On today’s episode of "The Maintainers," David and Jake sit down with the ever-insightful Ron Moore, managing partner at RM Group Inc., who shares his riveting journey from working on nuclear submarines to becoming a globetrotting consultant in reliability.
On today’s episode of "The Maintainers," David and Jake sit down with the ever-insightful Ron Moore, managing partner at RM Group Inc., who shares his riveting journey from working on nuclear submarines to becoming a globetrotting consultant in reliability.
Right off the bat, Ron shares stories about sky-high standards in nuclear sub maintenance, offering listeners a treasure trove of lessons about the importance of upstream defect management. Throughout the conversation, Ron dives into his master strategies for creating a seamless maintenance environment. He champions the significance of executive sponsorship, collaboration across departments, and genuine shop floor engagement.
Ron’s specific approach makes complex ideas accessible, stressing that effective training, the right tools, and strong leadership are the backbone of any successful maintenance program. As the chat transitions to the future of manufacturing, Ron offers his thoughts on AI and the critical role of a strong manufacturing base for national security. His candid views on these topics are both eye-opening and practical, making for a holistic discussion that addresses current challenges and future opportunities. With his knack for storytelling and an uncanny ability to simplify intricate concepts, Ron Moore provides a masterclass in reliability and operational excellence that will leave listeners both informed and inspired.
—
Guest Bio
Ron Moore is Managing Partner of The RM Group, Inc., and an internationally recognized authority on strategies and practices for operational and manufacturing excellence. He travels worldwide working with manufacturing companies in North and South America, Europe, Australia, Africa, and Asia.
Ron is also the author of “Making Common Sense Common Practice: Models for Operational Excellence,” of “What Tool? When? A Management Guide for Selecting the Right Improvement Tools,” of “Where Do We Start Our Improvement Program, of Business Fables & Foibles,” of “A Common Sense Approach to Defect Elimination,” and of “Our Transplant Journey: A Caregiver’s Story,” as well as author of over 80 journal articles. Ron has applied the principles described in these books worldwide to help companies to improve productivity and global competitive position.
Ron is a member of the Society of Maintenance and Reliability Professionals, a Certified Maintenance and Reliability Professional, and Fellow with the Electric Power Reliability Alliance. Prior to this, he was also a Senior Fellow with the University of Dayton's Center for Competitive Change, Chairman of its Manufacturing Series Advisory Board; a former advisory board member for the Instrumentation and Control Division of Lockheed Martin Energy Systems.
—
Guest Quote
“If you don't have good leadership alignment, teamwork, and so on, it doesn't matter what tool you use. It's not going to work. So the key to any effective organization is executive sponsorship, the sense of working collectively to a common purpose, the alignment, the culture, and so on. It's those kinds of things that really matter the most.” – Ron Moore
—
Time Stamps
00:00 Episode Start
01:35 Opening Icebreaker
03:20 Ron's Background
07:40 Surprising insights from nuclear sub maintenance
09:20 Segment 01: The Maintainer Mashup
10:00 Ron's perspective on maintenance and reliability practices
13:25 How Ron guides his clients in the right direction
17:55 Building strong partnerships for operational excellance
21:55 Segment 02: What's in Your Toolkit?
22:30 Discussing Ron's published works and lessons in operational excellance
29:48 Uncovering operational complexities in manufacturing
33:58 Segment 03: The Future of Factories
34:40 The future of manufacturing with new technology
44:05 Segment 04: Fix It Funnies
—
Links
Ron Moore: [00:00:00] Maintenance. Maybe we should call it maintenance.
Jake Hall: I'll fix it. I'm gonna fix it. Concentrate it. Maintain it. Maintain control.
David Lee: Maintenance complete. This is The Maintainers, a Bluecap Community Podcast. My name is David Lee, director at Tractian and your host for The Maintainers Show. And I'm Jake Hall, the
Jake Hall: Manufacturing Millennial.
Jake Hall: On today's episode, we're joined by Ron Moore. He's the managing partner of the RM Group Inc. Today, you're going to hear from Ron, how he started working in the industry on nuclear subs and, uh, Grand, uh, Connecticut and how he consults organizations across the world on reliability. Uh, but before we kick off today's episode, let's hear a word from our sponsor.
Voiceover: This podcast is brought to you by Tractian. Tractian offers streamlined hardware and software solutions designed to make maintenance more reliable and profitable. Their AI powered condition monitoring [00:01:00] and asset management solution predicts machine failures and eliminates all risk. Unplanned downtime, generating an average of 38 percent more productivity for clients worldwide.
Voiceover: It's artificial intelligence, quarterbacking your maintenance.
Jake Hall: Well, thanks for joining us today, Ron. First off, how are you doing? How are you feeling?
Ron Moore: Oh, fine. Glad to be here. I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you guys and share my thoughts about reliability.
Jake Hall: Now, before we get into reliability, you've been in the industry for a long time, so we want to know, where is your escape when you're getting burnt out?
Jake Hall: Where do you like to be? Where do you like to travel to? Where is your place of escape?
Ron Moore: I don't recall the last time I was burned out. I've, I've always enjoyed work and, you know, you get tired occasionally, but burned out, eh, I can't really relate to that at this point in my life. Uh, well, my wife and [00:02:00] I like to go to, uh, Florence, to Tuscany.
