Up Time Magazine- April/May 2008 - (Page 17) organization. The vision of the Association for Maintenance Professionals embraces the concept that some kinds of value must be encouraged and empowered on a local level through enthusiastic volunteers. Other types of value delivery must leverage information technologies in order to serve the global community. In all cases, it is imperative that the managing organization is simply present to empower and support – not manage and direct value delivery and activities. Best practice case studies demonstrate the inherent problems with a command and control approach to management. With a lean management structure leveraging state-of-the-art technology, the Association for Maintenance Professionals is designed to empower these connections at a distance and in the background. Because of the lean footprint and leveraged use of technology, membership in the Association for Maintenance Professionals is FREE. That is correct – the fee for membership is exactly $0. While the idea was sound, the implementation lost huge sums of money for Starbucks as they had to build a billing, credit card processing and customer service support operation with a huge overhead. What should have added less than $40 per month in overhead to each location to provide FREE wireless, actually cost millions and created a great deal of red ink for their otherwise super profitable coffee shops. Charging a fee is not what adds value. Delivering value is what adds value. The Association for Maintenance Professionals intends to focus on value delivery in service to the maintenance and reliability professional community. Creating an organization that requires continual revenue growth takes focus away from mission delivery. Mission delivery is the focus of the Association for Maintenance Professionals. We offer several small and non-intrusive advertising programs to solution providers and our projections show we will create enough revenue to sustain this mission well into the future. What about our friends at SMRP, AFE, MESA, EFNMS and other maintenance and reliability societies? Each of these groups does great work in providing standards, best practices information, networking, conferences and certification or credentials for our community. We hope that they will find ways to leverage the Association for Maintenance Professional network for their own benefit as they can count on our full support. There is a great deal of good work for all of us to do and we are only at the very beginning of the Reliability Revolution. What can you do? Get to know the Association for Maintenance Professionals by creating a membership. Once you are ready – create an online group or possibly even a local chapter. You will not make any money, but you will be paid in new relationships, learning, sharing, experience and knowledge. If you have other project ideas that are “outside of the box” please let us know. Please join us and help to change the world, one maintenance professional at a time, at www.maintenance.org Put down your gun and step away from the machine! Our family of products just got bigger! The Value of FREE Before you ask “how much can it be worth if it is free”, we would ask you to consider the value you currently get from Uptime Magazine (a free magazine) or Reliabilityweb.com and Maintenance-Tips. Would the value you get from the Google Search Engine increase if you paid for it? Have you noticed that when you stay at the more common hotel chains you get Internet access at no charge while the 5-star, overpriced hotels charge you $10-$20 per day? Which Internet provides more value? Last time we checked it was exactly the same Internet service. What should cities charge for access to local parks or libraries? Currently the air we breathe and sunshine are delivered without cost. You have all heard of and many of you frequent a coffee shop called Starbucks. You know, the place with the $5 café lattes. Did you know that they were one of the first to offer a public wireless internet connection? The idea was based on the fact that people might buy more $5 café lattes if they could surf the net while they sipped their caffeinated beverage. Equipment failure due to inadequate manual lubrication is unfortunate, but certainly not unheard of. The results of inadequate manual lubrication are all too apparent in the high cost of replacement parts as well as equipment downtime. Trico’s Streamliner grease dispensers are a cost effective and reliable alternative to manual lubrication. • High pressure – up to 800 psi • Larger reservoir capacities – 125cc to 500cc • Adjustable dispensing rates from 30 days to 12 months • Distribution block available for multipoint capability– 2-8 points • UL explosion proof units available www.tricocorp.com 800-558-7008 23 www.uptimemagazine.com http://www.Reliabilityweb.com http://www.tricocorp.com http://www.maintenance.org http://www.uptimemagazine.com
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