Maintenance Renaissance Launch Tomorrow in Milan

This week is the perfect week to launch the International Maintenance Renaissance and perfect location.

Learned that a young man of 17 years old died last week because a poorly maintained roof collasped in Turin, Italy. Also viewed a 500 year old fresco paintings that are fading away because of roof leaks that are too expensive to repair. It is literally a crying shame to see masterpieces deteriorate because ineffective preventive maintenace programs. There has to be some inexpensive technology to help preserve our vestages of the past.

Stay tuned for future pictures of the Leonardo Da Vinci Museum of Science and Technology. This was truly a fascinating museum and a great inspirational tool to get more interested in engineering and technology.

Saw in the New York Times that Hezobollah has developed an army of future soldiers in their terrorist quest.

That is when I realized we need to create a Tech army and start young and get them active. We can build on existing programs Robotic contests, Youthbuild and Skills USA competitions. The world needs an army of technicians to battle senseless casualties caused by preventable disasters.

Yes, we have to do more to fix it forward and hopefully after this weeks series of events and the launch of PAS55 more will help repair for tomorrow. We need a new generation of innovations to conquer these challenges.

Hopefully, more will join in and step up to the plate to fix it forward.

Small World Story

Hello again, this is Joel Leonard and I am to depart Amsterdam tomorrow morning to speak at the Leonardo Da Vinci Museum of Science and Technology on Monday and launch the Maintenance Renaissance.

As I was catching up on some work at the business center met Javier Valla, a GM Lead Technician from Fremont, California who is taking his first trip to Europe to recharge his batteries. He was busy searching the web to chart his trip and research the historical locations of old europe.

We got to talking. His mom was the first lady to pass the electricians certification at the GM plant and she was a maintenance woman and Javier is a maintenance technician who is looking to prepare for changes in his career. Although the current economic situation looks bleak, he has a positive attitude and knows that if he continues to elevate his skill sets to handle the new technology and he will have a bright future.

His mom Martha Quesada is now an electrical instructor at the GM plant and Javier can't wait to share with her the song "Find me a Maintenance Woman." http://www.mpactlearning.com/maintenance_crisis_song/FindMeAMaintenanceWoman.wma

Stay as tuned we hope to post this video on SkillTV soon and who knows who else I might bounce into.

Green Movement may be looking to Greensboro

Check out this post by Tom Lassiter of Action Greensboro reporting an idea to advance a mid size town to international prominence by leveraging its name. Hopefully the leaders of the Triad work to take this opportunity to propel this concept to execution. http://springboard.actiongreensboro.org/2008/11/21/claiming-green-leadership/

Royal Mail engineering for success and fighting for respect

Above is Tim Jones, director of engineering for the Royal Mail Service. He has been working feverishly to develop, and implement systems to advance the reliability performance of their machines. Below are some of the slides of his presentation given at the Marcus Evan's Enterprise Asset Management Conference. Very interesting perspectives. Alot more goes into getting the mail that most would ever imagine.

If Jay Leno or Letterman ever got to tour or visit postal services perhaps they would not be as brutal with their jokes.

Joel Leonard

SkillTV.net

Major Breakthrough against corporate apathy and ignorance toward maintenance and reliability performance-

Pass it on-- Pas 55 to be launched Nov 25th

Finally, corporations will be held up to new business standards and perhaps future regulations will be developed to help make common sense common practice and deferred maintenance issues will be worked down. Meaning that top executives will finally be held accountable not just to short term quarterly stock rates but actually leading in the development and execution of long term business sustainable processes. Hooray!!!

Above is a link to the launch to of this new standard called PAS (Publicly Available Specification) 55 . We will be discussing and sharing more details on this in future updates and videos on SkillTV.net.

The movement against the maintenance crisis is making headway! Join us and pass the word about PAS 55. http://www.iam-uk.org/asp/ManualsGuidlines.asp

Introducing the European Maintenance Evangelist

Yes, the Maintenance Crisis is not just a US or a even just a North American problem but actually a global challenge. Wim Vancauwenberghe, on the left above, is leading the fight in Europe by serving as executive director of BEMAS.org , and encouraging maintenance appreciation and professional development. He is working feverishly for companies to benchmark practices, instill pride in their workforce, and most importantly for executives and government leaders to view maintenance not as a cost but a value, profit contributor. Check out his blog: http://www.maintenanceblog.eu/

One of his major contributions was organizing the 2008 EuroMaintenance Conference held in Brussels earlier this year. With over 5500 attendees from 51 countries, this event is the new benchmark for the industry worldwide. http://www.euromaintenance.org/em/vis_presEN.cfm

We need more energetic resources to step up to the plate and work to prevent avoidable disasters and optimize profit performance.

