Uptime for Executives

By James V. Reyes-Picknell

This is a book for senior executives who lead organizations with a heavy dependence on physical assets such as fixed plant, factories, facilities, mobile equipment, vehicle fleets, pipelines and other linear assets. You don't need to be expert in asset reliability or how to maintain those assets, but your people do. Maintenance and reliailbity are two subject areas that are often both poorly understood and poorly executed. The result is high cost to keep things running, a lot of breakdowns, and substantial lost revenue opportunity because of the downtime. Getting out of that situation requires your organization to go beyond the knowledge, skills and expertise needed when operating smoothly. The change cross multiple functional areas (department) and will run into substantial resistance. Delegating responsibility too low in the organization will result in disappointing results. The key to overcoming those challenges is your active participation at the level of executive sponsor in the transformation. To do that, you benefit from an overview of the areas where problems will reside and what must be done about them. This book provides that overview and advice. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Conscious Asset
• Release date: May 13, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224230242

James V. Reyes-Picknell

James Reyes-Picknell is the best-selling author of "Uptime - Strategies for Excellence in Maintenance Management" (2015), “Reliability Centered Maintenance – Reengineered” (2017), and “Paying Your Way” (2020). He is a Mechanical Engineer (University of Toronto 1977) with over 43 years working in Reliability, Maintenance and Asset Management. James is widely regarded as a subject matter expert in ensuring the delivery of value from physical assets. His experience spans a wide range of industries, mostly in the private sector, many in natural resources, all dependent on physical assets for their success. James’ career includes naval service (Canada), petrochemicals, aerospace, shipbuilding, pulp and paper, mining, oil and gas, manufacturing, gas and electric utilities, project management, software implementation, management consulting and training delivery. James is a professional engineer (PEng), certified management consultant (CMC), maintenance management professional (MMP), certified asset management assessor (CAMA) and certified blockchain professional (CBPro). He is the 2016 recipient of Canada’s prestigious Serio Guy Award for outstanding contributions to the profession.

Book preview

Uptime for Executives

Achieving and sustaining high performance

By: James Reyes-Picknell

Preface

THIS BOOK IS FOR SENIOR executives. If you are reading this book, I believe you are one of them. You are one of the ideal sponsors of change, who want to know at least a bit of what it takes to get high performance from your physical plant through your people. The industry you are in, and the age of your assets don’t matter. The assets all follow the same laws of science. What you need to do to keep them operating at high performance is also guided by that same science. The nature of the industry and operating environment will be important, but only in terms of influencing failure mechanisms and their consequences. These principles also apply to how we should manage the employees we have. Putting it into practice is where the challenge lies – it is in people. Sadly, people don’t follow such simple sets of rules!

Having worked in this field for over 40 years, I’ve seen a lot and made many mistakes, gaining a great deal of insight and knowledge about what works well. Throughout the industry (any industry), I see many organizations getting it wrong. They miss big opportunities for both cost savings and revenue gains. In the worst cases, they are living with high risks to safety, health, and the environment without even realizing it. 

The technical aspects of improving this situation are easily learned and applied. In fact, most organizations have an abundance of good technical staff. But getting the results can be elusive. Technocratic approaches just don’t work. 

Where clients have experienced the greatest benefits, often exceeding expectations, there has always been an executive-level sponsor and champion for the initiative and a strong focus on people, knowledge, and behaviors. That sponsor has been either the Chief Financial Officer, the Chief Operating Officer, the VP of Operations, the site General Manager, the President, or the Managing Director. 

Where organizations make attempts, fall short of expectations, or give up, there has been a senior (but not executive) level leader and an excessive focus on technology. They seem to think that the tools will solve the problem – they don’t. Those leaders who delegate and then keep their hands off are really just abdicating. Having one throat to choke if things don’t work out isn’t an effective strategy. Ultimately, results will be, at best, mediocre. 

Successful sponsors invest effort, either through their own career experience, or by learning from books or experts, in understanding what is involved in transforming the performance of physical assets. What they all grasped fully was that the transformation is mostly about people, not technologies. The technocrats just don’t seem to truly understand that.

Companies that are dependent on their physical assets have no shortage of engineers and technical staff. The hard technical aspects are not a problem for them. However, all that technical talent rarely comes with much knowing about how to transform the organization. They usually fall short of the necessary soft skills to manifest and sustain the changes that are being sought.

Internal experts, including your corporate experts in a center of excellence, are seldom any different than your staff in the field. Very few companies truly embrace managing changes well, and even fewer have the ability to manage their own transformations. 

I have kept the book short and easy to read, avoiding overly technical content. It should take you no more than an hour to read it from cover to cover. 

Disclaimer

THIS BOOK WAS NOT CREATED by artificial intelligence but rather by a real person with over 47 years of experience in maintenance and reliability in real-world operational environments at sea, on land, and in various industries.

The experience reflected in the words within these pages was gained through the school of hard knocks. I’ve seen what works and what doesn’t, tried many ways of making things better, and learned from my mistakes. Some attempts worked, and some did not, and all contribute to a level of knowing that exceeds that of most people working in the field. 

For this book, ghostwriters and Artificial Intelligence were not used, exploited, abused, or harmed in any way. 

AI will eventually benefit from this book, but no AI will ever be able to help you make the sort of transformation you may be struggling with today. 

Introduction

ANY PHYSICAL ASSET will deteriorate with usage and time. The rates of deterioration and the nature of that deterioration will vary with a number of factors. Eventually, all assets deteriorate to failure if they are not maintained. With good maintenance, deterioration can be slowed and arrested, and more importantly, the consequences of failures can either be avoided or minimized. 

Effective maintenance addresses failure mechanisms. It needs to preventing failure, predicting when it will occur, and/or render its consequences tolerable. It must also be cost-effective and risk-effective. If we don’t do maintenance at all, or we do the wrong maintenance, or we