Download the Reliable Plant 2009 Official Program Guide  - [8MB PDF File]

This past Christmas, I received one of the greatest gifts ever from Santa Claus - a global positioning system (GPS). This high-tech navigation tool mounts to the dashboard of my car and serves to guide and instruct me when I’m behind the wheel. It informs me about:

• Where I am
• Where I’m going
• The best way to get there
• The pace at which I’m going
• When I should expect to “get there”
• Resources available along the way
• Past journeys (have I been down this road before?)

By networking with satellites and accessing volumes of files that pertain to my path, it lets me know how to proceed to the next point and raises a red flag when I’ve taken a wrong turn.

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a GPS available to guide and instruct you in your career as a maintenance and reliability professional?

Fortunately for all of us, such a solution is available. It’s the professional conference.
Attending a professional conference – such as Noria Corporation’s RELIABLE PLANT 2009 conference September 1-3 in Columbus, Ohio - does everything that an onboard navigation system does … and then some.

Attending a conference lets you know “where I am.”
Is what you are doing today “good enough”, especially in these economically sensitive times? Is what you are doing today “up to industry expectations”, “better than the plant down the road”, “better than the competition”, “best in class”, “as good as Toyota would do it” or “world class”? Or, is it quite the opposite? How would you know?

On the GPS, “where I am” is easy to spot. It’s the brightly colored digital car image. That’s you.
In the professional world? Well, conferences bring together a multitude of speakers who have a wide range of experiences and insights on the state of their industry. (Industrial professionals from around the world will lead 101 sessions at RELIABLE PLANT 2009; these sessions will be found in five concurrent sub-conferences: Reliability World, Lubrication Excellence, Lean Manufacturing, Plant Energy/Sustainability and Plant Safety.) Through case studies and industry reports, through snapshots and stone-cold data, they give you a true understanding of the real world – the good, the bad and the ugly.

Measure yourself up to the companies featured and referenced in the conference sessions. You will get a clear view of where you, your organization and your company stand today.

Attending a conference lets you know “where I’m going.”
Your boss wants you to play a lead role in reducing organizational costs by (fill in the blank) percent by the end of this year. Your company is expecting an equally challenging (and completely measurable) increase in productivity and performance over the same time period.

What do you do? You can go crazy. You can go beat your head against a wall. Or, you can go to a conference, where – through exposure to a wide range of informational resources – you can get a handle on where you need to go in order to achieve those deliverables.

At RELIABLE PLANT 2009, the conference, exhibition and workshops may very well point you in the direction you need to go. “If I applied lean techniques to my tool cribs, I could identify wasteful/redundant spending and eliminate all that time looking for parts.” “If I could improve safety, I could improve morale, and that would have an impact on productivity and absenteeism.” “If I applied root cause failure analysis after a mechanical event, I could eliminate fixing the same problems over and over, saving me time and money.” “We’ve never had much of a strategy for machinery lubrication. With some focus, we could probably really reduce what we spend on lubricants and increase the performance of the equipment.”

Attending a conference lets you know the best way to get there.
You now have a general idea of where you want to go. For your car trip, you may want to go to Des Moines, Iowa. The GPS maps out the best way to get you from Point A to Des Moines, Iowa. For your professional journey, you may want to pursue lean techniques or lubrication best practices or a reduction in energy usage. Attending a conference helps you map out the best way there.

Take lubrication strategy. At RELIABLE PLANT 2009, spending three days in educational sessions and on the exhibit floor, it hits you that you need to follow these four steps as soon as you get back to the plant:

1. Throw out the milk jugs, coffee cans and Coke bottles that we’ve used to store and pour oil. They’re the cause of contamination and probably a reason why bearings keep failing. Buy storage containers that are made for industrial lubricants, and are dedicated and labeled to hold only specific lubes.
2. Convert my calendar-based oil changes to ones based on condition. The calendar-based oil changes are wasting time and money (labor, product and disposal).
3. Work more closely with my lubricant supplier and have the relationship based on applications, strategy and total cost instead of just transactions.
4. Read the new book that I bought in the Noria bookstore booth on lubrication requirements and testing methods.

The next 50 or so steps will come after you re-examine your notes, go through all of the presentations from the conference CD, receive the packets of catalogs and guides that you requested from exhibitors, have several chat sessions with your colleagues from your company’s sister plants, and take that benchmarking tour that you arranged with the session speaker after his presentation.