Ron Moore: That's my, that's our very favorite place in the world to visit. And if you haven't been there, I would encourage you to go see the architecture, the medieval history, the wine, the food. It's all just Yeah. Wonderful. Uh, maybe Ireland would be second choice, but when I'm home, I like to hike up in the Smoky Mountains, which are near here.
Ron Moore: And I found that to be very relaxing and pleasant and enjoyable, all that sort of thing.
David Lee: Awesome. You know, I wanted to touch on something you mentioned. You said that you can't relate to burnout and there's been a lot of studies that validated this recently. Burnout is not about overwork. But it's actually about feeling the lack of impact.
David Lee: So obviously what you do, you know, that you're impacting the globe and you're impacting your clients. So, uh, yeah, thank you for that. You sound like you've, uh, you've traveled all over the world and things. And, uh, and that's [00:03:00] wonderful. But before we dive in to your background, I just want to say thank you for participating in the upcoming documentary, Unturning Still, presented by the team at Tractian.
David Lee: Now, tell us a little bit about your background and how you got started in the industry.
Ron Moore: Okay. Uh, depends on how far you want to go back. I, I grew up, I'll give you some of that, you know, I grew up in Eastern Kentucky and in spite of the area, which isn't known for being high tech or advanced or maybe even backward really, uh, had great teachers, great parents and so on.
Ron Moore: Yeah. And from there, I had the good fortune to get an appointment to West Point. So, I spent three years there, got kicked out as a firstie, or a senior, for being married. Spent a couple of years in the Army as a chaplain's assistant, uh, working for a bunch of priests and ministers. And then from there, I [00:04:00] went back to school.
Ron Moore: I got my BS, MS in Mechanical Engineering, MBA, PE, CMRP, you know, all the usual. I got my BS, MS in Mechanical Engineering, MBA, PE, CMRP, you know, all the usual. Stuff that you might, uh, don't be too impressed by that. Okay. You just gotta be tenacious about applying what little talent you have. Anyways, my first job though, which is probably more to the point of what we're talking about here was working on nuclear submarines and I didn't really realize it at the time, but in retrospect, I look back and they had extraordinarily high standards, procedures, checklists, training, development, you know, all that sort of thing.
Ron Moore: And when you think about it, think about the reliability that's essential for a nuclear submarine. You know, if you're out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, And you're down, you know, several hundred feet below the surface, unplanned downtime takes on a whole new meaning in your [00:05:00] life. So, and, and then you throw on top of that, these submarines are being operated by 20 year olds and maintained, you know, by 20 and 30 year olds.
Ron Moore: So the standards for reliability, ease of operation, ease of maintenance, and the training and development that goes with it. Has to be extraordinary. So, but I only recognize that in retrospect, but I found it to be, looking back, found it to be kind of a seminal experience. Anyways, from there, I moved from Connecticut down to Knoxville, where I am now, and for the most part, I spent several years, maybe 20 years, Uh, working mostly in projects, coordinating and trying to get various functional groups to work together to a common purpose.
Ron Moore: And eventually, I became the president of a company called [00:06:00] CSI, and we made condition monitoring instruments and software technology. That allowed, you know, mostly heavy industry, DuPont, BP, Warehouser, you know, Alcoa, you know, mostly big, huge industrial operations to know when their equipment needed maintenance and to know about how much time they had left and so on.
Ron Moore: Perhaps more importantly, I learned more about how manufacturing operates work. It's not just the maintenance. It's. There are just a plethora of issues that have to be addressed if you want to have good reliability and so called operational excellence. And then, gosh, 30 years ago, I set out on my own, and I've been doing that ever since, working with companies around the world, mostly, again, in heavy industry, with a focus not so [00:07:00] much on condition monitoring as on high level performance of how you get the entire operation to work collectively.
Ron Moore: To some sort of common purpose and objective that relates to the success of the business. So that's probably enough, you know, for now on what I do. So Lucas,
Jake Hall: as, as a quick follow up question, just with me being a military history and I guess you could say nerd along the way, um, what was the most surprising thing when you were working on these nuclear subs when it came to a maintenance or reliability process or procedure that just kind of was like, wow, I never thought of that until.
Jake Hall: It was mentioned to me. Is there anything you can add to that?
Ron Moore: Yeah, to me, uh, the design that, you know, those steps they went through to make sure the design was correct and all the, uh, what, the attention to detail about the standards that were applied for, say, welding, for installation. [00:08:00] You know, I mean, imagine putting a nuclear reactor inside a 40 foot diameter tube.
Ron Moore: You know, you got to know how to get it in and get it out. You can't just say, well, boys, what we're going to do today? You know, so the, all that was given extraordinarily detailed thought. And of course, at the time being a young engineer, I'm kind of irritated with it, but I'd rather to irritate me than to irritate the sailors who are trying to get the work done after the fact.
Ron Moore: So again, it's a retrospective perspective about. All the attention to detail that went to this. And a lot of that was driven by Admiral Rickover. He set exceptionally high standards that everybody knew and knew they had to follow and he got it most of the time. So you can substitute the word real. No, no,
Jake Hall: I love, I love the authenticity there, Ron.
