Joe Anderson and George Williams with ReliabilityX
On this week's Industrial Talk we're onsite at the 30th Annual SMRP conference and talking to Joe Anderson, Co-Founder and COO and George Williams, Co-Founder and CEO of ReliabilityX about “Asset Management and Reliability starts with your Organization”. Get the answers to your “Reliability” questions along with Joe and George's unique insight on the “How” on this Industrial Talk interview!
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GEORGE WILLIAMS' CONTACT INFORMATION:
Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgewilliamscmrp/
Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/reliabilityx/
Company Website: https://reliabilityx.com/
JOE ANDERSON'S CONTACT INFORMATION:
Personal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-anderson-b06a5653/
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SUMMARY KEYWORDS
reliability, organization, joe, company, conversation, problem, people, understanding, pharma, industry, operators, gents, develop, question, world, long, asset, industrial, problem solvers, podcast
Welcome to the industrial talk podcast with Scott Mackenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hard hat, grab your work boots, and let's
Alright, once again, thank you very much for joining industrial talk, the number one industry related podcast in the universe, Georgia and Joe. It is backed up by data. Don't come to me as a It's not data. It's all data. And it's scientific. And it is a platform that celebrates industry professionals all around the world, because you are bold and brave, you dare greatly. You're solving problems. You're changing the world as we speak. That's why we celebrate you on this podcast. And we also if you can tell by the buzzy buzz in the background, we are broadcasting on site SMRP 30th annual 30 am about that one here in Raleigh, North Carolina. And it is swimming with problem solvers. Like the two gents that are in the house, Georgia, Joe, ReliabilityX get cracking legends. Thanks, man. They know more about reliability than I do. Which is pretty much 99% of everybody here. Because don't have any good show.
So far. It's been amazing. It's been an honor. You know, last year was kind of first time back this year is now like, you know, double so you get his excitement state used to have right so it feels normal, right? Yeah, I
was. I went up to the ballroom, because I can't understand the conversation. So I just sort of man knows his limitations. But I went up to the ballroom, and it was full. I was I was dazzled. You don't you don't get a sense you get. There's been there's stuff happening, man when you see them all in one room? Yeah. Yeah, homerun. Man, that's
been fantastic. You gotta like that
man. All right, for the listeners to this level set, because I can say Georgia is a hell of a guy. And I could say Georgia is that Joe is a hell of a guy. But tell us why. Joe, you start background
background, you know, 25 plus years as a practitioner, before going out on my own a lot of food and pharma. stuff and yeah. And in leadership roles, started out as a mechanic work my way up type of thing. And again, you know, I've been doing this for a long time, a lot of certifications. And a great business partner that makes me look good. So yeah,
you guys. Yeah. Yeah, you got, you have a trophy chest. Let's put it that way. But we can talk about that trophy. Later. George, give us a little background.
Yeah. So very similar. Joe started out as maintenance mechanic worked my way up in pharma, ultimately responsible globally, for reliability within that organization. cmrp CRL, all the fancy acronym CMRP of the Year award winner, all that great stuff. And then three years ago, we decided to partner up and I would start reliability yet.
I was there. I remember when they were just a fledgling company. I had to settle for allegedly. I don't
mean small. It sounds great.
Do you think it is I'm going to take grass a little bit here? Both of you have that farm of food background. Okay, cool. Do you think that there's greater adoption in those industries versus let's say, manufacturing? I think there's a focus for quality. Do you think that there's a greater adoption of that? I don't care if I throw it out for both you guys walk on each other? I don't care.
I'd say in pharma. There's a much, much greater expectation of it. And, and all of the processes are documented, but that doesn't mean they're good ones.
Right? Yeah. But this, this sort of is a bridge to the conversation we were having or having prior to the conference, this podcast. And that is all the technology, all of this all this is great stuff. You walk up and down the hall is like, oh, my gosh, that's a great tool. That's a great tool. That's a great tool. But the reality is, it's really a human equation. Right?
For sure. And I think, and we're seeing it a lot here too, is everyone's looking for that one thing. And there's a silver bullet, right. And I'm like, you know, if we came up with a software that they could download, that would eliminate all their problems.