Attending a conference lets you know the pace at which you’re going.
The GPS gives you a readout of your current speed – 45 mph, 70 mph, whatever. In the professional world, it can be hard to decipher whether you’re going too fast or too slow or on pace with the established norm.

For instance, you’re bent on changing the culture of maintenance at your plant from reactive to proactive. You work at a 100-employee facility in the Northeast part of the United States. The site has been around since 1953. The workforce is non-union. And, the average age of the 24-man maintenance crew is 58. What kind of timeframe are you looking at? One year? Three years? Five years? Fifty years?

In a big conference setting, through exposure to a variety of case studies, industry reports and conversations with fellow attendees, you should be able to find facts and figures from others who are in the same boat as you. The hundreds upon hundreds of attendees at RELIABLE PLANT 2009 come from a wide range of backgrounds. Among them will undoubtedly be representatives from medium-sized plants in the Northeast that have been around for more than 50 years and whose non-union maintenance workforce has an average age of more than 55. After the conference, you may realize that the average pace is 3.5 years for a conversion from reactive to proactive.

Attending a conference lets you know when you should expect to “get there”.
The GPS lets you know that at your current rate of speed, you should arrive in Des Moines, Iowa, at 6:18 p.m.

With knowledge on your pace from the previous section (obtained at the conference), you should know that if you can officially launch your push toward proactive maintenance in November 2009, you should arrive at your stated destination in May 2013.

Attending a conference gives you access to resources available along the way.
The GPS can let you know that a McDonald’s, a Chevron station and an antique mall are located 2.6 miles from your current location.

A conference such as RELIABLE PLANT 2009 will let you know about and expose you to a slew of educational materials that are available to attendees. This could include a report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on ways to reduce energy consumption, white papers on the topic of Reliability-Centered Maintenance, a Webinar a company is holding next month on best practices for kaizen – the list goes on and on.

Attending a conference makes you cognizant of past journeys.
A GPS does this by giving you a backlog of recent addresses that you’ve plugged in.
The same road that has been traveled the same way for 20 years will only take you so far. New times call for new roads and new frontiers. Conferences like RELIABLE PLANT 2009 show you those paths.
This conference is for you.

On September 1-3, all paths lead to Columbus, Ohio, for Noria Corporation’s RELIABLE PLANT 2009 conference. We welcome you and your co-workers to check out this year’s packed lineup of educational sessions, workshops, exhibitions and certification examinations. You will find that this event will serve as a guide to will help get you where you want to go.

Mike DaPrile, vice president, Toyota Motor Manufacturing North America
Tuesday, September 1, 8:00 am

Toyota is the face of the successful 21st-century manufacturing company. Fortune named the corporation as No. 3 (behind Apple and Berkshire Hathaway) on its list of the World’s Most Admired Companies. Toyota plants are viewed as role models in terms of lean, reliability, sustainability, safety and asset performance. They truly embody the Reliable Plant. However, even Toyota has encountered some potholes during the recent world economic crisis. In this keynote session, company vice president Mike DaPrile (a 47-year veteran of the global auto industry, including 22 years at Toyota and 25 years at General Motors) will outline Toyota’s present and future direction in the wake of a changing (and challenging) auto manufacturing landscape and illustrate how Toyota is reinvigorating/reinforcing/reinventing itself.

The Lubrication Excellence portion of the conference will feature 26 sessions delivered by true experts on the subjects of machinery lubrication and oil analysis.

What follows is a sneak peek at 10 of the Lubrication Excellence sessions.

“How to Cut Lubricant Consumption by More Than 50%” by Jim Fitch, Noria. The math is pretty simple: Cutting your lubricant purchases in half = big savings. But what’s the best method? Lubricant consolidation? Extending drain intervals? Economy brands? Contamination control? Oil analysis? In this session, Noria’s chairman outlines a proven plan for safely squeezing maximum life out of lubricants and drastically cutting new lubricant purchases without sacrificing machine health. “Benchmarking Your Plant’s Lubrication Performance for Reliability” by Jason Kopschinsky, Noria. Benchmarking is a continuous improvement tool that allows you to rate your company’s practices against those of the front-runners in industry or those that are considered “world class”. This paper will discuss how to effectively benchmark your facility’s lubrication practices to define opportunities for improvement, set up performance metrics and lay down a plan to become world class.

