Workshops

Maximize the value of your conference experience by attending one of the workshops at the 16th Annual SMRP Conference. There will be several 1-day workshops on Thursday (October 23).  Each workshop takes place from 8:00 am – 5:00 pm and costs $300.00 per person which includes breakfast, lunch, refreshments, and course materials. Plant tours and workshops on Thursday run simultaneously. 

Workshop 1 - Business and Finance for Maintenance and Reliability Professionals
Presenter: Dane Brooks, MRG

Often we are asked to develop Reliability programs with the seemingly contradictory environment of continual downward pressure on budgets. This environment appears to limit the ability to initiate and execute larger well-engineered Reliability programs due to their upfront implementation costs. However, this appearance is often simply the manifestation of a more controlled financial environment which requires a different process for program approval. In the competitive times we are in, corporations are prudently instituting tighter control over capital and operating expenses, thus requiring greater scrutiny over financial requests. Bottom line, a company wants to see bottom line results for any and all investments! As a shareholder, this is welcome news. As a Maintenance or Engineering Professional (MEP), this is simply another level of effort we must accept.

This workshop is designed to give the non-financial professional the basic tools to build a business case that financial professionals will understand and accept.

Workshop 2 - KPI’s for Managing Maintenance
Presenter: Terry Wireman, Vesta Partners, LLC

In the past, maintenance has frequently been viewed as a necessary expense and something of a non-value added function. In today’s competitive business climate, companies are being forced to seek every conceivable advantage to succeed by implementing quality improvement initiatives, empowering work teams, reorganizing internally, contracting out work, optimizing assets, etc.

To date, few companies have been able to effectively manage maintenance primarily due to the lack of proper measurement and control systems for the maintenance function. Since the maintenance department and staff have a significant impact on the condition and, ultimately, on the capacity of costly manufacturing machinery and other capitalized assets, such as furnaces and ventilation systems, there is a need to find the best method of effectively and efficiently managing maintenance.

This workshop will explore over 100 common KPI’s for managing maintenance. KPI’s used for strategic and tactical managing will be evaluated on the basis of examining maintenance as a business. Formulas for establishing indicators for managing maintenance daily, weekly, monthly, and annually will be presented and detailed.

In addition, how to identify problems will be highlighted by using the indicators, and typical solutions for the uncovered problems will be discussed. All attendees will leave with an enhanced understanding of developing performance measures and ways of applying them at their plant or facility.

Workshop 3 - Weibull Engineering Introduction
Presenter: Wes Fulton, Fulton Findings LLC

The Weibull Engineering Introduction is a 1-day session covering the most important parts of the Student Handbook and SuperSMITH™ STUDENT software. This is a must-see workshop for reliability, quality, maintainability, supportability, and associated management personnel. The presenter, either Wes Fulton or Dr. Abernethy, will provide all basics necessary to become familiar with probability plot generation and interpretation.Each student will receive Dr. Abernethy’s Student version of his popular Weibull Handbook.

Reliability & Statistical Analysis for Predicting Life, Safety, Failures, and Test Substantiation
by Dr. Robert B. Abernethy. Topics covered include:

1. An overview of life data analysis
2. The statistics of Weibull analysis
3. How to make Weibull plots, step-by-step
4. Median Rank Plotting Positions and regressions solutions
5. Interpretation of Weibull plot patterns
6. Interpreting the Weibull parameters
7. Goodness of fit
8. How to make Weibull Probability Paper
9. Censored or suspended data
10. Three-parameter Weibulls for origin shifts
11. Forecasting failures in future months and years
12. Weibayes, the one parameter Weibull, for improved accuracy
13. Test substantiation of new products with minimum cost
14. Confidence intervals to measure the statistical uncertainties
15. Case studies illustrating all of the above

WinSMITH™ Weibull Student’s software (WSWS) is included to reduce the drudgery of hand calculations and produce probability plots for the most useful distributions. It is similarly extracted from the SuperSMITH™ FULL software package by Wes Fulton. A PowerPoint presentation on the CD introduces the software features with case studies.

