Joel Levitt is a leading trainer of maintenance professionals and the author of 19 maintenance management texts. His recently launched series of comic books, Elements of Great Maintenance Management, provides lessons for anyone—from design engineers and reliability engineers to operators and maintainers—interested in brushing up on maintenance and reliability principles.
For anecdotes, Levitt could confidently draw from his firsthand experience as a process control designer, source equipment inspector, electrician, field service technician, merchant marine worker, manufacturing manager and property manager.
In this interview, the author discusses why it is important to realize better ways to ensure availability of equipment and to implement best practices. He answers questions on:
- Why engineers are faced with recurring equipment problems;
- The difference between planned maintenance and defect elimination;
- The cost implications of plant maintenance methodologies, such as defect elimination;
- How World Class Maintenance is evolving in the age of predictive maintenance; and
- Fundamental shifts in maintenance theory and management over the course of Levitt’s career.