Jake Hall: Let's, let's roll with him. [00:09:00] You know, so now that we know a little bit more about you, I think this is a great opportunity to jump into the first segment of the show, which is the maintainers mashup. That's really. Where we dive deeper into equipment, management, um, uh, creating structures around teams that really move maintenance and, um, make it more reliable.
Jake Hall: Maintenance required. Listen, I maintain. I maintain myself. Maintain course. Maintain speed. I gotta maintain respect. So, you know, as a consultant, you know, can you give, you have a unique perspective. Uh, when it comes to how organizations run their maintenance and reliability practices, can you talk more about just the stories and the insights that you have around these topics when it comes to you as a consultant and how you're supporting these companies?
Ron Moore: Well, most organizations, and you can give them credit for running it. Uh, [00:10:00] a lot of them run it poorly. Most of them are fairly mediocre and a few of them are really superb. And, you know, I'd say one or two, or maybe 5 percent are superb. And the rest of them are kind of, yeah, we're doing what we can, you know, And, and that's not because they're bad people or incompetent people.
Ron Moore: These are really fine people. They know how to do the work for the most part, but they're put in a position where the defects overwhelm their ability to actually do a superb job. And the defects are coming mostly from upstream, from poor operating practices, poor procurement, you know, focused on price instead of You know, capability and poor design, you know, a lot of these plants are not designed for ease of operation, ease of maintenance, and of course, reliability.
Ron Moore: And so when you compound that [00:11:00] effect, by the time it gets to maintenance, they don't control most of the issues related to the equipment. And, and moreover, they surely don't control a lot of the issues related to production because you got other issues around production where you have changes in your processes, changes in your products, startup and shutdown procedures, you know, uh, raw material issues and so on.
Ron Moore: So unless you take a systems level, holistic view of your production process, Then maintenance has very little control over the entire, you know, system level set of issues around reliability and operational excellence. Having said that, absolutely essential for that because they have to deal with all the upstream issues which finally arrive at their feet.
Ron Moore: So you've got to have, you know, really good [00:12:00] maintenance planning, you've got to have really good condition monitoring and so on. But if you don't address the upstream defects. Well, among other things, you'll be, you know, doing a lot of work efficiently that you shouldn't be doing at all. So, it's, it's kind of that, uh, systems level perspective that I rarely see.
Ron Moore: And without that, you can not have good reliability and operational excellence.
David Lee: You've made some really good points there. Um, one thing I've noticed is a lot of those issues that are happening upstream, they still tend to fall on the shoulders of the maintenance. Uh, at least that that's the view of the people who are actually there with them.
David Lee: Um, now let's say you now have a new client, right? It sounds like you've been working with clients all across the globe, all across America, and a diversity of clients, uh, where you'll, you'll have to speak to different [00:13:00] people in the hierarchy. So let's say you enter a new company, a new plant, and you see these different issues.
David Lee: Uh, but you don't necessarily think they're aligned correctly and what the real issue is. How do you, how do you address the situation? How would you enter? What are your steps that you would take to kind of show them and point them in the right direction, uh, as you being the expert and getting them to basically listen to you and see what you're seeing?
Ron Moore: Well, it kind of depends on where I go in. You know, if I go in at a plant level, what, what the site manager cares about is, is production on quality production on time in full at the lowest sustainable cost. And so I try to speak to that issue on how that can be addressed with some of the things I've observed in the plant.
Ron Moore: Now, the guy, his boss, the VP of operations, or maybe even the CEO, and I've done a few of these for CEOs of, you know, really big companies, you know, part of the fortune, not just fortune [00:14:00] 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average. In any event, what they care about is the money. So in one instance, one of these companies, you know, my first slide was 180, 000, 000, just the numbers, 180, 000, 000, that was the only thing on the slide.
Ron Moore: And you know, I just let that sit for 10 or 15 seconds, which seems like an eternity, you know. Anyways. And I said, all right, now that I've got your attention, let me tell you how we're going to get this. Cause I had been in several of their plants and knew notionally where they were more or less and what additional capacity they had, what their gross profit was and what their maintenance costs were.
Ron Moore: And what I've found is in most operations, you have probably another 10 percent or more additional capacity in [00:15:00] those assets that require. Little, maybe even no additional capital investment. And you have probably 10 percent or more additional opportunity to reduce your maintenance costs. So what's that worth?
Ron Moore: Now that 10 percent is not through cost cutting. You know, any idiot can go in and shave 10 percent of the workforce off, but what are they doing to make sure that that doesn't impact the other 90 percent to the detriment of the entire organization? And so. You know, and the fundamental focus is so called defect elimination.
Ron Moore: Some people call it process improvement. You know, doesn't really matter what you call it, but what you're trying to do is make sure you eliminate the faults in the system that result in loss production or extraordinary costs. And so that's at that level. Now, at the shop floor level, what do they [00:16:00] care about?
Ron Moore: What they really care about is how are you going to make my life easier? You know, I come into work and I got all these obstacles. I can't get the parts. I can't, the procedures are screwed up. You know, they won't let me have the equipment, you know, and they know more about what the issues are than the guy that's running the site.
