Don Armstrong
Don Armstrong, is a Professional Engineer whose experience includes direct line responsibility as maintenance and engineering manager for over 5,000 man-years of safe trades effort in three large pulp and paper mills in Canada (Powell River, Crofton and Nanaimo) and one in New Zealand, complemented by eighteen years of consulting in many different industries and institutions, world-wide

Measuring reliability

  In an industrial setting, reliability is the “product” of Maintenance, so its very important that it be measured. Maintenance is expensive, and you should know what it is buying you. There are many

Measuring Maintenance performance – the haza…

  This article explores the ways that Maintenance performance can be measured. Many of the principles covered apply to both institutional and industrial maintenance, and the differences are explained. Topics include: – Guiding principles

Managing tools and supplies

Tools Nothing moves a job along faster, and to a high quality standard, than having ready access to the right tools. They are the last links in the maintenance chain that connect your tradespeople

Managing major plant shutdowns

  Major maintenance shutdowns can be very stressful for both Maintenance and Operating people, but with careful planning and attention to details, they can also be very rewarding. As with non-shutdown maintenance, the single

Managing small maintenance jobs

  There are two kinds of maintenance work that should not appear on weekly work schedules: –       Genuine emergency or urgent work that is not identified when the schedule is prepared and –       Small jobs that

Maintenance business processes and job description…

  This article covers the development of business processes for Maintenance followed by a discussion on the use of business processes as the basis for practical position descriptions. ___________________________________ When visiting institutions and industrial

Looking after the basics

  A client once asked me to fly from our office on Vancouver Island to their operation in the UK so that I could provide recommendations on how to improve the service from their

Institutional vs Industrial maintenance

I’m sometimes asked if maintenance management processes developed in industrial operations will transfer into an institutional setting, such as a school district, a university or a hospital. The answer is an emphatic “yes”, however,