The Death of Reliability: Is it Too Late to Resurrect the Last, True Competitive Advantage?. Nathan C. Wright
Читать онлайн книгу.
Nathan also believed that you must have buy-in from operations and management. Without it you cannot make things happen. I have personally seen his program work and decrease the cost of maintenance and increase safety and retention of workers. If I had the chance, I would work on another project with Nathan.
Bill Cole
Electrical Supervisor
Kinross Gold Corporation
Round Mountain, Nevada
For over 25 years I have had the privilege of observing and working with hundreds of exceptional leaders and specialists in a broad spectrum of business disciplines. My association with Dr. Nathan Wright has been one of the highlights of that experience.
Dr. Wright has a unique grasp of the realities of the business world and the often-perplexing challenges associated with focusing and channeling the energies of leaders, managers and workers within an organization. His insights come from his extensive background in manufacturing, mining, and consumer products, giving him the ability to see the dynamic balance between the policy and process issues of an organization and the people issues that make or break implementation and execution.
As a teacher of leadership skills, he brings the hands-on experience of having turned around ineffective teams by developing both the skill set and the mindset of leadership in those he has coached and mentored. He has a no-nonsense approach to training and development, which stems from a keen awareness of what people need to know and do, and what they don’t need to do, in order to achieve the outcomes demanded in today’s global economy.
Dr. Dennis Deaton
Co-founder and CEO
Quma Learning Systems, Inc. Mesa, AZ
Author, The Book on Mind Management, Ownership Spirit:
The One Grand Key that Changes Everything Else
In his new book: The Death of Reliability: Is it Too Late to Resurrect the Last, True Competitive Advantage, Dr. Nathan Wright takes innovative thinking to a new level. His approach to reliability could be the missing piece needed to complete the maintenance puzzle and bring about the increase in reliability that today’s engineers and managers are looking for, but unable to find.
If Dr. Wright is correct in his analysis of the challenges manufacturing facilities face regarding reliability, then industry is indeed in a very dire position and needs to act quickly before it is buried beneath its own mistakes.
Before Nathan led the maintenance team at the plant where I was working, maintenance was mostly reactive and poorly organized. Within a few weeks, he had begun to introduce the ideas he expands upon in this book which brought the plant uptimes which had not previously been thought possible. It was clear that his rich background in maintenance, reliability and management was a huge advantage to any organization.
I believe Dr. Wright is in fact correct in his analysis, and that his book will be a huge advantage to your organization as well.
Larry Wiskirchen
Reliability Professional,
Vibration analyst, ISO Cat. IV
I have known Nathan professionally for more than ten years. He has a unique combination of journeyman skills and advanced education that is extremely rare and valuable.
I completely agree with Nathan’s views on the exceptional value great reliability can bring to the bottom line. Many of today’s business leaders don’t fully understand the value that great, consistent reliability can bring to the success of a business. And they certainly do not properly value the experience and talent a skilled craftsperson brings in gaining reliability. Journeyman training programs are being replaced with abbreviated technical programs to speed employees into the field where they are unprepared to face some of the complex problems they will be expected to resolve in their jobs.
How we encourage young people to go down this path, which takes real commitment, hard work, and dedication starts with parents, teachers and businesses. If the growing gap and deficit in truly skilled reliability leadership continues as Nathan suggests, there will be a lot of business pain along this long road. But today’s leaders can get a jump start by supporting the certified, comprehensive journeyman training programs for their developing employees.
In today’s business world, we see a huge number of senior executives who have excellent backgrounds in legal, accounting, financial, etc., but lack a basic understanding and knowledge on what truly drives high performance in their business. Consultants are overused as a quick fix, resulting in huge expenses and few lasting improvements in many cases. Nathan is right in that it is this disconnection between many senior executives and “the business” that leads to a lack of support for nurturing and developing strong craft skill sets in the workforce.
I especially liked Nathan’s write-up on Transformational Leadership—empowering great people to perform and reach their full potential. They motivate and support their leadership teams, are positive thinkers, create inspirational vision that drives motivation into their teams. The opposite, Industrial Leaders (transactional), are all about position, policy, and micro-management—the death of great employees.
Leaders should recognize the value in skilled craftspeople, and make sure they understand the connection between hands-on experience, matched with strong leadership, and the value great reliability brings to a business. I fully agree with many of Nathan’s positions and see a huge value for leaders and business managers to invest in this book.
Steve Holmes
Chief Operating Officer
KGHM International, a subsidiary of KGHM Polska Miedz
Are we facing the death of real reliability? The simple definition of death in Webster’s Dictionary is “the permanent end of something that is not alive: the ruin or destruction of something.” The sad truth is that this is exactly where we are headed with respect to reliability. The reason I believe this is true is the loss of real reliability leadership. Without qualified leadership, there can be no real reliability and as such companies are losing out on the one true competitive advantage available to them today. I have repeatedly heard that the loss of skilled craftsmen stems from kids today not wanting to work hard. I believe that this is a small portion of the issue. There is a lot more behind the views of kids today than meets the eye. The erosion of individuals seeking skilled trades as a career starts at home. Parents fill their children’s heads with the belief that everyone should go to college. This cannot be further from the truth. The same message, that college is the only answer, is reinforced by teachers and counselors. The problem with these teachers and counselors is that they have never worked in a skilled trade and the majority hold non-technical degrees and know nothing of the trades industry. This anti-skilled trade attitude is prominent throughout our government. The ill-conceived “No Child Left Behind” program further damaged the noble professions in favor of non-technical educations that provide few options for the holders. When compared to the income of a college graduate, especially a non-technical graduate, a skilled tradesperson can make two or more times their salary. This fact has been presented to the last three presidents by Mike Rowe, a television personality best known for his show Dirty Jobs. Like me, he has gathered facts supporting this position. While we have different approaches to this message, we stand together in our efforts to open the eyes of anyone who will listen.
This gave me pause and made me want to write this book. After reviewing my background and experience, you will understand the context from which I