Efficient Plant January 2018 - 25

feature | voice from the field

Developing a
Reliability Strategy
Gina Kittle drives processes and
programs for her company and SMRP.

GINA'S
CREDENTIALS
B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Tennessee
Technological Univ., 1996
Certified Maintenance
and Reliability Professional, CMRP (2007)
Former Reliability Centered Maintenance Practitioner and Facilitator
Total Productive Manufacturing Training
SAP Plant Maintenance
Module Training
Worked with 14 North
American sites and 12
international sites deploying SAP Plant Maintenance and implementing Timken Reliability
Strategy
Experience implementing Total Productive
Manufacturing (TPM)
practices and using Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) to develop
specific critical-asset
maintenance strategies

JANUARY 2018

Michelle Segrest
Contributing Editor

AS A YOUNG GIRL, Gina Hutto
Kittle would sit in the garage with her
father and grandfather and study their
every movement. She watched her father-a
mechanic-fix anything that the neighbors needed repaired. Her grandfather, Owen Ramsey,
worked with Red Stone Arsenal in Huntsville,
AL, where he was part of the core group that
launched the first missile into space. Kittle would
play with his drafting tools and ask hundreds
of questions about how things worked and how
to fix them when they broke. Even though she
didn't really know what engineers did, she knew
she wanted to be one.
"My grandfather passed away when I was
in the fifth grade, but I remember seeing the
newspaper articles about his involvement with
the missile," Kittle said. "I found what he did so
interesting. He worked on cars and would show
me what he was doing. I learned about all the
tools and how to use them. This was manual
machinery, and just being around it inspired me.
Even though I didn't really know the definition
of an engineer, I just kept telling everyone, 'I'm
going to be an engineer.'"
Kittle now has a mechanical engineering degree and works as the program manager for The
Timken Company's manufacturing advancement
program, Product and Process Development.
Based at the global headquarters in North
Canton, OH, she owns the reliability strategy for
Timken's 26 international bearing facilities. "We

Kittle works with SAP

power user Alexandru
work as a team and I
Ilie, Electrical Repair,
set the overall reliability
to deploy SAP Plant
Maintenance in the
strategy," she explained.
new Timken PWP
"We've been very busy
Plant in Romania, July
deploying our SAP plan
2017. Images courtesy
of Timken
and EAM (enterprise
asset management) tools
across the various plants. I'm also involved in
training and the standardization of PMs (predictive maintenance) tasks across multiple plants-
really, anything that has to do with maintaining
the equipment of the bearing-producing facilities,
I support them in whatever they need."
While all this keeps Kittle busy, she finds time
to also be the treasurer of the executive committee for the Society for Maintenance and Reliability Professionals (SMRP, smrp.org), Atlanta.
Since attending her first conference in 2001, she
has served on various committees and the Board
of Directors since 2013. Her ultimate goal is to
become the first female chairperson of SMRP.
"Within SMRP, I have been able to work with
some really great people," Kittle said. "It has given
me a platform to learn and share knowledge
about the reliability industry."
Kittle remembers being a bit overwhelmed by
her first SMRP conference 16 years ago.
"I didn't even know half of the terminology
back then, and I was blown away by the knowledge that was in the room," she said. "The next
year I began to get engaged with the committees
and worked my way to conference chair. This was

EFFICIENTPLANTMAG.COM |

http://www.smrp.org http://www.EFFICIENTPLANTMAG.COM

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Efficient Plant January 2018