Toronto, ON -- The MainTrain 2006 maintenance conference, held November 2006 in Toronto and produced by the Plant Engineering and Maintenance Association of Canada (PEMAC), featured presenters and subject matter experts from all over the world, noted conference chairman Gerry B. Fitzsimmons, P.Eng., of Toromont Industries Ltd. "These presentations and workshops provided excellent information that everyone shared during the many industry networking sessions," he added.
The conference offered pre- and post-conference workshops and two days of business sessions designed to give maintenance and physical asset management professionals a valuable learning experience.
"It's gratifying when you hear from registrants that MainTrain 2006 offered exceptional quality and content," said Fitzsimmons. "There was lots of energy and passion at this year's event."
Brian Lackey, vice-president, operations and chief engineer, Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA), opened MainTrain 2006 with a keynote address on the importance of life cycle management.
"Getting the most for the least out of plant assets requires a corporate maintenance philosophy, which is supported consistently over time throughout the company from the top down," said Lackey. "To us, life cycle management means maintaining an appropriate balance of capital, operating maintenance and restoration spending. This optimizes the cost and performance of our key assets throughout their life cycle.
"A company that's truly committed to life cycle management will hold as a basic tenet that those who will be required to operate and maintain planned assets must be consulted to establish the life cycle strategy before making the capital investment.
How do you get a corporate commitment to life cycle management? Corporate leaders need to know that you have management systems in place that will support this strategy on an operational level," said Lackey.
Another speaker, professor Jay Lee of the University of Cincinnati, encouraged attendees to think about their existing operations and implement intelligent maintenance systems.
"How can we have equipment tell us how it feels? By the time there's a problem, it's too late. You want to predict, prioritize and optimize," said Lee. "It's important to only handle information once (OHIO). A failure is just the tip of the iceberg and it will sink us if we're not careful. The way of the future is condition-based maintenance (CBM).
"You want to be able to predict and survive -- you don't want to survive by surprise," he said. "The digital world of maintenance is here today. For example, Komatsu uses GPS in a big way. The company is embracing the 'lean-machine' concept. Toyota is using robots for predictive maintenance. Your goal should be to have a graceful failure of a machine."
The conference's Maintenance Best Practices Peer to Peer session featured Scott Anderson, maintenance manager, Ontario/Quebec hubs, Purolator Courier; Bill Mullen, maintenance area leader, Syncrude Canada; Andrew Thorne, maintenance engineering manager, Cameco; and moderator Brian Malloch, president of PEMAC and director of manufacturing, DoAll Canada.
"At Purolator, we're not focused on what we did yesterday," said Anderson. "You have to remember that yesterday is history. Maintenance best practices come through your people. People management is the most important tool in a maintenance manager's toolbox."
"I've worked all over the world," said Thorne. "The challenges are different, but you can transfer maintenance best practices from one industry to another. To improve your operation, go see what other people are doing and share ideas. You just have to show maintainers on the floor something else, so they can start to work differently. This leads to positive change within your organization."
In another sesssion, John Lambert, president of Benchmark Maintenance Services and a contributor to Machinery & Equipment MRO, walked attendees through some of the fundamentals of world-class maintenance.
"Maintenance has changed and it now has a product -- capacity. We're now an equal partner of production. Maintenance has to have a structure that reflects company (production) goals," said Lambert. "Failure isn't an option for maintainers. To control your planning and PMs, you need a computerized maintenance management software (CMMS) system. You may not need all of it, however, and this is an important point.
"A maintenance team has to be made up of well-trained, conscientious and proactive employees. It's a fact that people prevent more machinery breakdowns than any maintenance program," he said.
Reliability-centred maintenance (RCM) and total productive maintenance (TPM) are structured systems that allow you to improve the maintenance of an asset and its reliability, Lambert added. "When you can guarantee that maintenance fundamentals are done correctly, you can move forward to world-class maintenance."
A Maintenance Masters panel session featured Professor Jay Lee, James V. Reyes-Picknell of Conscious Management and Ken Bannister of Engtech Industries. This town-hall session enabled attendees to have their questions answered.
"Many CMMS systems fail because you haven't removed meaningless or unrelated data that has little or no value to the maintenance department," commented Bannister. "These CMMS systems are rammed full of mud and this creates big problems. Data scrub the existing CMMS equipment and inventory data files, so that only valuable information is transferred," he advised. "You want to eliminate duplication and redundancy."
According to Reyes-Picknell, "the maintenance industry continues to evolve at a fast pace. What worked for you before won't necessarily work for you in the future. Knowledge is power for maintenance departments. It's all about improving equipment uptime through the use of better systems."
Lloyd Longfield, general manager of Hydac Canada and executive director for the Canadian Fluid Power Association (CFPA), offered fluid-management tips for maintainers in another session.
"Knowing what contamination is and where it comes from, how it's measured, how it's removed and using recommended cleanliness standards form a base knowledge," said Longfield. "Unchecked contamination results in wear, then heat, then vibration and then component failure. Moving the monitoring cycle forward to monitor contamination is the first step in effective fluid management."
Awards were also a part of the event. PEMAC presented its annual Sergio Guy Memorial Award to the late John Campbell for his tireless industry work, influence on many maintenance professionals and passion for maintenance excellence. Campbell, a long-time maintenance consultant, was the original author of the book Uptime. The Campbell family took part in the award presentation.
As well, Canadian Tire and the City of Mississauga were named this year's winners of the PEM Maintenance Awards. They were presented to Ken Desloges, P.Log, maintenance ASRS/conveyor manager, Canadian Tire; and Shawn Crawford, manager of facilities maintenance for Mississauga, Ont.
Ted C. Buffington, president of Achievement By Design, was the keynote speaker at the awards gala dinner. "No situation, present or future, will match our knowledge or ability to deal with it," said Buffington. "You want to ask 'how' and not 'why'. Don't look at what's wrong -- look at what's missing. You want to achieve situational awareness. This is the degree of accuracy by which one's perception of his or her current environment mirrors the true reality. Don't be deceived by what you believe.
"Stuff happens and how people respond or react is determined by their filters. At the end of the day, clarity is power. Life isn't the way it's supposed to be, it's the way it is. The way you cope with it is what makes the difference. In an under-pressure situation, performance equals potential minus interference.
"It's important to rehearse the end game," he said. "To achieve success under pressure, you need to remember these key points: alertness, awareness, perception, interpretation, clarity, certainty and focus. Think it, believe it, or know it."
Contact Norm Clegg, PEMAC executive director, by telephone at 905-823-7255 or by e-mail at maintrain@pemac.org, or visit www.pemac.org.