John Q. Todd
Sr. Business Consultant/Product Researcher
Total Resource Management (TRM), Inc.
TRM and IDCON have both attended this conference for many years. Given the level of attendance, it appears conferences are certainly back in business and are back on track to produce ever-increasing levels of excitement.
https://smrp.org/Events/30th-Annual-Conference
Raleigh, NC was the location for the 30th year of the conference, thankfully well before the cold weather arrived! SMRP’s focus is on people working in the maintenance and reliability disciplines, which can mean different things across industries.
A person working in the industry can achieve certifications from SMRP, which are well known and accredited via ANSI. Their CMRP (Certified Maintenance and Reliability Professional) is an excellent place to begin as an opportunity to prove your knowledge of what you do all day long. At the SMRP conference, you can take classes and the certification exam as well.
The first day of the conference was filled with workshops put on by a variety of speakers. This year, these workshops ran for half or the whole day. Information forums like this provide ample time to digest the subject matter. However, take note that they do require an extra cost beyond the conference fees.
The more notable workshops, in my opinion, were:
- Calculating the opportunity for reliability
- How to get your boss’ boss to understand
- Aligning business objectives with stakeholder’s expectations
- Tuning up your PM program
Across most of the workshops, there was an obvious tone… “change.” Whether initiating change or adapting to it, this was a big part of the attendees’ and the presenters’ conversations.
Once the conference opened it operated as you would have expected: More sessions to attend and of course an expo hall for vendors like TRM and IDCON. SMRP was very clear to speakers explaining that their sessions cannot be a sales pitch. This goes a long way to ensure that the attendees get “good,” information that can be practically applied vs. just a bunch of bullet points from a sales sheet.
There were way too many sessions to list since they spanned three full days, but I found the ones I attended (and gave!) to be very much focused on sharing lessons learned, proven advice, and case studies that are truly helpful. No matter if you are new to the industry or have been around awhile, you could have easily walked away with a few gems of knowledge to apply back at the shop.
I had the privilege to co-present with Owe F. of IDCON about PM refinement. My session was on the ins and outs of deploying mobile solutions to the folks working in the field. Really good attendance at both and lots of questions and conversations afterward.
Vendors ranged from the well-known huge companies known for making either hardware or software to the smaller service-related firms. The expo was a good place to see new technology in action. Vendors were very willing to spend time with you even if you are not the main decision-maker.
The food was good. After-event parties were fun. The venue in downtown Raleigh was very convenient and close to lots of other things to do.
Kudos to SMRP for celebrating their 30th well and for continuing to provide a valuable service to the industry!
John Q. Todd, Sr. Business Consultant / Product Researcher at TRM. Reach out to us at AskTRM@trmnet.com if you have any questions or would like to discuss deploying MAS 8 or Maximo AAM for condition-based maintenance/monitoring.
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