By: Natalie Blythe

Against a tropical background of palm trees and sunshine, hundreds of maintenance and reliability professionals enjoyed some R & R — Reliability & Relaxation — at the Caribe Royale Resort in Orlando, Florida, for Reliable Plant 2022.

This year, the event shifted its education content to align with 12 reliability tracks, focusing on turning ideas into actionable advice that attendees could implement immediately at their facilities. On Monday, July 25, attendees were already filling the Caribe Royale for half-day and full-day workshops. Noria’s Wes Cash, vice president of services, conducted a full-day workshop in the Leadership and

Communication track on “Lubrication for Reliability Leaders: Building the Business Case.”

Along with Cash’s workshop, other Monday workshops were:

• “Precision Maintenance — Exponentially Extending the Life of Rotating Equipment” with Mike Turrentine, instructor/reliability field specialist, Hendrix Precision Maintenance Services
• “How to Create a Training Plan for Technicians” with Alejandro Trujillo, CEO, Pabelon
• “Putting Criticality and Analysis back into Criticality Analysis” with John Ross, president, Maintenance Innovators
• “Creating Your Action Plan: Live Coaching for R&M Managers” with Joe Kuhn, president, Lean Driven Reliability
• Optimizing Your Condition Monitoring Efforts: Panel and Workshop”
• “Avoiding Artificial Ignorance — The Pitfalls of Machine Learning for Machine Diagnostics” with Robert Skeirik, director of research and development, I-care Reliability
• “Effective Maintenance & Reliability Leadership” with Torbjorn Idhammar, president, IDCON
• “How to Double the Life of Your Rolling Element Bearings” with Mark Barnes, senior vice president global sales, Des-Case Corporation

On Tuesday, July 26, Reliable Plant 2022 officially kicked off with the Opening Ceremony on the Reliability Stage. Led by Cash and Bennett Fitch, Noria’s chief strategy officer, attendees received a warm welcome to Orlando, as well as affirmation on why attending Reliable Plant 2022 was crucial to turning ideas into action, furthering their professional and personal growth. Fitch also challenged attendees to step out of their knowledge specialty and attend at least one session that was different.

“If you attend at least one session that you’re not used to, I guarantee it’s going to help refine what questions you’re trying to get answered,” he said.

After the Opening Ceremony, there was tremendous buzz as the exhibit hall opened for the first day. A steady stream of attendees looking for the latest technologies and solutions to their everyday challenges visited industry exhibitors. This diverse mix of companies, which covered all facets of the maintenance and reliability industry, provided any type of solution for issues facing the industry.

New to Reliable Plant 2022 this year was the Emerging Technology Zone. Consisting of carefully curated companies, the Zone high-lighted innovative technologies serving the maintenance, reliability and operations sectors. An attendee favorite was Freddy, an autonomous mobile robot from Mobile Industrial Robots (MiR).

Learning sessions also began on Tuesday morning and ran until noon on Thursday, July 28. The learning sessions, which followed the 12 reliability tracks, featured prominent industry speakers such as:

• Shon Isenhour, founding partner, Eruditio
• Nathan Wright, president, Transformational Performance Solutions
• Jorge Alarcon, global technical manager, Bureau Veritas
• Ryan Chan, CEO and founder, of UpKeep
• Bharat Vats, chief revenue officer, Novity
• Ray Garvey, reliability consultant, AMETEK Spectro Scientific
• Abhishek Jadhav, business development manager, Sensata Technologies
• Matthias Auf der Mauer, CEO, AiSight

Tuesday also boasted a keynote panel on “Building and Sustaining a Strong Reliability Culture.” The panel consisted of Garrett Bapp, senior technical service advisor, Petro-Canada Lubrications; Megan Johnson, plant manager, Blue Buffalo; Nathan Wright, president, Transformational Performance Solutions; and Ryan Chan, CEO and founder, UpKeep. Charli K. Matthews, CEO and founder of Empowering Brands, moderated the panel.

The panelists shared their perspectives on what makes a strong and sustainable reliability culture and covered questions ranging from how culture impacts day-to-day operations to sustaining culture during high turnover to sharing advice on building a positive workplace culture.

Exhibit Hall at Reliable Plant 2022.

The annual Non-denominational Prayer Breakfast, sponsored by SD Myers, started off Wednesday, July 27. Following the breakfast, attendees headed to the Reliability Stage for a morning keynote address by Chan (who is also a Reliable Plant advisor) on asset operations management (AOM). Sharing his expertise in the field, Chan introduced the audience to AOM and discussed the future of maintenance, reliability and operations as it relates to the field. He believes organizations have much to gain by adopting new approaches to data, collaboration and communication — which is essential for keeping up with an ever-changing market.

Later in the day, Joe Kuhn, president of Lean Driven Reliability and Reliable Plant advisor, gave a keynote on “How to Get Your Plant Manager’s Attention.” Kuhn, a former plant manager and now a reliability consultant, understands how plant managers think and what it takes to get their attention. He shared insightful advice and years of knowledge with the crowd, along with practical and actionable advice to gain support for initiatives.

Wednesday closed on a high note with the Casino Reception. Featuring an array of games — Blackjack, Craps, Texas Hold’em and more — Casino Night gave everyone the chance to unwind and relax. Everyone was a winner as they played with “house money,” and four lucky participants won prizes at the end of the night, including a Yeti Soft Cooler and Xbox Series S.

The final day of Reliable Plant 2022 featured more learning sessions and then the Closing Ceremony. Cash once again took the stage to thank attendees for a great week, as well as thanking the Noria Corporation team for all their hard work. Ending the event with excitement was the show prize giveaways, where 25 lucky attendees received prizes ranging from an Apple Watch and JBL speaker to a Fire TV Cube and Kindle Paperwhite.

Following the giveaways, the exhibit hall officially closed, and Reliable Plant 2022 wrapped up its successful week in Orlando. To see all of the action from Reliable Plant 2022, search for the hashtag (#ReliablePlant2022) in any social media channel and follow us on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/reliableplant/).

The Reliable Plant Conference & Exhibition returns to the Caribe Royale Resort in Orlando to celebrate its 25th installment on July 31-August 3, 2023. To register for Reliable Plant 2023, bookmark the conference website (https://conference.reliableplant.com/) and stay tuned for more details.