Podcast: 2025 - Best of "Great Question with Plant Services"

This year-end wrapup episode collects clips from three of the most popular Plant Services episodes from the past 12 months. In these clips, Plant Services chief editor Thomas Wilk talks about:

• "How oil analysis can boost equipment reliability, but only if you use the data," with Mike Holloway, 5th Order Industry
• "How PM optimization improves reliability and reduces unplanned downtime," with Brian Hronchek, Eruditio
• "Reshoring in 2025 – strategies for navigating tariffs and trade uncertainty," with Rosemary Coates, Reshoring Institute

PART 1 (February 2025): "Oil analysis can boost equipment reliability, but only if you use the data," with Mike Holloway, 5th Order Industry

PS: I was struck by one of your statements, that when someone asks you how many customers use those data for the oil analysis companies to improve reliability, you put a thumbnail on that of about 15%. I was curious about that number, what are they doing right and what are the other 85% doing wrong?

MH: Many years ago I worked for ALS and we had a really large account – Wal-Mart – and they're pushing maybe 35,000 samples a month, some ungodly number. And I was watching the numbers and all of a sudden one month nothing was coming in. So I called the account manager and I said, can you look into this? Why haven’t we gotten any samples in the past week from Wal-Mart? And she did, she called back and said, I can't get through to the decision-maker. I said, well you’ve got to, something’s up. She finally did and said they just decided they didn't see any value in it anymore. I go, why is that? She said, everything's green, everything looks good. I said, ok, however, there's still value in that. She said, apparently they just said, “hey, we don't need this anymore, because everything's fine.” 

I said, you know, that's analogous to when we go to the doctor for an annual physical and the doctor says, you look great, keep on doing what you're doing. Then you think to yourself, do I have to go next year? Everything has been fine for the past 20 years, why should I go next year? Well, that next year, if you don't go, maybe something's not going to be fine. You don't know, it’s really to keep an eye on things, but people don't realize that. They just think that if there's not a problem we’re just going to move on and attack only problems, because human beings are really good at solving problems and innovating, we're really great at it actually. It's probably one of our only things we're good at, and it has to do with our ability to communicate and work as a team.

What's interesting is that with oil analysis, is that it’s a cool idea, you can't find anybody that disagrees with it, but you can't find many people who embrace it to that degree. Now, that's not necessarily always the same with like thermography or vibration analysis. Because with vibration analysis it's a physical thing that we can touch a machine and feel it shake a certain way; or with thermography, we know if it’s hot, it's not right. Those are all physicalities but oil analysis, the best you can do with that is maybe smell the oil, and if it smells acrid or if it looks really dark then you could have physicality to it, that maybe there's something wrong with it. 

Normally oil is like blood – you don't touch it, you stay away from it. You can analyze it remotely or through a lab, but you don't have that visceral feel for if it's any good or not. Therefore when we don't have that, I think we lose our ability to truly understand the value of it. People don't understand an atom or a molecule. They just conceptualize it. So how can we expect them to really understand the nuances of used oil in order to bring to the table? 

PART 2 (June 2025): "How PM optimization improves reliability and reduces unplanned downtime," with Brian Hronchek, Eruditio

PS: Do you find that when people do find the PM which needs a second look, that it's more the case that it should be eliminated? Or do you find that it's a PM that is still good, but needs to be fixed. Because I've heard a lot of people do want to reduce the number, the volume of work that is not useful any longer.

BH: Yeah, that's an incredibly important point, is reducing the amount of work. You know those apps out there that say, hey, we can take a look at your finances and tell you where you're wasting money.

PS: Oh my gosh, so many commercials say “download this app, you'll take a look at your subscriptions, blah blah blah.”

BH: It's completely funny because about 10-15 years ago I used to bounce a lot of checks. I have the app for my phone that said, hey, we'll connect all your bank accounts and everything, and tell you exactly how much money you have. That's great because I would look at the app, I would refresh it and says, hey, I've got $100 in the bank, I'm going to buy a hamburger. What it wouldn't tell me is that tomorrow I had my utility bill scheduled and all of a sudden that utility bill bounced, and then the water bill bounced, and the electric bounced, and then my rent bounced and you know, whatever it is.

I was disconnected from my finances because I was letting something or someone else manage it for me, right? All my money is flying out the window and I'm still making decisions to send more of it out the window, and yet I'm not getting any better even though I have a tool that tells me where all my money is going. It's like OK, this is a bit of a reactive tool because I'm not doing my job. So I changed that, I put everything in a in a spreadsheet and I started having daily touches and I knew where everything was going, and quit bouncing checks, so I'm going to pat myself on the back. Good job, buddy!

The same thing is happening if we think about our maintenance resources – our labor, our time, right? A lot of our labor is going towards things that completely cannot produce value. It's like the Netflix and the Hulu and the Xbox 360 subscriptions, and our kids don't live at home anymore and they don't use them, but we're just continuing to send that money out the door, and then you finally realize, oh my God, I can cancel that subscription, and that puts money in my pocket. That didn't change any other problems, but it puts more money in your pocket.

So the first step in PMO is doing that scrub and determining against a set of criteria, “is this activity, is this inspection valuable or is it not?” Could even the seasoned technician give us any results out of this? We have a customer who's actually downstairs right now, down at the conference who actually had an inspection that had 1,800 inspection points. They would give themselves 8 hours to do 1,800 inspection points. But their version of PM was find & fix, not inspect and then plan & correct, so they would get about two or three hours into this 8-hour PM and they would find a handful of things that needed to be fixed, and they'd spend the next three days fixing them.

