Unplanned downtime remains one of manufacturing’s most costly and preventable drains on productivity. Conveyor systems—critical to assembly, coating, packaging, and material handling operations—are ...

Airgas, Inc., announced on February 4 it has acquired Merriam-Graves Corporation, an independent distributor of industrial, medical, and specialty gases and related supplies operating in 25 locations ...

On April 4, the diversified industrial manufacturer Eaton Corporation announced it has completed the purchase of The Moeller Group, as announced in Eaton’s December 20, 2007 news release. “This ...

The traditional view of operational shutdowns, turnarounds and outages (STOs) holds that they are maintenance and engineering events. This simplistic view is held by many organizations. A more ...

Overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) is the premier standard for measuring manufacturing productivity. Read about how to calculate OEE, the six big losses, OEE benefits and more. What is Overall ...

As I conduct assessments at organizations that have made attempts to implement lean manufacturing, I consistently observe similar results. The company has sometimes received assistance from an outside ...

Creating a maintenance plan is generally not difficult to do. But creating a comprehensive maintenance program that is effective poses some interesting challenges. It would be difficult to appreciate ...

Most everyone would agree that striving for world-class maintenance status is a good thing, but what exactly does this mean and how do you know when you get there? An athlete knows there are world ...

Let us share a few words about wrench time: What is it? Why is it important? And, how do we measure it? Wrench time is a measure of crafts personnel at work, using tools, in front of jobs. Wrench time ...

The United States faces a need for nearly 3.5 million manufacturing jobs over the next decade, and 2 million of those jobs are likely to go unfilled due to a skills gap, according to new research from ...

These days, if you’re a leader of any type, you can’t simply order people around and expect them to do what you want. They may follow your directions, if you are watching, but once they’re left on ...

There are a variety of failure analysis and problem-solving methods used to analyze equipment and process failures. The different methods are described and compared so maintenance and reliability ...