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Session Overviews

Tuesday, May 6, 2025 

Leadership is necessary to fully utilize all five pillars of the SMRP body of knowledge. It is important to understand that leadership is not something that can be trained but must be developed. The development of leaders can only be accomplished through mentorship. Leadership is as much of a hard skill as any journeyman-level skill, and true leaders apprentice under skilled professionals. There are four aspects of successful leadership: ownership, transformational, authentic, and strategic. Each of these requires the others to achieve the desired results. There is no shortcut, and no one is born a leader. To lead, you must have followers, and following is a voluntary activity. In this session, we will discuss the basics of leadership. Leadership is rooted in ownership. Every day, we are tasked with making decisions, and with each decision, we must choose whether to respond as a victim or as an owner. This workshop helps you identify the difference. We alter our destiny by altering our thoughts, and it all starts here. While we cannot always control what happens to us, we can always control how we respond. Owners take charge of the outcome. The most researched and widely used leadership measurement tool today is the Full Range Leadership Model. Within this model, we identify seven different leadership styles and explore how we can drive success by employing some or all of them. The three major categories of leadership are laissez-faire, transactional, and transformational. While most of us aspire to be transformational leaders, many of us operate in a transactional manner. This presentation will help you understand the different leadership styles and, depending on your goals, guide you on how to transition to your desired leadership style.

A reliable maintenance program that effectively identifies potential failures is essential for maximizing availability and maintaining a competitive edge. Preventive Maintenance Optimization (PMO) is a proven method for achieving this, enabling a transition from reactive approaches to proactive, structured maintenance strategies. This workshop offers a deep dive into PM optimization, guiding participants through a step-by-step methodology to enhance maintenance programs with detailed, failure-mode-based tasks. Participants will learn how to identify and address failure modes more effectively, eliminate non-value-added activities, and close gaps in failure mode coverage. The workshop focuses on practical strategies for improving reliability and limiting risks by implementing the right task, at the right time, performed by the right person, and executed in the right way. Using real-world examples and encouraging attendees to practice on their laptops or tablets using a dedicated PMO SaaS platform, this workshop equips participants with the tools and insights needed to understand the value of PM optimization and implement it effectively within their preventive maintenance programs.

A routine machine lubrication service plan is critical for optimizing mechanical reliability, but it requires careful planning and execution to be effective. Unfortunately, the process of creating such a plan is often met with ambiguity, and engineers may struggle to develop a robust and accurate lubrication work plan. Mike Johnson will provide a roadmap for engineers to build an efficient, accurate, and timely machine lubrication service plan. The presentation will begin by discussing the importance of machine lubrication and its impact on reliability. It will then outline the key elements of a reliability-enhancing lubrication work plan. From understanding equipment lubrication needs to selecting the appropriate lubricants and establishing a routine maintenance schedule, this presentation will offer a comprehensive guide to building a successful lubrication service plan.

Improving reliability at a plant can be a daunting task. In some instances, the fear of past attempts at improvement keeps us in a state of paralysis, where the status quo of unreliability is more acceptable than another failed attempt. In other instances, it’s simply a case of not knowing how or where to start. We know you’re ready to make the commitment to improving your plant’s reliability. Commitment is one of the key components of a successful reliability improvement initiative. Another important element of success is clarity. Without clarity and commitment, your improvement initiative will ultimately fail. This workshop was presented by Tor Idhammar in 2020 at the Annual Conference and was very well attended and rated.

Wednesday, May 7, 2025

Keynote Speaker: to be announced

Doc Palmer will illustrate that hidden opportunities abound that we can seize to our advantage.

Gaining alignment and obtaining approval for your reliability efforts can sometimes be difficult. This talk explores strategic approaches which improve your chances of success.

This presentation will focus on the importance of accountability and leadership capability within organizations. It will address the costs associated with turnover, absenteeism, and grievances, highlighting their impact on productivity and morale. The session will introduce the Organizational Reliability Model™ and the Productive Leadership Model™, providing frameworks for defining accountabilities and developing leadership skills. Attendees will engage in practical exercises and learn methods for delivering feedback and counseling - key strategies for building a reliable and effective leadership pipeline.

Do you struggle with driving results within your Root Cause Analysis program? In this session, we will look at the four things required to build a successful Root Cause Analysis program. We will dive into 10 tools in less than 10 minutes that can create a step change in your understanding of the problems. We will even talk about when to use which tool. You will leave with a better understanding of the problems you are having with RCA in your facility and will have an introduction to the tools you need to finally solve them.

Follow our case study of a rotary fill machine that struggled to reach design rates for 10 years and now achieves over 85% OEE. Our client tried everything, including OEM six-month visits, but continued to struggle. We will take a deep dive into understanding what creates unreliability, how to identify opportunities, how to train people in critical thinking, and how to eliminate losses and improve OEE. The improvements implemented on this machine added $3MM per year to the company’s bottom line.

