CLICK: See photos from our lean reliability conference

More than 150 leaders from manufacturing facilities around the United States attended Reliable Plant magazine’s third annual “Lean Tools for Maintenance & Reliability” conference. The event was held October 1-3 at the Hilton Hotel in Cleveland.

Among the companies that sent plant leaders and/or teams to the event were Callaway Golf, Ford, Kennametal, Kimberly-Clark, Kodak, Mercury Marine, Parker Hannifin, Raytheon, Sara Lee and Volvo. Boeing led the way by sending 26 plant leaders.

Sponsors of the conference were General Physics, Inventory Management Analysis, Technology Performance Group, Triple R and Unex.

The event featured a full-day pre-conference workshop by Noria Corporation’s Drew Troyer (“Lean Plant Reliability Management”) on October 1 and two days of keynote addresses, case studies, panel discussions, white papers and mini-workshops during the best practices conference on October 2-3.

Keynote addresses were given by:

• Wayne Vaughn, the director of maintenance at Harley-Davidson Motor Company (“Designing Effective Maintenance in a JIT Factory”)

• Toyota maintenance and reliability leaders David Absher and Johnathan Ritter (“An Inside Look at Reliability and the Toyota Production System”)

• Paul Casto, a reliability technology leader at Eastman Chemical (“Integrating the Reliability Business Case with Six Sigma and Lean Methodologies”)

Highlight sessions were delivered by:

- Mark LaRue, plant services division manager, Honda Manufacturing of Alabama (“Overcoming the Challenges of Lean in Facilities Maintenance”)

- Bryan Lund, lean coordinator, Global Lean Office, Energizer (“Training, Problem-solving and Standardized Work”)

- Michael Giuliano, operations manager, and Barb Molnar, lean project manager, Nordson Corporation (“Implementing Build-to-Order”)

- Mike Wroblewski, president and certified Six Sigma black belt, Victory Alliance Technologies (“Using Kaizen to Increase Your Equipment Effectiveness”)

- Steve Eberhardt, Organizational Effectiveness leader, AstenJohnson (“TPM’s Role in a Lean Enterprise”)

- Dr. Jay Lee, director, Center for Intelligent Maintenance Systems, University of Cincinnati and National Science Foundation (“Tools and Strategies for Achieving Zero-Breakdown Equipment and Productivity”)

- Mike Cicholski, a former Alcoa plant leader and current consultant with Life Cycle Engineering (“Fundamentals Give Stability to Lean Reliability”)

- Mike Verdin, principal, and Sue Gillman, co-founder, Aveus (“Lean Simulation Mini-workshop: The Downtime Life Cycle”)