Ron Moore: So a lot of time I spend just with the guys on the floor. You know, I have this phrase I use, if you want to understand the problems with the work. Talk to the workers. I mean, what a simple concept, you know, but, but too many people don't use it. And maybe later, I know you've got one section you're mapped out where we might, I might tell you a little anecdote or two about just that.
Ron Moore: Just go talk to the guys doing the work and they'll tell you what's wrong. And then, then I'll go back to the site manager and he thinks I'm a genius. [00:17:00] I'm not a genius. I just know who to talk to.
Jake Hall: I think that just, that, that, that brings up my next question that you had, Ron, where it was, it was, it was a great ad where you talked about people aren't going to buy into it unless it's making their life easier, you know?
Jake Hall: And when we talk about the keys to success when it comes to manufacturers and how they implement maintenance reliability solutions, you know, one of them we had on a mention here was the production and the maintenance partnership.
And I think
Jake Hall: from that, that's the individual levels that are working on the equipment every single day.
Jake Hall: They have their hands in the equipment. But there's also a level of. Executive, I guess there's, there's three things, executive sponsorship, there's a production and a maintenance partnership, and then there's also the shop floor engagement. Can you dive more into, I guess, the other discussions that, the other segments that you want to talk about with that?
Ron Moore: Yeah, sure. The, the executive sponsorship, now I use the phrase sponsorship to [00:18:00] differentiate it from management or the leadership or whatever it may be, and those are concepts that, you know, I could talk about for a while, but. The, the point about sponsorship is this, if, if I'm an executive, I can't just come to you, Jake, and say, okay, reliability, I want some, here's some money, go find it and then walk away.
Ron Moore: You know, check that box and walk away. It requires active engagement in the process. It requires me to come to you and participate in all the activities that you've got ongoing to demonstrate my support. It requires me treating it. Kind of very much the same as I would treat safety, right? Now, if we had somebody seriously injured, I would be involved personally.
Ron Moore: Well, if you don't have good reliability, you're going to have more of that. I've got the data, you know, the, the [00:19:00] poorer your reliability, the greater the risk to safety injuries, you know, environment and to major accidents. And so, unless you have that sponsorship, where there's an active, you know, engagement in demanding, supporting, rewarding, punishing, you know, expecting these things to happen, then it gets less emphasis.
Ron Moore: Okay? Now, the production maintenance partnership, Is one where, for example, the production manager and the maintenance manager are both held accountable for production schedule compliance, maintenance schedule compliance, and maintenance and repair costs, because in most of these plants, too often, Production blames maintenance for the failures.
Ron Moore: Maintenance blames production for not letting them have the equipment or running it into the ground. Well, if I [00:20:00] hold you both accountable for both of those things, with production in the lead, production has the lead. I want to emphasize that point. Then, you have to do what? Well, you have to work together to address the issues and come to a, you know, a common conclusion about what's the right thing to do for the business as opposed to my department.
Ron Moore: And when you have that along with a shop floor engagement process, you're far more likely to be successful. But if you don't have that process, you're You know, that executive sponsorship, if you don't have the production maintenance partnership either formally written or informal, and if you don't have that shop floor engagement process, it's not going to happen for you.
Ron Moore: I'll guarantee it. So, you know, folks tend to act autonomously in their little department, and some of that's necessary. It's essential, [00:21:00] right? You've, you've got things you do independently of the other guy. When you have task interdependence, then you have to work together for the greater good of the organization.
Ron Moore: Deferring to doing the right thing for the company, as opposed to your little patch. So, those, you know, whatever I said, three or four things, become an essential part of a proper reliability and OPEX program.
David Lee: Awesome. Yeah. So this has turned into a masterclass for all those who have a project that they need to get going in their company.
David Lee: How do you actually articulate these issues and what the solution is? Right. So thank you for that, Ron. That, that was a really good points there. But now to transition into our next segment, uh, let's talk UXL And, uh, I would like to hear about what's in your toolkit.
Ron Moore: We're going to fix it. Get the tool.
Ron Moore: [00:22:00] Pick the one right tool. The right tool for the right job.
David Lee: All right. So now with all of this experience and this knowledge that you have, it only makes sense that you wrote about it, right? So can you talk about, uh, your books and things? And for the audience, he is a published author. So I'd love to hear about that.
Ron Moore: Yeah, well, I've written six books, five of which apply to reliability, operational excellence. The most popular one is the first one. It was written, I think the first edition came out in 1999. So, it's been around for 25 years, and it's now in its sixth edition, and it's called Making Common Sense, Common Practice.
Ron Moore: And, you know, most of what's in the book is literally what you might call common sense, but far too often, [00:23:00] or more often than not, it's not common practice. And so, what I tried to do in the book is take a fictitious company. And describe some of my experience in working with various and sundry companies, it just kind of glommed them into a single company and address issues around leadership, alignment, uh, managing cultural change, you know, performance measures, you know, and that sort of thing.