When prompted, most senior executives will insist that asset and process safety data are valuable corporate assets. All evidence points to the contrary, however. Companies report and monitor many KPIs across Finance and Operations, yet few, if any, involve monitoring the quality of the organization’s asset and process safety information and how it supports effective decision-making. Since many of these companies have reliability and maintenance (M&R) programs that rely on this data, it is unsurprising that when these programs fail, root cause analysis often reveals ineffective performance measurement due to unstable or incomplete asset data foundations. The goal of this workshop is to address this common lack of metrics in asset data quality. In an interactive setting, participants will explore how most mature performance metrics focus on the work execution process, causing latent risk to go undetected because the underlying asset information quality is lacking. We will share a methodology to link a performance measurement framework to the life cycle of physical assets. A register of practical quality and performance metrics will be produced with input from workshop participants. Participants will learn from peer subject-matter experts and have an opportunity to share their own successes and challenges in measuring asset performance.

How to Retain an Effective Operational Excellence Culture Organizations devote significant attention and resources to developing a proactive culture that drives excellence in manufacturing through asset utilization and OEE improvement. However, far too often, effectiveness—and even best practices—are lost when organizational priorities shift and management changes. In this deep dive, we will explore strategies you can implement now to help sustain excellent practices and results through the inevitable but unforeseen changes that lie ahead for your organization.

In my career, I’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly impact that leadership has had on product Quality, Reliability, and Robustness (Q, R&R) and Maintenance Reliability (MR). In fact, leadership has more of an impact on Q, R&R, and MR than any analysis, experimentation, or testing that engineering, quality, or maintenance reliability could conduct. Leadership impacts the personnel, management, team dynamics, prioritization, and excitement of Q, R&R, and MR tool use. In this session, I’ll walk through key methods to engage your leadership and teams towards improving product Q, R&R, and positively impacting your MR programs, including: 4 Key elements for organizational engagement towards Q, R&R, and MR step improvement How impactful tool use can be “Lightning in a Bottle,” stirring excitement and future tool use Leading your leadership through Visual Management and Power Analytics Mr. Martz supports his presentations with examples from his 35 years as a reliability engineering leader, leading corporate Q, R&R initiatives, and helping companies engage their organizations for Q, R&R, and MR via his consultancy, ASQR&R. Mr. Martz is also an Amazon Best-Selling Author in the corporate leadership space.

In today’s fast-evolving industrial landscape, organizations face growing pressure to enhance asset reliability while minimizing costs and operational risks. This session explores key global trends reshaping the field of reliability, from the integration of data across enterprise systems to the consolidation of software point solutions. Participants will gain insights into the shift from preventive to predictive maintenance and the strategic benefits of risk-based maintenance approaches. Additionally, we will examine the transformative role of artificial intelligence (AI) and digital twins in driving smarter decision-making and optimizing asset performance. The session is designed to be interactive, allowing attendees to learn from each other on how to leverage these advancements to build more resilient and data-driven reliability strategies.

A discussion topic for Maintenance and Reliability professionals on capital projects that introduce new assets to a business or manufacturing process, aiming to optimize manufacturing and maintenance costs, MTTR, MTBF, as well as safety and quality

Thursday, May 8, 2025: 4 Hands-On Workshops

Modern planning philosophy suggests that a planner must outline all the steps for the craftsperson and kit all the necessary parts. But what does "all" truly mean? How do we determine what is "good enough" to effectively plan all the work? How do we factor in the skill level of the craftsperson? Moreover, kitting parts can sometimes become a trap. Similarly, modern scheduling philosophy prioritizes schedule compliance and maintaining a calendar view of who will be where and when. But would simply scheduling fewer work orders lead to perfect schedule compliance? And do we really need to visualize an entire week's schedule in advance? Instead, we should approach planning as a Deming Cycle, embracing imperfect plans while fully loading weekly schedules to counter Parkinson’s Law, even if it means breaking the schedule. Doc Palmer will guide participants in planning an actual work order and creating an actual weekly schedule, addressing these critical issues along the way. Learn how effective planning and scheduling can provide a distinct competitive advantage through superior maintenance strategies.

Regardless of your role in an organization, you are part of a team! But how can you maximize your contribution to help your team succeed? In this engaging and interactive session, participants will discover the key qualities of exceptional team players. Through hands-on activities, real-world scenarios, and collaborative discussions, attendees will learn how to enhance communication, foster collaboration, and drive team success. By the end of this session, participants will be equipped with practical strategies to improve teamwork, increase productivity, and cultivate a positive work environment.

If the Leadership Lags, So Will the Initiative... Join us for this interactive session, where we will explore a leadership process and the 10 elements needed to truly drive a successful reliability improvement effort. What you will enjoy about this session is that we will build examples of many of these elements during the workshop. This will give you a jumpstart if you are ready to get started or help reinvigorate your ongoing implementation efforts. Bring your problems and concerns, and let's build some powerful leadership solutions for your implementation.

In this session you will become part of a team charged with creating a reliability strategy and presenting your strategy to the group. Along the way you will receive guidance on methods to quantify opportunities and how to present those opportunities to gain support for your efforts. This interactive session will be a great learning and networking opportunity.