I mean, that would be phenomenal. Wait, the CMMS doesn't do that?
Is reliability trashed? It is let's just
call it events. But everybody's looking for that thing and it doesn't exist and we've gotten away from understanding it's as simple as application of knowledge We're all here to learn. But what are we going to take back and apply to develop the skills necessary to get this stuff out of the system?
This is always the that. To me, it's there's inflation. So it's, it says, here's the $2 million question. And the $2 million question is where do you start? Who do you trust? It's like, again, I mean, I got all these tools, but I, I gotta find that trusted Sherpa. Where do I start? You do that? Do that? I think that's where we're at.
Yeah, I think everyone has a different level of where they're at. Right? Whether it's from an organization or personally, and how they tie into those things to make a difference. Some folks get hung up on what's the right one thing, when taking one step is better than no steps? And so, you know, I'm gonna
I'm gonna interrupt. Yeah, that one step gets knocked back real quick if that there's no continuity from the leaders. Yeah, no doubt. And that's frustrating.
Yeah. And so a connection and understanding of what the business objectives are, and how your assets achieve those objectives. And seeing where the value is missing? Where are we missing the value that produces the results for the company. And that value could be in operations in, in in either downtime or speed losses or things like that, where it could be in risk associated with your assets, depending on your industry, depending on lots of factors. And I think folks have to have an understanding of what's the value proposition of their asset? And how do I make sure that's what we're achieving? What often fouls and what our organization focuses on, is the training, the coaching and the education on exactly how to articulate that, so that you get a win and get support so that you can go down further path.
You know, I like I like defining, clearly defining a quick win. Because every everybody is just like, Yeah, show me show me, Joe, Joe, show me. And so when you when you go in to an organization reliability X, I want to give them a plug right here. The brain children of liability accident, and there's a fan that is that your fan,
that's our only fan, it's a website. Literally our only fan.
That's okay, man, we just, we're just excited that there's a fan, yes.
Yeah. So anyway, when you go into organizations, you go, how do you approach an organization and say, Hey, Hi, Joe, we have, we're feeling pain, I don't know what the pain is, I know that it's not right, I just sort of up in the air about the whole thing. How do you start to approach me where I'm just like, oh, my gosh, pain and pain everywhere? So how do you normally approach it.
So we have a series of tools and processes we put together when we walk in to assess basically the situation, and where their pain points are, and then showing them, you know, through training and, and, you know, just bringing awareness, basically, to what those problems are, and help them develop a strategy to go after those things. And so, I know, I do that all the time, with the clients that I'm working with, we you know, it kind of depends on the industry and things like that, how you're gonna approach it, but really it is is is getting people up to a level of awareness where they understand where the problem is, and then they getting helping them develop the competencies needed to help address the issues at hand. And so that, again, it comes through. So a lot of education and training and maybe hand holding as well, to get the ball.
I was gonna go down that road. So here's the deal. All right, I still, I'm paying I hear what you have to say, Joe, I, I'm all there. And I'm looking at the spreadsheet, whatever the process is. I'm on the whiteboard. Yes, I got it. When do you this? Do you Georgia? When do you just sort of say, All right, I'm going to start pulling off those training wheels a little bit, but I'm going to be coming back. I'm going to keep you a little stable. I'm going to how long as the typical engagement, what's what's that look like?
It is as long as it takes to evolve the culture to a point of ownership. There is no set time limit on that. If you move faster than you can evolve the culture you fell. Yeah. And so we focus on people, because that's the only place success comes from you call out the OEM vendor 25 times and they reset your machine In a pm in a week later, you're running like crap again. And that's a people thing. It's not a machine thing. And what we focus on is the we don't it's not cultural change, it's cultural evolution, you are bringing awareness, education, understanding. And when you get people far enough along the change curve, then you can implement if you implement before the culture is evolved enough to accept it, you fell
out, it makes sense to me, and I agree with you 100%. The, the area that it's always a human equation, it just is. So you know, Joe, you know, when when you've reached those milestones, of saying, okay, and, and I just throw this out, because if it's a human equation, you're having some challenging conversations with management and saying, Hey, Scott is the good guy, however, he's not in the right place. You know, do you have those conversations? Do those assessments do you have? I don't want to be in your shoes type conversations.