Ron Moore: Uh, and then address particular topics, design practices, procurement practices. You know, stores, practices, installation startup practices, operating practices, and of course, maintenance practices. And then throw in there some of the common tools like RCM, TPM, maintenance planning and scheduling. And, and use that fictitious company to describe some of my experiences in working with, well, literally hundreds of companies out there.[00:24:00]
Ron Moore: And give folks case studies so they can relate to, you know, to a case study far more than they can relate to me, uh, yammering on about one thing or another. And that one is, well, it's been around a long time. Um, of course, if it's a good book and popular, you have to write a sequel. Right? So I wrote a sequel, you know, it's called What Tool When, you know, what tool should you use and when should you use it?
Ron Moore: And it's a kind of provides a hierarchy and covers all the more common and popular tools. With that said, though, my experience has been if you have good leadership, good alignment, teamwork, partnerships, and good shop floor engagement, it doesn't matter what tool you use. You'll figure out how to make it work for you.
Ron Moore: If you don't have good leadership, [00:25:00] alignment, you know, teamwork and so on, uh, it doesn't matter what tool you use, it's not going to work. So key to any effective organization are those things that we alluded to or talked about earlier and that is the executive sponsorship, the sense of working collectively to a common purpose, the alignment, the culture and so on.
Ron Moore: So it's, those kinds of things really matter the most. Anyways, from there I wrote a book, you know, Where Do We Start Our Improvement Program? That's uh, touched on in Making Common Sense Common Practice. And I wrote another book, uh, A Common Sense Approach to Defect Elimination. And it's a bunch of case studies that talk about some real simple things you can do to address the defects and, and have a better performance.
Ron Moore: And then, uh, I wrote A [00:26:00] book called Business Fables and Foybles, and that's 35 short stories about the screw ups I've seen people make in plants around the world that were just so obvious. You know, once you see the mistake, can you go, why'd I do that for? I don't know. You did it. So that, that one's more of a beach read, you know, the first two books, the common sense and the what tools when.
Ron Moore: Those are, well, you got to want to read those. Okay. They're not easy reads.
Jake Hall: So, so Ron, with one discussion points that you had in those books, you talked about how, um, within maintenance that maintenance is maybe too heavily emphasized compared to reliability and how maybe it's one of those things that we should be focusing on more on the reliability of our equipment and our processes and our products.
Jake Hall: More than the maintenance of them. Can you, can you dive more into [00:27:00] that?
Ron Moore: Well, I mean, certainly I agree with that because by the time, you know, maintenance gets the equipment, everything's already been predetermined. I mean, the reliability has been preordained before they even get it. You know, if, if I'm designing something and I select, you know, poor efficiency motors, poor efficiency pumps.
Ron Moore: You know, use a carbon steel instead of stainless steel because it's cheap and it's easy to get in. Then the maintenance guys are at a serious disadvantage. Or if when I'm buying stuff, I buy for price instead of performance or so called total cost of ownership. Or if the storeroom is, it is an afterthought, you know, as they say, you know, a redheaded stepchild or whatever the euphemism is.
Ron Moore: If it's not treated like a business. As it should be and run like a business, then the parts aren't going to be there. And so you're going to suffer [00:28:00] more loss production. You're going to suffer increased maintenance costs because you don't have an effective storeroom with the right parts when folks need them.
Ron Moore: And of course, if you, you know, start things up, uh, if the procedures aren't well defined, if they're not well trained and so on and so forth, then you're going to induce more defects. So it, it's all those things. I don't know. I've kind of touched on those earlier, but I don't know if I've answered your question or not.
Ron Moore: Oh, and you, you gotta have good maintenance too, you know, good planning and scheduling, good condition monitoring and all that sort of thing. Maintenance gets a whole lot easier when you address all those things upstream and do a better job there. It's, it's that, again, it's, it's that task interdependence that we need to, you know, Assure is addressed so that we work collectively to a common purpose.
Ron Moore: And if you think about task [00:29:00] interdependence, I mean, even in your business, right, who do you depend on to get things done so that you can be effective for your business? So it's that kind of mindset that you have to go at this with in order to be effective across the entire organization.
David Lee: Yeah. You've, uh, you've raised some really good key points here, and, uh, I'm sure our audience is really enjoying some of these topics as they highly impact, uh, your business.
David Lee: Our lives as maintenance professionals and as industrial professionals as well. Now, I do have a question though, would you be able to tell us maybe a fun story as you've literally written a book, as you just said, on stories in, uh, in this context, so would you be willing to share like maybe a short story, uh, to kind of drive the point home, uh, anything that you think the audience would be interested in?
Ron Moore: Um, yeah, sure. Uh, the one that came to mind when you asked that question was, you know, I was at a steel mill, and in fact, I'd been called by one of their senior folks to come up and [00:30:00] do an RCM type analysis, you know, failure modes and effects and all that sort of thing. And I don't enjoy those. They're boring.
Ron Moore: They're tedious. So I called a friend of mine and I said, Bill, I've got a job for you, but I'll bring you up there and introduce you and so on. So we went to the site and we did a little bit of chit chat, you know, as you do. And I said, well, you know, before we do this RCM analysis, which takes several days and involves a lot of labor hours and, you know, I said, I want to go talk to the operator.
