Institutionalizing reliability and maintainability in the industrial/commercial organization

Landis Gardner is a 103-year-old manufacturer of machine tools; specifically, precision grinding machines sold principally to automotive manufacturers. The author describes how the implementation of a reliability and maintainability (R&M) program at Landis Gardner resulted in R&M becoming "institutionalized" throughout the company. That is, Landis Gardner has implemented an integrated R&M program where most of the employees are aware of R&M and how their job can affect it. Many of the functions traditionally performed by R&M specialists are, instead, performed by the various managers, engineers, and service technicians throughout the company as part of the normal business practices. The overall result has been substantially improved product R&M. The benefits include more than double the achieved mean time between maintenance actions (MTBMA), improved employee morale, and sales that have tripled during the eight years in which the program was implemented.