USPS
The Maintenance Technical Support Center in Norman, Oklahoma, provides field support for over 15,000 pieces of automated equipment located at over 400 United States Postal Service (USPS) facilities. The USPS began implementing Reliability-Centered Maintenance in 2004 to ensure that maintenance programs focused on performing the precise amount of maintenance at the lower practical cost.
The intent is to increase capacity, eliminate equipment breakdowns, and reduce overall costs. This move into a reliability-centered environment has been cumbersome partly due to the change in culture that needs to occur within the organization. MTSC is working with our Engineering counterparts to ensure that reliability concepts are part of the Statement of Work for all new processing equipment. Consequently, much emphasis is being placed on training the Integrated Logistics Support community in reliability concepts.
Other than a select number of vendors that provide week long sessions in reliability, availability, and maintainability, we have no resources that have the background to manage our reliability efforts. We currently have to develop knowledge of asset reliability internally using local and contracted resources. If we could find sources of degreed engineers of all disciplines that already had reliability knowledge or a reliability certificate, we would certainly consider them for new hires.
As reliability becomes more important to our organization, so will the need for trained, qualified reliability engineers.
General Motors
General Motors Corporation; 104 UAW represented North America locations, plus 24 non-UAW North America locations; Approximately 400,000 hourly and 60,000 salaried employees; Automotive products; Major efforts ongoing to purchase machinery and equipment that is both reliable and maintainable so that all M & E will run producing quality components and assemblies at rated speed safely; Working through both the Product as well as the Manufacturing disciplines to assure this, as well as being cost conscious; Multiple reliability professionals developed in-house to work as liaisons with the various disciplines within the corporation; While a "certificate"
program is not of major importance in our company, we would look to educational institutions to provide graduates that have sufficient background in R & M to fill specific job functions. Certified Maintenance and Reliability Professionals (CMRP) would be a consideration in any openings with our corporation.
Cargill
Reliability of equipment and systems has taken the foreground as one of the most crucial aspects to our organization. We create customer solutions by bringing value in products and services. The ability to execute and produce products and services how, when and where the customer wants it is crucial to business. . The company has determined that being able to increase our service dependability has distinguished ourselves in a ever tightening market. If we can make our products when needed, improve first pass quality and decrease the amount of expenditures required then we can increase our market share, product margins and improve share holder equity. . Our company has changed our organizational chart to include positions that reinforce our focus on Reliability and Maintenance of our assets. We have a corporate M&R Center of Excellence that helps business units with any asset integrity issue. We have also created positions at plant site that is the Maintenance & Reliability Manager. These positions are usually degreed engineers that have been sent to special internal curriculum on reliability/maintenance topics. . We currently are having to develop knowledge of Maintenance & Reliability Professionals internally. . If in fact we could find sources of engineers of all disciplines that already had reliability knowledge or a reliability certificate, we would look there first for new hires.
Hormel Food Corporation
Hormel Foods Corporation is a multinational manufacturer and marketer of consumer-branded meat and food products, many of which are among the best known and trusted in the food industry. The company enjoys a strong reputation among consumers, retail grocers, and foodservice and industrial customers for products highly regarded for quality, taste, nutrition, convenience, and value. With more than 15,600 employees, Hormel Foods is owned by approximately 11,200 shareholders of record.
Optimizing the lifetime value of our physical assets is critical to our success. Equipment and process reliability is an important part of this goal. Improving reliability allows us to control expenses while increasing the capacity of our existing physical assets.
In order to achieve our goal of optimizing the lifetime value of our physical assets, we have initiated reliability improvement processes at all of our locations. Included in these improvement processes is a change in culture from reactive maintenance to proactive physical asset care. Proactive physical asset care requires the involvement of all plant employees led by trained and qualified maintenance and reliability professionals. We have modified our organizational structure to include positions assigned full-time to reliability.
Because there are very few university programs that include reliability, we have had to provide the training opportunities required to develop reliability professionals. Individuals applying for positions in engineering or maintenance that have knowledge of reliability and its application in industry will have an advantage over others seeking employment with our company.
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