I don't care who you are or what you do, you simply must read Seth Godin's blog. He is the pied piper of a new age of communication and business building. I was inspired by him to write this post.

Isn't it strange how the promise of future glory tends to be overcome by the reality of past failures?

John Moubray's article speaking out against streamlined RCM approaches was a watershed article. For the first time, Moubray spoke about the coming age of accountability for those charged with managing assets, and the need for defensibility in decision-making.

He was slammed by many at the time as a scaremonger, however, the reality has proved to be far more frightening than anything any of us could have imagined.

Since the turn of the century we have seen physical and financial asset management drawing closer and closer together. Particularly with some of the work that has gone into the fields of asset economics in the UK Utility and Rail industries.

And the timing could not be better. Since about the mid 1990's we have been firmly on the radar of corporate management. Initially as a source of costs to be controlled, but over time enterprises around the world have come to realize that physical asset management is source of significant competitive advantage.

We are always planning for the last big event. As the mining and commodities industries went into a once-in-a-century boom, miners and oil companies scrambled to increase their capacity to get the most out of it.

Cost cutting is done with a scalpel, not a meat cleaver.

If you must cut costs and if you are responsible then you must, you need to do it controllably, without any adverse ramifications. You need to keep your eyes firmly on the prize of maximum cost effectiveness.

Europump is dedicated to energy efficiency globally and they regularly produce reports related to the issue of fluid transportation systems as they call them. (E.g. pumps right?)

In a report from 2005 (I think) they mentioned that 20% of all energy in Europewas consumed by pumping systems. Wow...

Dow Chemicalshas just announced that it is laying off around 5000 workers. The oil price hasdropped to around $43 per barrel and demand from Asiafor commodities has tailed off.

But wait – thereis even more good news for maintainers. Manufacturers are continuing tooutsource their operations. And technology is laying waste to entireindustries.

The world is changing at a tremendous pace. We are now in an age of many-to-many conversations with blogs, twitter and all the rest. More of us are talking to each other, and it is gettting harder to separate the noise from information.

To take advantage of this I want to start a monthly teleconference. Probably in January, of about 30 minutes or an hour each month. 

Would this interest you?

Some of you reading this are quite happy in your present role, and you are satisfied with doing a good job and being paid fairly for that.

Some of you have aspirations to proceed to management, and then maybe to executive management, using reliability as a method to project your value into the organization.

And some of you, a small percentage of the people reading this, want to change the world. Some of us, not just you, are not satisfied until they have seen their influence written across major organizations throughout the world. And in today's labor market and economy, the ...

In the next few weeks I hope to finally submit my latest manuscript for a book that I have been working on across several continents, several years, and several projects. It has been an exhausting and exhilarating experience. I think it's pretty good.

It is called Lean Strategies for Asset Reliability, and as the title suggests the central theme is Lean M ...

As a sideline, I tend to have a lot of sidelines, I do a lot of data modeling using various graphing tools. This is because I am basically a very boring person. However - I have stumbled upon something very intriguing coming out of the Energy Information Administration. This department publishes the official government energy information for the USA.

Have a look at this motion chart below.