Want to contribute to the fight against the maintenance crisis?

If so contact Joel@SkillTV.net and we will gladly give you whatever support we can provide.

Bleep, bleep, bleep- SkillTV host almost taken out by Bike Riders in Amsterdam

Joel Leonard reports that he has lot to learn while in Amsterdam. He just learned the special markings on the sidewalks dedicated for bike traffic, the hard way.

While taking in the sites of the canals, buildings several hundred years old, modern buildings and watching ducks fish in the canals, a group of bike riders almost mowed Joel down. And he couldn't get out of the way without getting hit by the other lane of traffic that appeared out of nowhere, so he wisely just stayed put and let them move around him.

He said it was kind of wierd to get cussed out in Dutch-- as he had no idea what they said but knew what they meant.

Well, he hopes the collisions he causes at tomorrow's Enterprise Asset Management conference is the crash of new ideas against status quo and outdated business processes. And Leonard hopes not to cause too many international incidents.

Is Dubai Engineer Heaven?

SPECIAL UPCOMING MAINTENANCE MANAGEMENT CONFERENCE DEC 14th-18th

Dubai is quickly becoming the tourist and conference center of the world. Believe it or not, over 15% of the worlds cranes are in Dubai building innovative structures like the ones above.

Join Joel Leonard and other Reliability leaders at the 14th Annual Middle East Maintenance Management Conference. The Petrochemical industry has been able to forge new technologies and approaches to asset reliability and performance.

Many of these same processes can be implemented in other discrete manufacturing and process industry operations.

Click on link to learn more and to register for this unique event:

http://www.iirme.com/maintenance/

SkillTV Launches an International Maintenance Renaissance

Believe it or not in Italy, they call SkillTV's Host Joel Leonard, L’evangelista della Manutenzione (The Maintenance Evangelist).

Joel says "with the struggling economies, demographic transitions and technological improvements, there is no better time in history for the world to wake up to the new realities of maintenance. With Milan being the host city that sparked the Medieval Renaissance, it is the ideal location to launch an international Maintenance Renaissance. To preserve and expand our economic capacity, we must fix it forward by waking up leaders around the world to the opportunities available with excellent maintenance and reliability programs."

So after supporting Amsterdam's Enterprise Asset Management Conference, Joel Leonard will be participating in a series of events in Milan for a Maintenance Renaissance.

He begins his visit by speaking at the Salteco Company's 60th anniversary party http://60anni.salteco.it/ita/home.asp at the Leonardo Da Vinci Museum of Science and Technology. http://www.museoscienza.org/

Then he will be visiting several Italian factories and will be speaking to students, researchers, engineers and Italian business leaders at Intellimech-KilometroRosso. He is planning on gathering lots of videos, interviews and pictures of his travels.

Joel Leonard also stated, "We can not allow language barriers, ignorance, and apathy to continue to prevent our societies from realizing our available profit potential and we must inspire current and future engineers to help build a more reliable tomorrow as the premier engineer, Leonardo DaVinci did 500 years ago. "

Modern Day Don Quixote?

Years ago others laughed, ignored or scoffed at Joel Leonard's warnings about the Maintenance Crisis. Some of his "friends" said he was a modern Don Quixote by chasing windmills or spreading false fears like Chicken Little. Well laugh no more as Joel is about to depart to Amsterdam. No, he will not be chasing the windmills, but he will be dispelling common maintenance myths. He also hopes to learn more about Holland's Maintenance Valley, a national program to retain and attract businesses to the Netherlands.

Want to see the new SkillTV Video?

Click on the title above to see a compilation of the EuroMaintenance Opening Remarks, interview with CEO Patrick De Groote and Senator Max Baucus' statement about the need for skilled workers.

This video will be shared with attendees of the Rockwell Automation next week in Nashville, Tennessee to give them insight on the complexities of the maintenance crisis. Plant Services Editor Paul Studebaker will be leading several round table discussions and using these videos to prompt debate.

Planting seeds to grow tomorrow's workers

In order to get future skilled workers, more of us need to invest time now with school kids. Most do not have a clue as to what opportunities are available or what they want to do for their future career.

To get more kids interested in maintenance, reliability and engineering opportunities, Joel Leonard developed a great process of attracting the masses and then spent time with the curious to address their questions and feed their interest.

Instead of bringing knicks knacks, candy and give aways like all of the other employers, Joel provided the students something they all wanted: their chance to be an internet TV star.