“The Role of Operations in Lubrication” by Jarrod Potteiger, Noria. With 43% of U.S. companies pursuing a form of lean manufacturing, operators increasingly are asked to assume some or all of a plant’s maintenance activities. And while Toyota is living proof that operator involvement can work, there are a few simple rules that will help you avoid problems. In this session, you’ll learn the right way to implement operator-assisted lubrication.

“How to Fix a High Particle Count” by Jim Fitch. Diagnosing and correcting a high particle count can result in wasted time and money. Whether you’ve just begun a lubricant contamination control program or you’ve been monitoring contaminant levels for years, you know how disturbing it is to discover a high particle count. Acting quickly is important, but troubleshooting without a plan often results in unnecessary work and wasteful lubricant and filter use. Instead of throwing time and money at the problem, attend this session and learn specific steps to fix it.

Jim Fitch will present two Lubrication Excellence sessions at RELIABLE PLANT 2009.

“Lubrication Program Transformation at Albemarle” by Jon Cavin and Kirk Williams, Albemarle. In the last five years, lubrication at Albemarle went from “a necessary evil” to “a must-have”. In this case study, you’ll hear how Albemarle implemented 5-S visual systems for lube points, transitioned from time-based to condition-based oil changes with quantifiable savings, used lubricant usage trending as a predictive tool for mechanical seal failures, empowered lube technicians to order parts and implement reliability in the field, and implemented 5-S methods in lube storage areas. You’ll also learn what lies ahead for the program.

“7 Tools for Developing an Effective Lubrication Program” by Tom Hiatt of Covance and Wayne Ferguson of Eli Lilly. This session will provide valuable information in support of the development of an effective lubrication program. By applying the principles from this session in areas such as lubrication guidelines, recognition and reward, procedures, audits and training, your maintenance and operations department will become more knowledgeable and proactive in the application, testing and use of lubricants within critical equipment in your areas. The speakers will also discuss the importance of developing a lube team and the necessary sub-teams to enhance program development.

“RCM Defines the 100 Failure Modes of Lubrication” by Terry Harris, Reliability Process Solutions. When rotating equipment stops working, processes cease to perform to designed expectations. The negative impacts are downtime, reduced capacity, lower quality and EH&S incidents. RCM can be used to define these failure modes. Lubricants and lubrication programs have more than 100 failure modes that can be defined and controlled. Understanding each failure mode helps you decide how to prevent and eliminate each of them.

“Are your Machines Designed for Lubrication Maintainability and Reliability?” by Mark Barnes, Noria. Reliability experts recognize that a large portion of life-cycle costs is affected by basic design. Yet OEMs continue to design and deliver equipment that is often difficult or cumbersome to maintain. In this session, you’ll learn what it takes to make a machine maintainable and reliable from the outset.

“Extending the Life of Rolling Element Bearings with Precision Lubrication” by Jeremy Wright, Noria. According to bearing manufacturers, a bearing has a 90% probability, in many circumstances, of lasting for as long as 12 years. Yet in practice, fewer than 10% of all bearings actually reach their true potential. This session will examine the profound influence lubrication can have on the longevity of element bearings and how to drastically extend bearing life.

“Can Premium Lubricants Really Reduce Energy Costs?” by Jeremy Wright. With increasing energy costs, companies are focusing on ways to reduce overall energy consumption. One train of thought is to use synthetics and other premium lubricants to reduce friction and energy losses. But, is this really effective? This session will uncover the truth about energy reduction through lubricant upgrades.

• Lean Manufacturing 2009
• Reliability World 2009
• Lubrication Excellence 2009
• Plant Safety 2009
• Plant Energy & Sustainability 2009

“Our name change reflects the goal and aspiration of today’s industrial facilities; they want and need to be a reliable plant,” said Paul V. Arnold, the editor-in-chief of Noria Publishing, which produces Reliable Plant and Machinery Lubrication magazines. “A reliable plant pursues excellence and best practices in the areas of maintenance and reliability, machinery lubrication and oil analysis, workplace safety, energy management and total sustainability. You can’t reach a level of excellence, especially in today’s hyper-competitive global environment, without concerted improvement efforts in all of those areas. That is where this conference and exhibition comes in.”