Yeah, I mean, they're the real, you have to Yes. So the way I look at it, right, is it's the 1080 10 rule. And that there's 10% of people in your organization that are ready for the change, and they want it they they welcome it, just 10 Yeah. And then there's 80% of the people 80% of the people are kind of your fence sitters. They've seen this before, or the month is coming. So until they start to see some success, they're just sitting back and waiting. The bottom 10% No matter what they're showing up to get their paycheck, and you're not gonna move them very far. So what we do is we set out to find that 10% and below or 10%, are they up the upper 10? Yeah, because the upper 10 will create the momentum necessary to reach a tipping
point those advocates in there, they get those? Yeah, right. And
so we got to the floor. You know, they know what some of the problems are, maybe I'm out there hand holding, helping them troubleshoot issues to make them go away that type of thing. So they're seeing it in action as well, and that they can replicate it. And then we get those little quick wins, there's always a low hanging fruit, they're fairly easy to identify and go after. And then you start to see people will pull off of the fence, the ones that are sitting on that fence and saying, Hey, I kind of liked this, Hey, this might work, hey, this is going to be different. Yeah. And you'll you'll get to a point over a period of time as you continue to solution some of these things that you'll hit your tipping point, that
again, you didn't get an answer my question? Yeah. What's George? Yes, do assessments to determine their capabilities, and then you know, because there's gonna be gaps, and then there's going to be one set, you're going to have to have that conversation. I think that that's the right. But then in a world of where we have tight resources and all that, I don't know how you guys doing? I'm gonna back away. So.
So what's interesting about your, your question and comment is, oftentimes for us people quit the organization. So that's interesting. So when we come in, and they realize that what the the new level, the new bar of expectation is outside of what they want in their career, they will oftentimes leave the organization. Right. And so and that happens, you know, with clients we work with, sometimes at the VP level, sometimes at the management level, and sometimes at the shop floor level. Some folks are perfectly happy just showing up and doing as little as possible. And when the bar and expectation are set differently, they have to make business decisions.
Which then begs the question of, okay, so you have this attrition, it's that's moving, it's happening everywhere. And people are cannibalizing other companies, whatever it is. Interesting time. Do you guys set up a sort of a plan of attack on how to keep that skilled funnel?
We're huge on developing the pipeline, especially when it comes to skilled trades. And what we do is we normally work with clients to develop their operators, because it's a lot easier to pull in operators than it is skilled trades. And so, you know, so in house in house upskill Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, you find, you know, and there's pros and cons, right? Typically, you're grabbing your best operators and working on them. So when you pull them, it leaves operation, sometimes at a deficit, but at the same time, they're still there and available and as long as you're documenting and doing things because that will help those upcoming operators, they're typically fun.
Yeah, I think you have to, especially in today's world, I think you have to sort of sweeten the opportunity to be a part of something bigger, right? That means training. That means I, if you guys are the expert, not be asking for their opinions, help us be a better company, whatever that that whole collaborative push, is because you're never going to achieve whatever you're trying to achieve. If you don't have that buy in that human buying, that's up, up and down. Chain.
It is and you communicate differently, and you work differently in that vertical, right. So down at the shop floor level, you know, you can't tell them, you're gonna get the cost savings for an initiative, that's they don't care about that that's not really relevant to them, right. It's about making their job easier, less stressful, giving them quality of life. And when you talk to senior leadership, it's about how those things achieve business objectives. If if we're not making people's jobs easier, we're failing.
How do you deal with because I can keep on riffing on and I know we need to go. But how do you deal with the fact that if you hammer the whole low hanging fruits, right? And everybody's like, yeah, that was easy. Look at the wonderful things that are going on, and then it levels out. And all of a sudden, those are all taken care of good. But then then the benefits or whatever, it just start to sort of level out, you have to have sort of that macro understanding that everything is is improved and efficient. You might not see that, wow, that's a million dollars to the bottom line that that's great. How do you deal with that? How does that story go?
So for me, it's, it's if we can get an organization to even be at a point where they think they've plateaued, we've done a hell of a job. I don't think so if the organization should not accept any defects. And so if they're to a point where they're in the minutiae, and you're trying to find the little tiny efficiency gains, if because we're now effective at that company is running in a world class state by them?