He set up the SkillTV video camera, projected the SkillTV logo on the wall of gymnasium and asked kids if they wanted to be on TV?

Boom! Like magic, stars lit in their eyes and then Joel said alright I will put you on but we need at least 10 kids to do a TV shoot.

Bam! The kids scrambled to get all of their buddies to join them on the Y's bleachers underneath the SkillTV logo. While they were all together and he had their full attention to explain to them the opportunities and challenges facing the maintenance, reliability and engineering sector.

Several of the kids have already expressed interest in this potential career path.

Changing perceptions face to face

Yesterday at the Randolph Career day 40 area employers shared with 8th graders from 5 area schools what careers and opportunities they have. Joel Leonard was busy working to get their attention converted from being an American Idol or sports into maintenance and engineering opportunities.

After a morning of talking to a couple at a time, he later came up with an ingenious idea that not only got all of the kids talking but also the other employers came by to learn more about SkillTV.net.

Hand to Hand Combat in the Fight against the Maintenance Crisis

Today Joel Leonard is participating in a county wide career day for 8th graders of Randolph County, NC. Over 1400 kids are attending and Joel is busy evangelizing to help attract future workers to this critical career path.

After talking with several he is encouraged that several could move down these career paths.

A family that engineers together prospers together

This is a family of engineers from nuclear, mechanical, electrical professions. This family, aka the Catapult Outlaws, loves to build catapults on the weekends. In fact their entry into the 2008 pumpkin chunking contest was designed during breaks at their church choir practice. They may be unconventional but they love designing, building and troubleshooting projects together. Their catapult will be featured in an upcoming SkillTV episode on Pumpkin Chunking.

It is amazing how much excitement and joy is generated by blowing up pumpkins. What is even greater, is that energy can be converted into interest into future engineering jobs. Stay tuned as we add more related posts.

We also encourage companies who are struggling to locate qualified engineers to sponsor events like these in order to identify potential talent.

From Russia with love and interest in SkillTV

Last week, Joel Leonard keynoted the Process Industry Reliability and Maintenance Conference produced by IDCON in Raleigh. After his session he met with several international resources in the Maintenance and Reliability sector. Above is Yerem Davtyan and Nadezha Prozhogina leaders of Datastream's St. Petersburg Russia's office. They provided some interesting insight in the repositioning of russian business of primarily serving the Russian Government to now competing in the global marketplace. To be competitive russian companies are implementing computerized maintenance management systems.

Joel Leonard looks forward to possibly visiting Russia in the future and seeing first hand some of the improvements and processes that are being implemented. Check SkillTV.net in the future to see this interview.

SkillTV interviews US Green Building Council Leadership

In order to convert green ideals into today's reality the US Green Building Council created LEEDS Certification to benchmark and promote green building approaches. In a future episode on SkillTV main page you will be able to learn more about what Proximity Hotel in Greensboro, NC did to earn the first Platinum level certification.

What would you say to the CFO or CEO?

Imagine that you had a chance to share with top leadership your unfiltered views on the role of maintenance and how the organization could better realize maintenance's profit potential.

Here is your chance:

Joel Leonard, host and founder of SkillTV.net is in the process of writing a book that will be marketed to MBA programs and top leadership. He is asking engineers and maintenance pros to share their views with him at Joel@SkillTV.net and he will add selected entries in his book. His intention is that the better top leadership appreciation maintenance and reliability programs and understand the repercussions of short term focused cost cutting decisions that shrink maintenance performance, the better future leaders will be able to manage future operations.

SkillTV in the news

Maintenance: a competitive advantage?

Many businesses and now even regions and countries are beginning to rethink how they view maintenance.

Many business and government leaders are becoming increasingly aware that maintenance is much more than just a line item on a spread sheet but actually can be a competivite advantage.

We highly encourage you to download the pdf version of the Council on Competitiveness's Thrive document and share with your team some of the obstacles and opportunities in the 21st Century.

http://www.compete.org/publications/detail/472/thrive/

Also view the 5 part series at SkillTV.net on the Senate Workforce Briefing where this document was rolled out earlier this year.

Little name but Large Resource

Names are so deceptive. You will understand if you have ever met Pete Little. As we know many of our biggest talents are moving to retirement. But not Pete, he is hanging around as long as he can and loves to develop mentees. I know firsthand as I could not do what I do now if not for receiving Pete's wisdom over the years.

If you would like to be mentored by one of the best, you can contact him at the MPACT Learning Center. http://www.mpactlearning.com/

As our current workforce moves out, having talented resources that pay it forward is invaluable to future generations.