Ron Moore: Now, the, the, the machine or the process was a thing called a scarfer. I don't know if you know what a scarfer is, but it's a big box shaped blowtorch. It's about three feet wide and about a. Foot and a half deep, and you slide slabs of steel through it, and it has burners every centimeter or so that literally burn, oxidize the top layer of, uh, [00:31:00] steel off of the steel.
Ron Moore: It's a quality control measure you use to minimize crack propagation into the steel. Anyways, go out to the operator of the scarfer, and I said, uh, you know, what, what's going on here? People are complaining that it's not very reliable. Could you? Maybe describe that a little bit. And he said, well, we got a couple of problems.
Ron Moore: He said, one of them is the, um, the burners, they heat up and they sag and they tend to damage things. And, uh, and that's because the cooling fluid, the filters aren't being changed often enough. So they overheat. Well, I mean, I'm no genius, but sounds like an easy fix to me. You know, let's change the filters more often or put a system on there to detect the differential pressure across the filter and change it when it needs it.
Ron Moore: Okay, got that one. I said, [00:32:00] what else? He said, well, the biggest one is they send me crooked steel and you know, I've only got certain clearances in there and it jams or rubs or bumps the scarfer and damages it. If they'd send me straight steel, we wouldn't have these problems. Okay, so I'll go up to the rolling mill operator and say, what's the problem, you can't send them straight steel?
Ron Moore: And he says, well, uh, I got a little bit of a problem. He said that when I get the slabs, they're cold on one side. So when I roll the steel, it curls a little bit. So I can't keep it straight. Isn't that interesting? So go up to the ovens operator where they pre treat the steel for the rolling process. They said, what's the problem?
Ron Moore: You can't send him, you know, uniform temperature slabs so he can roll them. He said, well, the supervisor told me to leave the tops off the ovens. Cold air goes down the [00:33:00] sides and it cools them off. But he's told me I got to get my production up. That's the only way I can do it. Okay. Now I'm willing to, I didn't go see the site manager at that point, but I'm willing to bet you the site manager had told this guy, you better get your production up or I'm going to have your butt.
Ron Moore: Right. I'm willing to bet that I never did confirm that. So, and I've come across that. A lot. Okay. Wow. Where one area is functioning as if the other areas don't exist in order to get their area functioning higher. And then that, the impact of that just kind of goes boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Yeah.
Ron Moore: Until the very end, things are a mess.
Jake Hall: So, Ron, this is a good transition to move into, you know, our next segment, which is The future of factories, you know, it's where we cover new trends that you're seeing in the industry.
Meet the future.
David Lee: To [00:34:00] our futures.
Jake Hall: What future? The factory. My factory. Everybody's factory.
David Lee: I love your factory. My factory. My laws.
Jake Hall: With a lot of experience that you've had from, from going to this facilities and talking to these experts, I feel like there's, there's a, uh, a lot of new players in the field when it comes to new technology. So. What do you think the industry should focus on when it comes to manufacturing and within maintenance and reliability?
Jake Hall: Where, where does AI, where does recruiting, how does bringing jobs back to the States, can you add some insight on to what that would look like?
Ron Moore: Well, um, as you may guess, may have guessed already, I'm not big into, even though I ran a technology company, when I did that, I was more into helping people work together to a common purpose.
Ron Moore: You know, I had good engineers and good technicians and good software guys. I mean, they, [00:35:00] they knew this stuff. They were just fantastic. And so, the technologists out there, for example, AI, I think, have mixed feelings, actually. You know, based on what little bit I know. It has the potential to be a dramatic, like, dramatic improvements in productivity of the individuals because they skipped through some mundane tasks that aren't really necessary.
Ron Moore: But it also has the potential to do great harm, you know, where people are using it, you know, bad actors are using it, influence folks in a negative way. Now that's more on the political front. So from a technology standpoint, I think it has great potential. From a political standpoint, I think, Really concerns me.
Ron Moore: I mean, it's already bad enough, all these social platforms spreading lies and misinformation and just stupid stuff. And now we got a tool that will [00:36:00] amplify that. So, concerns me a great deal. Now, having said that though, let's, you know, some of the other technology like condition monitoring and, you know, maintenance planning and scheduling systems, CMMSs and all that sort of thing.
Ron Moore: I think those are great tools. Problem that I see with those, though, is that people, well, use an analogy. Buying a CMMS and putting planners and schedulers in place and expecting that you're going to suddenly be a whole lot better is kind of like buying Word. And handing it to folks and saying, here, write a novel.
Ron Moore: I gave you the tool, you know, what's wrong? So, there has to be some sort of connection between the work, the processes, the tools, and so on, so that you have an effective solution that uses the tool to enhance your productivity, you know, by virtue of application of the tool. [00:37:00] And in my view, we spend a whole lot of time focused on technology and not nearly enough time focused on You know, what some people call blocking and tackling, right?
Ron Moore: You're getting the basic training of folks who know how to do the work and then give them the tool or train them in the use of the tool as opposed to saying, here's a tool, go figure out how to use it. So there's, there's some fundamental elements that are missing in most of these companies wherein, well, I sent you the training, you spent two days figuring it out, didn't you?
Ron Moore: Can't you use it?
