Although the author has been consulting for 30 years, companies still have the tendency to make the same mistakes now as they did then. And, one of the biggest mistakes is not keeping their equipment properly maintained and running correctly. There is often a focus to increase productivity but companies fail to focus on and push downtime reduction. This book gives readers the techniques they crucially need to keep their critical manufacturing equipment running correctly and efficiently, which increases production, decreases labor costs, decreases breakdown costs, and ultimately increases the bottom line.
Downtime in production lines comes from many sources. It might be small for many of the sources, but it adds up. Often it is nearly invisible to the workforce and the management team. Most training courses and books look at one aspect of downtime causes - mainly product changeover (set-up reduction) or breakdowns (TPM). This book covers many sources and not just a few.
Besides addressing product changeover and breakdowns, it addresses supply chain issues that cause breakdowns, staffing issues, and downtime internal to the processes themselves. It completely covers how to monitor and determine which downtime sources to go after first.
About the Author: Mike Beauregard is the founder of Resource Engineering Consulting LLC, a consulting and training firm located in Manchester, Connecticut. Mike is an international consultant and lecturer on the application of lean manufacturing and quality improvement techniques to manufacturing, warehousing, and distribution operations. He has successfully applied improvement techniques in companies ranging from 10-person start-up companies to Fortune 500 manufacturers. Mike has co-authored twenty-one published books and training systems on quality improvement and lean manufacturing tools including A Practical Guide to Statistical Quality Improvement published by Van Nostrand Reinhold and the highly successful SPC in Action series published by Quality Resources. Also among his works are The Basics of FMEA, published by Productivity Press, and 5S, an interactive computer-based training system on workplace organizational techniques.
Mike graduated from the University of Maryland in College Park in chemical engineering and has held engineering, manufacturing, and plant management positions in the discrete parts manufacturing, plastics, and chemical process industries. As plant manager for the Rogers Corporation's Elastomeric Products Unit, he led his site to win the Connecticut Quality Improvement Award. Winning this award was based on the results the unit achieved by integrating lean manufacturing and quality improvement techniques into its overall business approach.
Mike is a registered Professional Engineer and a Certified Quality Engineer. He is an eight-time member of the Board of Examiners for NIST's Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and served the two Connecticut quality awards as a senior examiner, team leader, and instructor for examiners. Mike is certified in lean implementation by the Supplier Excellence Alliance (SEA), the aerospace supply-chain consortium.
While living in Japan on an extended business assignment, Mike spent half a year studying and applying the Toyota Seisan Hoshiki (Production System) with tutelage from Ohno san.
Mike lives in South Windsor, CT with his wife Maura, a teacher of the hearing impaired, and has two children, Kevin and KC.
