HOT TOPICS

The content areas for Mainstream 2011 will be uploaded on the January 2011.

More than 100 Australian organisations will participate in in-depth research to identify the content areas for this year's program. If you would like to contribute to creating the program by being part of the research please contact Carolyn Watt via email or:

mobile: +61 403 809 312
landline: +61 2 9955 7400

In the meantime, please take a look at the content areas that our most recent Mainstream (May 2010) program addressed.

Holistic Asset Management

Life cycle asset management - opportunities for flexible business management; operations working with maintenance to achieve reliability and performance of assets to meet business goals; ensuring the asset owner is on-board; tactical workforce planning; need for an operational readiness program; quantifying risks - measure and report risks in terms of cost and future spends; understanding life cycle cost issues; integrating the efforts/ contribution of all stakeholders - operators/maintainers/engineers; hands on common sense approach; moving beyond maintenance to asset management; the key enablers of good asset management; asset management requires a different set of skills and competencies to those traditionally used in maintenance; applying the principles of a safety culture program to asset management

Integrating Operations, Production & Maintenance

Creating visibility across departments - data sharing is the key; getting operators on-side thorough education and communication and help them forge a reliability mindset; commitment to lean manufacturing path for continuous improvement throug teamwork; getting input/commitment across the whole business towards common goals; creating a strategy to balance rewards with production and reliability performance; improving ownership of equipment condition; use visuals to effectively communicate measures to all parties; simplify work orders by using standard work; what organisational structures work and why; language, actions and environment always needs to support the partnership

Leadership & People Management

Teaching engineers to be people managers; re-addressing recruitment procedure to include behaviour, attitude and ability to fit culturally; developing the skills of middle management and front-line supervisors; displaying a clear career path for employees with potential; ensuring people do not get left behind with their skills knowledge; tackling the barriers of change that hinder maintenance improvement

Developing a Reliability Culture

Integrating reliability improvement techniques into the business processes of managing maintenance: investing in reliability centered maintenance; using condition monitoring data effectively to support decisions on equipment lifecycles and major refurbishment and replacement projects; setting KPI’s to measure reliability; developing focused preventative maintenance plans; instilling a strong focus in a recessionary environment - getting the best from what you have; evaluating the mean time between failure; instill good practices with TPM and 5s; understand that to be a success a long term commitment (years) is needed; communicating why the change is necessary - why we can’t continue doing what we always have done; changing/aligning people's mindsets; equipment failure patters

Confronting the Aging Workforce Issue

Combating the lower productivity of older workers as they fall into a cycle of waiting for redundancy or retirement; create mentoring programs - the buddy system; develop a vision of the workforce of the future and then sell that vision to obtain buy-in and a sense of pride; understand the differences between generations; selling the maintenance profession to the next generation and then keeping Gen Y engaged; championing apprentice programs; capturing knowledge and company IP into a system and out of peoples heads; defining
what is critical to the business; strategies for the effective engagement of Gen Y, Gen X and the Baby Boomers

CMMS Pains

Selling the benefits to the shop floor guys to increase uptake and utilisation of the system; marrying ERP with best of breed; getting vendor and IT support; performing upgrades effectively; make your CMMS a site wide data tool not just a maintenance team tool

Surviving the Downturn & Changing Conditions

Understanding what the survivors have done to get through the recession; developing business plans based on long term forecasts to adapt to changing market conditions; evaluating future market conditions and developing a maintenance picture of success; being prepared for changing paradigms; innovation as a basis for adaptiveness; looking at the big picture - green/carbon issues, changing legislation, workforce of the future, economic conditions and world trends; budgets are reduced but general expectations regarding performance remain unchanged; maintenance departments to review systems, processes and work lists

Smart Strategies for Training & Retaining Staff

Effectively motivating your staff; reward your people so they stay loyal and only want to work for you; giving them ownership of equipment so they feel like a trusted and key member of the team; tips and tricks to keep you ahead of the pack; looking past the skill set to see if it is a cultural fit for long term retention; building the capability of the existing staff to train new employees; the importance of education, coaching and communication; maintenance preparedness vulnerability assessment for targeted training to increase skills; save time and money with focused training on the weakest employees on the critical assets

Selling the Value of Maintenance

Developing a business case to justify the maintenance dollars; evolving from only rewarding maintenance when a breakdown has been fixed; utilising reporting tools to display performance improvements; working out how to sell the value of maintenance and asset management to senior management; communicating the picture of success of what maintenance best practice looks like

Continuous Improvement Processes

Setting goals for success; identifying the tools and methods to drive improvement; compelling business needs/focus on the process of removing waste, improving quality, performing inspections and managing inventory; leadership commitment is vital - they must dedicate their time; align strategic initiatives with tactical deployment; track improvement along the way; discipline must come from front line managers; identify critical role players in organisations - key skills and competencies in the process; ensure sustainability - people empowerment and ownership; understand it is a long term commitment - avoid flavour of the month CI tools; increase the speed of taking on leading practices and ensure effective management of change

Instilling a Best Practice Maintenance Culture

Move from fix it to "resolve root cause"; trying to get maintenance trades to do formal root cause; encouraging the maintenance team to share knowledge/ideas; involve production in the process so they develop a maintenance mindset; instill good practices with TPM and 5s; aligned management is key; understand that to be a success a long term commitment (years) is needed; communicating why the change is necessary - why we can’t continue doing what we always have done; changing/aligning people's mindsets; diagnostic performed to identify areas of good practice and potential areas of improvement

Planning, Scheduling & Resource Management

Identifying what best practice looks like; communication between maintenance and operations - coordination between groups to establish lead time required on parts and equipment availability; ensuring work is done to plan, quality checked and measured for continuous improvement; business processes around resource management, job planning and scheduling; integration of maintenance business processes with other functions such as supply, HR, cost control and finance; reduce inventory and improve spares management by integrating MRO and maintenance planning

New Strategies in Managing Safety

Thinking beyond the barriers to identify what may hurt your people and how to safeguard against them; understand the elements and characteristics of a best practice program; finding innovation in safety management; understanding the real cost of safety; strategies for keeping people focused; what are the latest due diligence requirements?; leadership to instill the safety message and ensure it is enforced

Effectively Managing Shutdowns

Performing critical path management to ensure compliance to the shutdown plan; scheduling work to align with resource availably and access to machinery; establishing and controlling scope with a watchful eye on the budget to safeguard against scope creep and budget blow-out; schedule regular meetings during the shutdown to report on progress and flag unforeseen issues; perform a post-shutdown review to paint a clear picture of the effectiveness of the shutdown process and use the information to benefit future projects