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Whether it's a maintenance and reliability problem or a different kind of challenge "successful people hold accountable at a level that others do not," said XM participant singer Kenn Kington (www.kennworks.com) in the first Edition of the SMRP Symposium in Atlanta this month. The Symposium, presented by the Company for Professional Maintenance and Reliability (www.smrp.org), was designed to provide a deep immersion in various topics that focus on maintenance and reliability in a short period of time. Participants had the opportunity to participate in four-hour interactive workshops, visiting factories and maintenance, and passing certification exams during the two-day event.

In an opening speech on the second day, Kington describes "four critical decisions" as successful people: where and how to apply focus, anticipation, initiative and responsibility. All participants in the symposium were encouraged to identify and focus on their greatest challenge of maintenance and reliability, which anticipate workshop was the most relevant to this problem, and then go to work, take the initiative to define a solution and The responsibility to implement the change. He emphasized that it is good to fail because it is about how people learn. "Go ahead and take the step," he said.

In a workshop, Alex Willems, a high-quality engineer for North American Newmont Mining, discussed the value of his business stemming from root cause analysis, or "industrial CSI." Newmont Mining is a multi-million dollar global gold exploration, and Willems offered some lessons learned by what he called a small but effective team focused on RCA and defect elimination.

"We were looking for the root in the wrong direction," Willems said. The old idea was to eliminate the symptom with a quick fix and find someone to blame for the problem. "Change the conversation" to "what", he suggested.The company began measuring key performance indicators (KPI) for improvements. "Change the only one you think is the most likely reason - not all 20 possibilities - And then measure this because you have to know what solved the problem. "

Finding the right facilitator to carry out a reliability program is very important, he said. The person must be well organized, a critical thinker, a good communicator and willing to use intelligent tools, such as 5 whys, Ishikawa diagrams and logical trees. "The best facilitator may not be the most experienced or the most popular," he noted.

Andy Page, director of the Allied Trust Group, organized a workshop entitled "Leading Positive Change - The Psychology of Resistance and Effective Measures for IT Management." "When leadership and change management are strong, the likelihood of success is excellent," he said.

Page said that because of the way our brain is connected, the need to avoid risk is greater than the need to succeed it is important to make sure that the changes appear to be safe. "A well-managed change does not create anxiety or ambiguity," he said. "Eliminate fear, do not believe."

Training and education are not a sufficient factor of change, because each has different underlying values and prejudices, he added. "The change leader must help people create new, positive, guided experiences - this helps change their beliefs, attitudes, actions and results," the page said. He concluded with psychological techniques to facilitate a psychologically safe environment and behavior modification.