Well,
Ron Moore: no, is the short answer. You don't really. Understand how to use a tool until you've used it time and time and time again. And too often folks assume that just cause you've been to a two day or a week long course, well, you're proficient now, not even close. So [00:38:00] that's, that's one of the issues as far as recruiting and, you know, getting folks into the company.
Ron Moore: I'm a big fan of the Toyota approach and that is you hire for aptitude and attitude, because if you got those right. Then we can teach you how to do what we want you to do. Our training and development systems are excellent. Our supervisory, uh, staff has been there and done that and they know how to do it.
Ron Moore: And I'm going to give you a lot of hands on skill development as opposed to staring at a bunch of, you know, what, PowerPoint slides. The, you know, tactile visual training is far more important. And doing it in small doses, two to four hours. I teach you a little bit, have you do it, teach you a little bit, have you do it, and so on.
Ron Moore: And when you do it that way, you're going to be far more successful at having the proper skills. [00:39:00] And, and again, you know, doing the basic stuff. And all those tools are very often used as solutions, and they're not solutions, they're tools to help you apply these principles effectively within the organization.
Ron Moore: Anyways, I've preached probably enough on that point. There was no, uh, manufacturing, wasn't there? You wanted me to talk a little bit about that? You know, I, I see manufa you know, uh, Greenspan, I think, he said, original wealth comes from manufacturing, mining, and agriculture. Now, we're pretty good mining, and we're pretty good at agriculture if you just look at the productivity in those areas, although mining, frankly, it needs work.
Ron Moore: But manufacturing, our, our manufacturing, I think, is an issue around [00:40:00] national security, economic security, and, for that matter, national defense security, because if we're having to go particularly to folks like China for critical items. You know, like rare earth minerals, metals, wow, we're at incredible risk for that.
Ron Moore: Or if we're having to go to, you know, the Middle East for oil and natural gas, whoa, or aluminum from, you know, some foreign country. And all that needs to happen is that those supply chains disrupted either by virtue of a political situation or by virtue of a military situation even. And. You know, we're at serious, serious risk.
Ron Moore: So I think there needs to be a, and chips, didn't mention chips, you know, 90 percent of the chips I'm told, I don't know the numbers, come from [00:41:00] Taiwan. Well think about that and the risk we're taking in not having our own chip factories here. So yeah, I'm a big fan of, you know, improving our manufacturing base and our capabilities for not just for our economy, but also for our national security.
Ron Moore: And I think, I think personally that it's essential.
Yeah. Absolutely. I haven't said that.
Ron Moore: We, we still want to have good trade relations with all those folks, but we want to do it by virtue of, from a position of strength, not a position of weakness. And right now, we got some areas where we're in a position of weakness.
David Lee: Absolutely. Yeah, you know, um, it's important to have these conversations. Um, and look at this with a very sober lens, because as you mentioned, national security starts to become a big theme in this, right? So I, I really appreciate your words there. And then you, you also talked about, you know, the, the [00:42:00] future of the different issues that we, uh, We're having to face here.
David Lee: So I really appreciate that. Now, transitioning to the next section, which we call Fix It Funnies. I want to talk to you a little bit about some different things here. Uh, but before we dive into that, uh, what do you feel looking at all these different issues you mentioned? Do you feel that these are insurmountable issues or do you see any that could be insurmountable, uh, just to transition us over, I just wanted to ask you that quick question before we, we press on.
Ron Moore: Um, the, the short answer is they're not insurmountable, I don't think. The key issue in my mind is, is, are the leaders of this country and the leaders of these large companies are, do they understand the importance of reliability, operational excellence, you know, strong manufacturing base, not just from [00:43:00] their little patch perspective, of course they do.
Ron Moore: But from a perspective of the strategic importance it is to this country, and I think intellectually they do, I'm just not sure that we've come to a proper political solution to all that so that we think more broadly about our role in the world and how we fit in and the importance of our leadership in the world, you know, for manufacturing, technology.
Ron Moore: Uh, you know, militarily, all that sort of thing. And it's a bit of a, right now we're in a bit of a conundrum because we have such strong diametrically opposed opinions and it's very, it's very concerning to me. So I'll, on that note, I'll pause and we can go on to something a little less weighty.
David Lee: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
David Lee: No, that was all [00:44:00] super appreciated. Uh, very, very important things, but transition over to, uh, the fix it funny's
Ron Moore: the fix is in. It's making a really funny noise. I'm gonna fix it. Make it funny. Would be great if you could make it funny. Your fate is fixed.
Let it funny. Make sure it's funny.
David Lee: Uh, at the start of the episode, Jake asked you where you'd like to escape and get your much needed vacations.
David Lee: So, now on the other hand, I'd like to ask you about, do you have any sort of work hacks, right? Are you wearing specific insoles, or do you, do you keep a power bar in your pocket at all times, or a specific, uh, any sort of thing like that that would, uh, that would be entertaining for the, for the, uh, the audience to hear?
Ron Moore: Well, I don't know about entertaining, but it's just things that I do, I'm kind of OCD, just ask my wife, you know, uh, I, I weigh myself every morning as soon as I get up, I go to the bathroom, I come out and I weigh myself, and I do that [00:45:00] for, it's a real simple thing to do, I do that because I don't, it's called short interval control process in process control, you know, real short intervals.
