Confer (v): Present, talk, give, discuss, consult, put heads together, have a conversation…

Conference (n): Symposium, forum, meeting, convention, consultation, summit, alliance…

Do you attend conferences? Do you share what you learn with those who can’t attend?

Last month, the Society of Maintenance and Reliability Professionals (SMRP) held its 14th annual conference, in Birmingham, AL. This event turned out to be bigger and better than any previous year. Back in 1993, when I attended the first SMRP annual conference in Nashville, about 200 of us felt a sense of camaraderie, a new sense of belonging, with a bit of apprehension often associated with anything new labeled "maintenance." In subsequent years, our apprehension melted into an annual trek of renewal—that bit of maintenance and reliability "nutrition" we all need from time to time.

This year’s SMRP conference attracted nearly 1,000 conferees from around the world. They were practitioners, leaders, educators, consultants, suppliers and publishers representing a total cross-section of capital-intensive businesses. Beyond the powerful keynote and general sessions, 50 technical sessions, a variety of post-conference workshops, numerous SMRP update sessions and several exceptionally interesting regional plant tours

were offered. In addition, nearly 60 vendors displayed their products, services and publications, demonstrating and discussing the latest they had to offer. All in all, knowledge-seekers had a veritable buffet of practical, down-to-earth offerings from which to choose.

The conference sessions provided particularly compelling insights in the areas of Manufacturing Process Reliability, Business and Management, Equipment Reliability, People Skills and Work Management. There was something of interest for everyone who attended.While most of the sessions provided case examples of improvement efforts and results, many others provided ideas: some inside the box, and some outside the boxes we find ourselves in.

One track (People Skills) was dominated by discussions on the imminent "Maintenance Skills Shortage." A number of presenters from multiple perspectives echoed the concern that most businesses have already encountered, or soon will—"where will our maintenance people of the future come from?" This excellent information now needs to be translated into positive proactive strategies back at the plant. Now is the time to fundamentally re-think our approaches to applying the proven maintenance and reliability tools and techniques that we have honed, polished and fine-tuned over the years. But, enough on that topic for now…

The 11th Annual Lean Management Conference by Productivity, Inc. also took place last month, in Alexandria, VA. There, more than 300 conferees got to choose from another strong slate of keynote and general sessions, over 26 "knowledge transfer" workshops and 20+ company case studies on the basics of Lean, Six Sigma and Total Productive Maintenance (TPM). Many presenters spoke ...(Read whole article)