Guess how much credibility they had when they said, “we'll do a PM and we'll give it back to you in eight hours”? Never. They're like, well, we're not going to do this very often, so how about once a year let's do a PM. Well that’s a terrible frequency for something, especially when it fails more often than that. Going through PM optimization, I think they went from 1,800 inspection points down to like 400 inspection points, and those last 400 inspection points were polished up and cleaned up to really be valuable.

Then what they did is they changed their downtime for the PM from 8 hours to 2 hours. They said, “hey, we don't need 8 hours, we only need 2 and we promise you we're not fixing anything, we are just looking.” Operations got on board and like “well, we can live with 2 hours” and they tried it a few times. What they would do is like a pit stop, everybody dives on it, everybody gets their specific inspections, records the data, dive off, turn the thing back on, and let's spend the next two weeks planning the repairs, and then let's come back for 4 hours and fix it. And they have gotten such incredibly, incredibly huge gains in performance in that area and now starting across the plant as it expands.

PART 3 (July 2025): "Reshoring in 2025 – strategies for navigating tariffs and trade uncertainty," with Rosemary Coates, Reshoring Institute

TW: It has been some six months, hasn't it? 

RC: Yeah, like no other six months.  

TW: Well, I want to start with something we talked about in January, and when we talked at that time, we were sort of looking forward to what this new administration might hold for reshoring manufacturing. You said there had been already a significant impact in uptake and reshoring interest and to quote you, you said “phones were ringing.” So, my question right now is: are the phones still ringing with you and the institute, and if so, what are companies looking for help with these days? 

RC: Yeah, for sure, they're ringing! A lot of companies though now are in a situation where they're trying to figure out what to do about the tariffs. Since the Trump administration began, the President has signed 143 Executive Orders related to trade. And trying to keep that stuff straight, what's on, what's off, what the tariff rate is and so forth, has really gotten to be extremely complicated and tough to keep up with for sure. So yeah, a lot of companies are reaching out to us for help and to try to rethink their strategies. 

TW: Interesting. Yeah, the on again off again business has been tough for reporters too. We keep a running digest of activity on Industry Week, and I found a couple of tables here and there of legal firms keeping track of what's on and what's off. What's on right now, from what I can remember, is 10% across the board with a couple of higher rates here and there, with some things maybe pending in July, right? 

RC: Yeah, so the original tariffs went into effect about three months ago. Those were the big tariffs, the 145% on China and 46% on Vietnam, and you know, just big tariffs with big numbers. And then those were put on pause until July 9. If that pause is lifted, we may go back to these giant tariffs again, or there may be a delay or there may be another pause – we just don't know. And it’s really hard to tell whether this is policy or it's more performative politics.  

It's a negotiating tactic that Trump likes to use. In the meantime, it's like a bullwhip effect in business. I mean, it's like on again off again, you know, what do we do? How do we plan for this? And that's the anathema of most businesses, is unpredictability and not knowing what to do. 

TW: Let’s finish our conversation with a little time spent on contract manufacturing, the smaller businesses in this world. I read a really interesting report which talked about the value prop that contract manufacturers thought they were bringing to their customers versus the value prop that was actually winning them business.  

For example, a lot of these smaller manufacturers based in the U.S., were pitching their services based on quality, but it turns out their customers from the larger OEMs and others were more focused on total cost of ownership and shorter lead times, which is directly related to this issue of offshoring and reshoring. What's your sense of what the contract manufacturers can do these days to help stay alive and stay competitive while everyone waits for the larger companies and larger plants to reopen and become new customers for them?  

RC: A critical skill here is listening. Talking to customers but actually listening about what they're trying to solve. So instead of marching in and saying, “here are all the things that we offer and this is what we do”, listen to what the customer is telling you about what they need. 

If they're saying they're looking at time to market or total cost of ownership, it's a little bit of a different spin, and that's what smaller contract manufacturers need to be delivering. I think that's a mistake not only small contract manufacturers make, but it's a common mistake for all kinds of business providers.  

I’ve been in the consulting world for a long time and I'm seeing these consultants come in and say, “I know all the answers, I'm going to come in and tell you how to do stuff,” instead of listening to what the client is saying about what they need or what their goals are. You have to think about being a better active listener and to ask the right questions and then try to provide solutions that meet those questions or inquiries. 

TW: Anecdotally I'm following somebody on Threads who works for a plant in central Tennessee and she works for a contract manufacturer. She had watched as her plant was reducing the number of shifts over the past four or five months in response to the tariff uncertainties. A lot of her fellow coworkers just didn't want to see what was happening, didn't want to listen to the tea leaves, so to speak.  

I believe she just took a new job within the last one or two weeks at a different place. But, she could sort of see that this one plant wasn't doing its best job listening on what their value was to manufacturers. And she's like, “We’re down from three shifts to two. I'm not going to wait to go from two shifts to one. I'm going to try and find somewhere else that's listening.”  

There's a workforce issue that comes into play here too. If you want to keep the workers, you’ve got to listen to what your customers are saying. 

RC: I mean, it'd be great if we could all live in the comfortable past, but that's not the business environment. You have to constantly be thinking forward. What's new? What direction is business going in? What new problems are they addressing? I think paying attention to future trends, listening to trendsetters and so forth is a very important part of providing the correct solutions for clients and for customers.

About the Podcast
Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast offers news and information for the people who make, store and move things and those who manage and maintain the facilities where that work gets done. Manufacturers from chemical producers to automakers to machine shops can listen for critical insights into the technologies, economic conditions and best practices that can influence how to best run facilities to reach operational excellence.

Listen to another episode and subscribe on your favorite podcast app