Have you been to southeast Asia? If not, you may want to try to visit as it a great location for westerners to visit and do business. I recently spent a week there providing a Maintenance Crisis Workshop and prepared the 23 attendees to take the Association for Facilities Engineering Exam. Participants were from semiconductor plants, food processing, healthcare, automotive and plastics industries. To my chagrin learned that Malaysia is also experiencing a Maintenance Crisis.
Discovered that many companies are having difficulty implementing and getting value from their CMMS systems. Discovered that when older employees depart much of their valuable activities and information is lost and new employees do not have a complete history as a foundation to move forward. Also most of the engineering talent i encountered, had earned their education in United States. Met a Iowa State Cyclone, Mizzou Tiger, Georgia Tech Yellowjacket and numerous US trained talent. Shame that US immigration laws require students to depart elsewhere to apply their skills. I firmly believe for the US to have competitiveness advantage that if immigrants come to the US and earn an advanced degree, they should have a green card stapled to their diploma. Many will still go home but we should make it harder for the really smart and talented to leave, should we not?
A common concern in Malaysia was how to move from reactive maintenance culture to a proactive culture. Sound familiar? Amazing that many of the engineers never heard of or seen acoustic ultrasound, knew how to use infrared thermography, set up a pm schedule or other fundamental reliability technologies.
Now don't mistake this blog entry, as this is far from a typical third world country. Kuala Lumpur is as nice if not nicer than any US city and the world famous Petronas Twin Towers were so spectacular to see up close as the stainless steel polished to a mirrored finished glistened with spotlights at night.
Also had the opportunity to attend Metal Tech Expo and got to see thousand of calipers, welding units, lathes, robots, automation systems. Was able to be among the 20,000 attendees as they perused the exhibits and discover the latest technologies to advance their manufacturing performance. Will be posting pics and links to SkillTV Technutia blogs in the coming days. Thanks again for all of your continued support, as I strive to uncover issues and solutions to the Maintenance Crisis worldwide. Questions, comments add below or email me at [email protected]