Well, I'm going after your low hanging fruit, the process and doing so is problem solving. And what you're doing is you're you're honing your problem solving skills through repetition. And then as it starts to plateau off, it's a lot of the chronic issues, the harder that have multi layer root causes, but it's the same process. And now that we've done this 6000 times, although it's a more difficult problem, and it might require, say, more funding or a reengineer or something like that. We still have the toolset to be able to to solution. It just might take us longer that
you guys are awesome. All right. Gotta wrap it up. Definitely can chirp on this for a long time. George, how did he get a hold of you?
They can reach us at www dot ATT reliability x.com, email us at ask at reliability x.com.
The company and that's that's how you get a hold of the big thinkers in the company. And LinkedIn, and LinkedIn, absolutely. Here's the deal. I'm going to have all the contact information out on industrial talk. So fear not, you will be able to get a hold of these two gems which you need to because they're I think you guys are addressing really the root cause of a lot of the, it's the technology is cool. I get the shiny look at it, and I got it. But it really is gets down to the human element. And I think that it's a great career. But
trust these guys, these are trusted Sherpas. All right. Once again, we're broadcasting for the 30th annual SMRP conference here in Raleigh, North Carolina. And as you can tell, we're hanging out with some incredible problem solvers. So stay tuned, we will be right back.
You're listening to the industrial talk Podcast Network.
All right, as we wrap up our conversation at the 30th annual s MRP conference I want to give a hearty thank you to both George Williams, CEO big wig and then Joe Anderson coo other big wig with reliability AX, they definitely know much about reliability. So you need to reach out to these two gents reliability X's the company will have all the contact information as you know out on industrial talk because you need to continue to educate, collaborate with those two guys and innovate because you need to keep that asset up and running. You need to be able to make that a focus because we need you to succeed and these two gents are passionate about your success. All right. Again, put SMRP on your No wonder if you're, if you're into maintenance, reliability, whatever it might be. That is a excellent, I mean, excellent conference for you to attend and I think this year No, no 2023 will be in Orlando say that's not bad either. So check that out. The contact and all the information for SMRP 31st annual will be out there. All right. Be bold, be brave, dare greatly hang out with George and Joe, and you're going to change the world. We're gonna have another great conversation coming to you from SMRP shortly so stay tuned.
Transcript
Welcome to the industrial talk podcast with Scott Mackenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hard hat, grab your work boots, and let's
Alright, once again, thank you very much for joining industrial talk, the number one industry related podcast in the universe, Georgia and Joe. It is backed up by data. Don't come to me as a It's not data. It's all data. And it's scientific. And it is a platform that celebrates industry professionals all around the world, because you are bold and brave, you dare greatly. You're solving problems. You're changing the world as we speak. That's why we celebrate you on this podcast. And we also if you can tell by the buzzy buzz in the background, we are broadcasting on site SMRP 30th annual 30 am about that one here in Raleigh, North Carolina. And it is swimming with problem solvers. Like the two gents that are in the house, Georgia, Joe, ReliabilityX get cracking legends. Thanks, man. They know more about reliability than I do. Which is pretty much 99% of everybody here. Because don't have any good show.
So far. It's been amazing. It's been an honor. You know, last year was kind of first time back this year is now like, you know, double so you get his excitement state used to have right so it feels normal, right? Yeah, I
was. I went up to the ballroom, because I can't understand the conversation. So I just sort of man knows his limitations. But I went up to the ballroom, and it was full. I was I was dazzled. You don't you don't get a sense you get. There's been there's stuff happening, man when you see them all in one room? Yeah. Yeah, homerun. Man, that's
been fantastic. You gotta like that
man. All right, for the listeners to this level set, because I can say Georgia is a hell of a guy. And I could say Georgia is that Joe is a hell of a guy. But tell us why. Joe, you start background
background, you know, 25 plus years as a practitioner, before going out on my own a lot of food and pharma. stuff and yeah. And in leadership roles, started out as a mechanic work my way up type of thing. And again, you know, I've been doing this for a long time, a lot of certifications. And a great business partner that makes me look good. So yeah,
you guys. Yeah. Yeah, you got, you have a trophy chest. Let's put it that way. But we can talk about that trophy. Later. George, give us a little background.
