone.

Cliff Williams, Global Corporate Maintenance Manager, ERCO Worldwide, Yulee, FL (peopleandprocesses.com), discusses using his C.R.E.A.T.E tool to achieve maintenance excellence. CREATE represents communicate, respect, educate, authority, trust, and exercise.

Larry Bryant, Director of Reliability, Domtar Paper Co., Hawesville, KY (domtar.com), discussed his company’s journey to reliability success by involving alignment, training, empowerment, employee pride, and management support.

Mary Jane Van Hoesen, eAM Specialist, Alcoa, Ferndale, WA (alcoa.com), discussed the company’s extensive mobile work-order creation, monitoring, and analysis program, an effort she is spearheading and that is rapidly becoming a difference maker for her organization.

Harvey Henkel, Supervisor Condition Monitoring, TransAlta, Duffield, Alberta, Canada (transalta.com), talked about a journey his team initiated in 2000, focused on building and maintaining a world-class condition-monitoring team. Their efforts, particularly in extending average motor life span, have been a great success. Most important, Henkel discussed what they’ve done to maintain the program.

Brian Ricker, Director of Operations, Martin Operating Partnership, Smackover, AR (martinmlp.com), inherited a quality CMMS, saw the potential, and leveraged it as the backbone of a powerful predictive-maintenance program that has put the company on the right side of reliability and aligned with operational priorities.

Steven Lallensack, Director of Operations, Empire Level, Mukwonago, WI (empirelevel.com), and his team are a tremendous success story of moving from an aged company that received minimal investment to a modern, automated operation that is experiencing rapid growth. Empire’s approach kept people employed, improved reliability, and changed the company’s overall culture. Empire Level was EP’s Plant Profile story in Nov. 2016.

George Parada, CMRP & Maintenance & Reliability Leader, Cargill Salt, Newark, CA (cargill.com), had to deal with the skills gap that affects so many companies. Their solution was to implement the Salt ROME (Reliability, Operations, Maintenance, Engineering) Ops Boot Camp. New employees must complete the camp to ensure that they have the knowledge they need to be effective in Cargill facilities. To date, camp graduates have been instrumental in a 3% to 5% improvement in productivity.

To watch these videos, go to efficientplantmag.com/mainstream2017. I thoroughly enjoyed chatting with these speakers and am confident the conversations will provide ideas and inspiration that help you move your operation forward.