Ron Moore: So you don't go through this excursion, right, where, you know, you don't look for whatever a year, and you look down and you go, damn, what happened? I've gained 20 pounds. So it's just, you know, my way of saying, oh, I can't have pie tonight or something like that, just to keep things in control, you know. And another thing I do, I, I, And I started doing this decades ago, just after I got out of school, or maybe I was in school.
Ron Moore: I don't remember. It's given a list, to do list, and a to call list. People I have to call, things I have to do, and there's a check mark out with each one. One check means, yeah, that's important, two means, boy, you're late, and three means, man, [00:46:00] you're screwed. You know? It's too late. So, so, and then the ones that don't have a check mark, well, I've, you know, keep checking those from day to day to have the check mark as needed.
Ron Moore: So it, you know, it's just something that keeps me organized and on track about doing what I need to do. And it's handwritten, right? This is not on a phone or a computer, you know. It's on a piece of paper. You know, I'm low tech in that regard.
Jake Hall: So Ron, if you were in this industry within manufacturing and maintenance and reliability, what industry would you have gone into?
Ron Moore: Yeah, I'd probably be a doctor because that's, that's just something that appealed to me in my younger years. But as I got a little older, I started, you know, looking at other opportunities and so on. And, and the funny thing is, the initial plan was, yeah, to be a doctor back when I [00:47:00] was, you know, just young in high school even.
Ron Moore: And I thought, man, that's going to take seven years or more, right, to go through residency. And I thought, I don't want to wait that long. Well, guess what? It took me seven years to get my BS. So, I probably coulda, shoulda, woulda been a doctor, but here we are now. And it, you know, as they say, it worked out.
Ron Moore: You know, what do you do when, you know, things don't go like you've planned? Well, you adapt and adjust and move on. So, that's what I've done. And so far, it's worked out. And I'm getting old, so. You know, I reckon it will work out as we continue forward.
David Lee: Well, Ron, to a degree, you did become a doctor, but just a doctor for manufacturers, right?
David Lee: Well, by the [00:48:00] way, that sixth,
Ron Moore: sorry, that sixth book that I wrote was about my wife's liver transplant. You know, it was all the lessons learned as a part of helping her, you know, pre transplant, during transplant, and post transplant. So, I picked up a lot about the medical profession as a part of doing that, and some, some of them don't really appreciate my comments, because I'm looking for defects, right?
Ron Moore: And they don't appreciate me pointing them out to them. But anyways, there's a book, I wrote a book about it, you know, sorry, but, you know, interrupted you there, go ahead.
David Lee: No, I appreciate that. I'm actually going to check it out. So, so, yeah, no worries there. Now, one question I do have for you. Are you enjoying any particular pieces of content, whether it be TV shows, radio shows, uh, podcasts, uh, anything of that nature that you would like to talk about briefly to [00:49:00] the audience?
Ron Moore: Well, I don't care much for the drivel on TV. I like PBS and Nature and Nova and, you know, those things. I like, uh, what else do I like? I don't know. Those are the things I do like. And I enjoy, I like basketball, although my team just,
Ron Moore: I'm a big Kentucky fan. Okay. And three years running now they've underperformed. So I'm really irritated right now about that.
Jake Hall: Yeah. You, I'm sure. Yeah. Watching, watching March Madness, uh, this time this year was probably not a fun time for you at all.
Ron Moore: No, it was awful, but you know, you get over it, move on.
Ron Moore: Y'all.
Jake Hall: Yeah, so I guess one final question for you, um, if you were to work on a unique piece of machinery or equipment, you know, what would you, what would you like to work on? If you could work on [00:50:00] anything, do maintenance, design anything in the world, what would it be?
Ron Moore: Well, uh, actually my first car was a 1950 Pontiac with a straight flathead eight and the spark plugs went into the top of the engine.
Ron Moore: I would actually kind of like to go back and work on something like that because it's simple, it's easy, it's something I can do, you know, without a lot of, uh, training on electronics and so on. You know, it had an oil bath air filter, it had a, you know, a generator, not an alternator, and everything was right there.
Ron Moore: It was easy, even I could work on it, so, you know, it's probably something like that, you know, now that's not a big complex machine like a compressor or, you know, a big, uh, enormous turbine or anything like that, but, you know, I [00:51:00] tend to lean towards simple stuff that's easy to do, that's enjoyable to do.
Ron Moore: That's it.
David Lee: Awesome. Well, Ron, thanks again for coming to the show. It was great to have you. And also, by the way, thank you for your service as well. This has been The Maintainers, a Bluecap Community Podcast. Please don't forget to subscribe wherever you consume your podcasts, as we are on most of them. Major platforms.
David Lee: So you will be able to be notified the next time we have an episode going live.
Voiceover: This podcast is brought to you by Tractian. Tractian offers streamlined hardware and software solutions designed to make maintenance more reliable and profitable. Their AI powered customers. Condition Monitoring and Asset Management Solution predicts machine failures and eliminates unplanned downtime, generating an average of [00:52:00] 38 percent more productivity for clients worldwide.
Voiceover: It's artificial intelligence quarterbacking your maintenance.