Yeah. So very similar. Joe started out as maintenance mechanic worked my way up in pharma, ultimately responsible globally, for reliability within that organization. cmrp CRL, all the fancy acronym CMRP of the Year award winner, all that great stuff. And then three years ago, we decided to partner up and I would start reliability yet.
I was there. I remember when they were just a fledgling company. I had to settle for allegedly. I don't
mean small. It sounds great.
Do you think it is I'm going to take grass a little bit here? Both of you have that farm of food background. Okay, cool. Do you think that there's greater adoption in those industries versus let's say, manufacturing? I think there's a focus for quality. Do you think that there's a greater adoption of that? I don't care if I throw it out for both you guys walk on each other? I don't care.
I'd say in pharma. There's a much, much greater expectation of it. And, and all of the processes are documented, but that doesn't mean they're good ones.
Right? Yeah. But this, this sort of is a bridge to the conversation we were having or having prior to the conference, this podcast. And that is all the technology, all of this all this is great stuff. You walk up and down the hall is like, oh, my gosh, that's a great tool. That's a great tool. That's a great tool. But the reality is, it's really a human equation. Right?
For sure. And I think, and we're seeing it a lot here too, is everyone's looking for that one thing. And there's a silver bullet, right. And I'm like, you know, if we came up with a software that they could download, that would eliminate all their problems.
I mean, that would be phenomenal. Wait, the CMMS doesn't do that?
Is reliability trashed? It is let's just
call it events. But everybody's looking for that thing and it doesn't exist and we've gotten away from understanding it's as simple as application of knowledge We're all here to learn. But what are we going to take back and apply to develop the skills necessary to get this stuff out of the system?
This is always the that. To me, it's there's inflation. So it's, it says, here's the $2 million question. And the $2 million question is where do you start? Who do you trust? It's like, again, I mean, I got all these tools, but I, I gotta find that trusted Sherpa. Where do I start? You do that? Do that? I think that's where we're at.
Yeah, I think everyone has a different level of where they're at. Right? Whether it's from an organization or personally, and how they tie into those things to make a difference. Some folks get hung up on what's the right one thing, when taking one step is better than no steps? And so, you know, I'm gonna
I'm gonna interrupt. Yeah, that one step gets knocked back real quick if that there's no continuity from the leaders. Yeah, no doubt. And that's frustrating.
Yeah. And so a connection and understanding of what the business objectives are, and how your assets achieve those objectives. And seeing where the value is missing? Where are we missing the value that produces the results for the company. And that value could be in operations in, in in either downtime or speed losses or things like that, where it could be in risk associated with your assets, depending on your industry, depending on lots of factors. And I think folks have to have an understanding of what's the value proposition of their asset? And how do I make sure that's what we're achieving? What often fouls and what our organization focuses on, is the training, the coaching and the education on exactly how to articulate that, so that you get a win and get support so that you can go down further path.
You know, I like I like defining, clearly defining a quick win. Because every everybody is just like, Yeah, show me show me, Joe, Joe, show me. And so when you when you go in to an organization reliability X, I want to give them a plug right here. The brain children of liability accident, and there's a fan that is that your fan,
that's our only fan, it's a website. Literally our only fan.
That's okay, man, we just, we're just excited that there's a fan, yes.
Yeah. So anyway, when you go into organizations, you go, how do you approach an organization and say, Hey, Hi, Joe, we have, we're feeling pain, I don't know what the pain is, I know that it's not right, I just sort of up in the air about the whole thing. How do you start to approach me where I'm just like, oh, my gosh, pain and pain everywhere? So how do you normally approach it.
So we have a series of tools and processes we put together when we walk in to assess basically the situation, and where their pain points are, and then showing them, you know, through training and, and, you know, just bringing awareness, basically, to what those problems are, and help them develop a strategy to go after those things. And so, I know, I do that all the time, with the clients that I'm working with, we you know, it kind of depends on the industry and things like that, how you're gonna approach it, but really it is is is getting people up to a level of awareness where they understand where the problem is, and then they getting helping them develop the competencies needed to help address the issues at hand. And so that, again, it comes through. So a lot of education and training and maybe hand holding as well, to get the ball.