1. Median Rank Regression and Maximum Likelihood Solutions
2. Probability Plots for Weibull 1, 2 and 3 parameter solutions
3. Probability Plots for Normal, Log Normal and Gumbel Extreme Value Solutions
4. Up to 60 failures and/or suspensions
5. Monte Carlo Sampling from the distributions listed above using either random or precise sampling
6. Confidence Intervals based on the Beta-Binomial solution
7. Weibayes analysis (1 parameter Weibull)
8. Failure forecasting for months and years into the future.
9. The Analysis Report option listing exact values from the plot line and confidence bounds as well as goodness of fit metrics and confidence bounds for parameters. See below.

Workshop 4 - Maintenance Planning and Scheduling
Presenter: R. D. (Doc) Palmer, PE, MBA, CMRP (Author of McGraw-Hill's Maintenance Planning and Scheduling Handbook)

Maintenance planning and scheduling should dramatically improve the productivity of maintenance. For example, a group of 30 maintenance technicians should be performing the work of 47 persons when aided by a single planner. Yet most maintenance organizations do not have a planning function and most that do are frustrated. The author of McGraw-Hill's Maintenance Planning and Scheduling Handbook, Doc Palmer, reviews the fundamentals and then leads class exercises to illustrate the principles and techniques to achieve success. This workshop not only covers the theory and vision, but the nuts and bolts of how planning and scheduling works. This workshop allows class participants to take specific practices home to their own organizations. Participants should be able to implement a new planning organization or dramatically improve an existing planning organization.

Workshop 5 – Keys to Success in Moving from Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS) to SAP
Presenters: Kahn Ellis & Ben Mansi, Management Resources Group, Inc.

The workshop will focus how to successfully move from a local plant level Computerized Maintenance Management software to a large multi plant system like SAP for Enterprise Asset Management. The morning session will focus more on general keys to success in implementing a large enterprise system. We will discuss things like effective master data, maintenance organization, clearly defined roles, spare parts records, etc. The focus will be how to think differently in implementing a true enterprise system and not just a local plant system. The afternoon will focus specifically on SAP as a system and specific things that need to be considered with SAP. Kahn will share his experiences from multiple clients on things that work well in implementing SAP and things that can put a project at risk. The workshop will discuss keys to success in implementing a fully integrated system such as SAP. The afternoon will get into areas such as notification and order types, functional location structures, activity types, priority codes, and other areas to focus on to succeed with using SAP for maintenance management.

Workshop 6 – Project Management Essentials
Presenters: Catherine Jorgenson and Bob Kazar, Owens Corning

Knowledge of Project Management standards and processes is critical to successful project execution. Many projects fail to deliver in part or entirely against the intended scope due to poor Project Management (PM). As a result, Project Management has become a critical profession that is growing in demand very rapidly throughout all business sectors both in the United States and internationally. Similar to SMRP the Project Management Institute (PMI®) was founded on essential PM knowledge areas. The Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK®) and Professional Certification has become the recognized level of qualified achievement in the field of PM. PMI® has over 260,000 professionals in 171 countries and the Project Management Professional (PMP®) certification process received ISO 17024 accreditation.

Like SMRP, PMI® is founded upon the disciplined application of essential basic components. Therefore the workshop is based upon the PMBOK® as set forth by PMI®. This workshop is designed for the individual who is tasked with leading small or mid sized projects. The goal of the workshop is to build a foundation of understanding and execution of the phases as well as the elements of solid Project Management techniques. This knowledge is critical to the success of any project. The five phases of PM are Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring-Controlling, and Closing. Management functions of PM include; Integration, Scope, Time, Cost, Quality, Human Resource, Communications, Risk and Procurement Management. The workshop will utilize Reliability and Maintenance Project examples while addressing the five phases of PM and the management functions.