The autor of the Preventive Maintenance Optimization process and methodology known as PMO 2000, Steve Turner, participated as lecturer in the recent 7th World Congress of Maintenance and Asset Management. Predictiva21 talked with this aeronautics engineer graduated from RMIT University (Australia), who also has a Masters in Business Administration. Turner has been passionate about maintenance from the beginning of his career precisely because he comes from the aeronautics industry, main source of the primary concepts for industrial maintenance. Founder of OMCS International (Operations and Maintenance Consulting Services Pty Ltd), he is considered an authority in maintenance and asset management matters, besides being a pioneer in the methodology proposals for Asset Management, as demonstrated in PMO 2000.

Predictiva21: How did you come up with the idea of PMO 2000? What were the circumstances then?

Steve Turner: My background was in the military Air Force, and everything we did in the Aviation industry was against RCM philosophies. With the aviation, the new airplanes seemed to be evolutionary rather than revolutionary. So, because of that they start at the feasibility stage with reliability, and the reliability of the asset comes right through. When I left the Air Force and started working in the industry, I found the equipment was revolutionary, not evolutionary, so the new components were designed over the previous ones. And most of the existing organizations or equipment manufacturers have their maintenance recommendations done by themselves. And for that reason, it made sense to go back and start from the clean sheet of paper and review that in what we call now optimization. I went to many plants and asked them about their traditional way of doing things, and it didn´t mean much sense to me to start all over again, which means to throw away all current programs. So, we developed the existing maintenance strategies proposed by our organization or the same vendor to quickly assess the maintenance using RCM precision logics and not starting from zero. Of course, that was almost twenty years ago when we started doing that and now it has become common in the industry, and many companies use this process instead of the ACIEM methodology. I can see more and more people using it, and I´m proud of being able to introduce some improvements in asset management.

P21: How has your proposal evolved, and what is your opinion about the fact that many enterprises have adopted PMO worldwide?

ST: The culture of organizations is not specific to countries. I don’t really see it that way. I think people generally come to work to do a good job, like generally anyone who comes to work intends to do the best they can. So, I don’t see any difference in cultures, but what I do see is a generational change in terms of knowledge, and as we learn more about the methods in asset management, the traditional ways seem to be going forward with a lot of young people embracing the new methods and new age of computers and technology, bringing information into the system. So, I’m really seeing a lot of changes out there, with enthusiasm and energy as a new platform for the asset management in these cultures.

P21: Finally, what is your opinion about this congress?

ST: I think this is a magnificent conference, and I think that in this same conference ten years ago in Bogota, there have been changes in the number of people and what they are talking about is quite different. When I came here ten years ago, there was a lot of questions about what we should do and how we were going to do it. And what I’m seeing now is “this is what we’ve done and this is how we did it”. It’s a remarkable change over ten years. For people to come together from all over the world and share their experiences is a wonderful thing. There is so much information about maintenance, with sensational speakers who are the best of the best, and for me that’s truly remarkable.

Texto: Alimey Díaz M de Skinner
Corresponsalía/Fotos: Miguel Ángel Guzmán