I was gonna go down that road. So here's the deal. All right, I still, I'm paying I hear what you have to say, Joe, I, I'm all there. And I'm looking at the spreadsheet, whatever the process is. I'm on the whiteboard. Yes, I got it. When do you this? Do you Georgia? When do you just sort of say, All right, I'm going to start pulling off those training wheels a little bit, but I'm going to be coming back. I'm going to keep you a little stable. I'm going to how long as the typical engagement, what's what's that look like?
It is as long as it takes to evolve the culture to a point of ownership. There is no set time limit on that. If you move faster than you can evolve the culture you fell. Yeah. And so we focus on people, because that's the only place success comes from you call out the OEM vendor 25 times and they reset your machine In a pm in a week later, you're running like crap again. And that's a people thing. It's not a machine thing. And what we focus on is the we don't it's not cultural change, it's cultural evolution, you are bringing awareness, education, understanding. And when you get people far enough along the change curve, then you can implement if you implement before the culture is evolved enough to accept it, you fell
out, it makes sense to me, and I agree with you 100%. The, the area that it's always a human equation, it just is. So you know, Joe, you know, when when you've reached those milestones, of saying, okay, and, and I just throw this out, because if it's a human equation, you're having some challenging conversations with management and saying, Hey, Scott is the good guy, however, he's not in the right place. You know, do you have those conversations? Do those assessments do you have? I don't want to be in your shoes type conversations.
Yeah, I mean, they're the real, you have to Yes. So the way I look at it, right, is it's the 1080 10 rule. And that there's 10% of people in your organization that are ready for the change, and they want it they they welcome it, just 10 Yeah. And then there's 80% of the people 80% of the people are kind of your fence sitters. They've seen this before, or the month is coming. So until they start to see some success, they're just sitting back and waiting. The bottom 10% No matter what they're showing up to get their paycheck, and you're not gonna move them very far. So what we do is we set out to find that 10% and below or 10%, are they up the upper 10? Yeah, because the upper 10 will create the momentum necessary to reach a tipping
point those advocates in there, they get those? Yeah, right. And
so we got to the floor. You know, they know what some of the problems are, maybe I'm out there hand holding, helping them troubleshoot issues to make them go away that type of thing. So they're seeing it in action as well, and that they can replicate it. And then we get those little quick wins, there's always a low hanging fruit, they're fairly easy to identify and go after. And then you start to see people will pull off of the fence, the ones that are sitting on that fence and saying, Hey, I kind of liked this, Hey, this might work, hey, this is going to be different. Yeah. And you'll you'll get to a point over a period of time as you continue to solution some of these things that you'll hit your tipping point, that
again, you didn't get an answer my question? Yeah. What's George? Yes, do assessments to determine their capabilities, and then you know, because there's gonna be gaps, and then there's going to be one set, you're going to have to have that conversation. I think that that's the right. But then in a world of where we have tight resources and all that, I don't know how you guys doing? I'm gonna back away. So.
So what's interesting about your, your question and comment is, oftentimes for us people quit the organization. So that's interesting. So when we come in, and they realize that what the the new level, the new bar of expectation is outside of what they want in their career, they will oftentimes leave the organization. Right. And so and that happens, you know, with clients we work with, sometimes at the VP level, sometimes at the management level, and sometimes at the shop floor level. Some folks are perfectly happy just showing up and doing as little as possible. And when the bar and expectation are set differently, they have to make business decisions.
Which then begs the question of, okay, so you have this attrition, it's that's moving, it's happening everywhere. And people are cannibalizing other companies, whatever it is. Interesting time. Do you guys set up a sort of a plan of attack on how to keep that skilled funnel?
We're huge on developing the pipeline, especially when it comes to skilled trades. And what we do is we normally work with clients to develop their operators, because it's a lot easier to pull in operators than it is skilled trades. And so, you know, so in house in house upskill Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, you find, you know, and there's pros and cons, right? Typically, you're grabbing your best operators and working on them. So when you pull them, it leaves operation, sometimes at a deficit, but at the same time, they're still there and available and as long as you're documenting and doing things because that will help those upcoming operators, they're typically fun.
Yeah, I think you have to, especially in today's world, I think you have to sort of sweeten the opportunity to be a part of something bigger, right? That means training. That means I, if you guys are the expert, not be asking for their opinions, help us be a better company, whatever that that whole collaborative push, is because you're never going to achieve whatever you're trying to achieve. If you don't have that buy in that human buying, that's up, up and down. Chain.
It is and you communicate differently, and you work differently in that vertical, right. So down at the shop floor level, you know, you can't tell them, you're gonna get the cost savings for an initiative, that's they don't care about that that's not really relevant to them, right. It's about making their job easier, less stressful, giving them quality of life. And when you talk to senior leadership, it's about how those things achieve business objectives. If if we're not making people's jobs easier, we're failing.
How do you deal with because I can keep on riffing on and I know we need to go. But how do you deal with the fact that if you hammer the whole low hanging fruits, right? And everybody's like, yeah, that was easy. Look at the wonderful things that are going on, and then it levels out. And all of a sudden, those are all taken care of good. But then then the benefits or whatever, it just start to sort of level out, you have to have sort of that macro understanding that everything is is improved and efficient. You might not see that, wow, that's a million dollars to the bottom line that that's great. How do you deal with that? How does that story go?
So for me, it's, it's if we can get an organization to even be at a point where they think they've plateaued, we've done a hell of a job. I don't think so if the organization should not accept any defects. And so if they're to a point where they're in the minutiae, and you're trying to find the little tiny efficiency gains, if because we're now effective at that company is running in a world class state by them?
Well, I'm going after your low hanging fruit, the process and doing so is problem solving. And what you're doing is you're you're honing your problem solving skills through repetition. And then as it starts to plateau off, it's a lot of the chronic issues, the harder that have multi layer root causes, but it's the same process. And now that we've done this 6000 times, although it's a more difficult problem, and it might require, say, more funding or a reengineer or something like that. We still have the toolset to be able to to solution. It just might take us longer that
you guys are awesome. All right. Gotta wrap it up. Definitely can chirp on this for a long time. George, how did he get a hold of you?
They can reach us at www dot ATT reliability x.com, email us at ask at reliability x.com.
The company and that's that's how you get a hold of the big thinkers in the company. And LinkedIn, and LinkedIn, absolutely. Here's the deal. I'm going to have all the contact information out on industrial talk. So fear not, you will be able to get a hold of these two gems which you need to because they're I think you guys are addressing really the root cause of a lot of the, it's the technology is cool. I get the shiny look at it, and I got it. But it really is gets down to the human element. And I think that it's a great career. But
trust these guys, these are trusted Sherpas. All right. Once again, we're broadcasting for the 30th annual SMRP conference here in Raleigh, North Carolina. And as you can tell, we're hanging out with some incredible problem solvers. So stay tuned, we will be right back.
You're listening to the industrial talk Podcast Network.
All right, as we wrap up our conversation at the 30th annual s MRP conference I want to give a hearty thank you to both George Williams, CEO big wig and then Joe Anderson coo other big wig with reliability AX, they definitely know much about reliability. So you need to reach out to these two gents reliability X's the company will have all the contact information as you know out on industrial talk because you need to continue to educate, collaborate with those two guys and innovate because you need to keep that asset up and running. You need to be able to make that a focus because we need you to succeed and these two gents are passionate about your success. All right. Again, put SMRP on your No wonder if you're, if you're into maintenance, reliability, whatever it might be. That is a excellent, I mean, excellent conference for you to attend and I think this year No, no 2023 will be in Orlando say that's not bad either. So check that out. The contact and all the information for SMRP 31st annual will be out there. All right. Be bold, be brave, dare greatly hang out with George and Joe, and you're going to change the world. We're gonna have another great conversation coming to you from SMRP shortly so stay tuned.
About the author, Scott
I am Scott MacKenzie, husband, father, and passionate industry educator. From humble beginnings as a lathing contractor and certified journeyman/lineman to an Undergraduate and Master’s Degree in Business Administration, I have applied every aspect of my education and training to lead and influence. I believe in serving and adding value wherever I am called.
