I have worked with Dr. Wright for many years. His knowledge of maintenance best practices, techniques, and organization structure is phenomenal. Nathan has a thoughtful and practical approach when providing direction to maintenance leadership which follows the structure outlined in his book The Death of Reliability. In my 30 years in heavy industry in maintenance management, engineering, operations, and executive leadership, Nathan stands above the crowd in Reliability Leadership.

I have known Nathan professionally for more than ten years. He has a unique combination of journeyman skills and advanced education that is extremely rare and valuable.

I completely agree with Nathan’s views on the exceptional value great reliability can bring to the bottom line. Many of today’s business leaders don’t fully understand the value that great, consistent reliability can bring to the success of a business. And they certainly do not properly value the experience and talent a skilled craftsperson brings in gaining reliability. Journeyman training programs are being replaced with abbreviated technical programs to speed employees into the field where they are unprepared to face some of the complex problems they will be expected to resolve in their jobs.

How we encourage young people to go down this path, which takes real commitment, hard work, and dedication starts with parents, teachers and businesses. If the growing gap and deficit in truly skilled reliability leadership continues as Nathan suggests, there will be a lot of business pain along this long road. But today’s leaders can get a jump start by supporting the certified, comprehensive journeyman training programs for their developing employees.

In today’s business world, we see a huge number of senior executives who have excellent backgrounds in legal, accounting, financial, etc., but lack a basic understanding and knowledge on what truly drives high performance in their business. Consultants are overused as a quick fix, resulting in huge expenses and few lasting improvement in many cases. Nathan is right in that it is this disconnection between many senior executives and “the business” that leads to a lack of support for nurturing and developing strong craft skill sets in the workforce.

I especially liked Nathan’s write-up on Transformational Leadership—empowering great people to perform and reach their full potential. They motivate and support their leadership teams, are positive thinkers, create inspirational vision that drives motivation into their teams. The opposite, Industrial Leaders (transactional), are all about position, policy, and micro-management—the death of great employees.

Leaders should recognize the value in skilled craftspeople, and make sure they understand the connection between hands-on experience, matched with strong leadership, and the value great reliability brings to a business. I fully agree with many of Nathan’s positions and see a huge value for leaders and business managers to invest in this book.

For over 25 years, as Co-founder and CEO of Quma Learning Systems, Inc., I have had the privilege of observing and working with hundreds of exceptional leaders and specialists in a broad spectrum of business disciplines. My association with Dr. Nathan Wright has been one of the highlights of that experience.

Dr. Wright has a unique grasp of the realities of the business world and the often-perplexing challenges associated with focusing and channeling the energies of leaders, managers and workers within an organization. He has gained his insights from his extensive background in manufacturing, mining, and consumer products, giving him the ability to see the dynamic balance between the policy and process issues of an organization and the people issues that make or break implementation and execution.

As a teacher of leadership skills he brings the hands-on experience of having turned around ineffective teams by developing both the skill set and the mindset of leadership in those he has coached and mentored. He has a no non-sense approach to training and development, which stems from a keen awareness of what people need to know and do, and what they don’t need to do, in order to achieve the outcomes demanded in today’s global economy.

He offers exactly what is stated in his company’s name: Transformational Performance Solutions.

I have had the privilege of working with Nathan at 3 different companies. All were in mining and wanted to have a reliability based maintenance program. Nathan is a back to basic type of leader. He knows that to build a good program you start at the bottom and build a good base. That starts with employees. He says you need people that have the skills whether it's planners, journeyman, and apprentices. Nathan also believed that you must have buy-in from operations and management. Without it you cannot make things happen. I have personally seen his program work and decrease the cost of maintenance and increase safety and retention of workers. If I had the chance, I would work on another project with Nathan.

In his new book: The Death of Reliability: Is it Too Late to Resurrect the Last, True Competitive Advantage, Dr. Nathan Wright takes innovative thinking to a new level. His approach to reliability could be the missing piece needed to complete the maintenance puzzle and bring about the increase in reliability that today’s engineers and managers are looking for, but unable to find.

If Dr. Wright is correct in his analysis of the challenges manufacturing facilities face regarding reliability, then industry is indeed in a very dire position and needs to act quickly before it is buried beneath its own mistakes.

Before Nathan led the maintenance team at the plant where I was working, maintenance was mostly reactive and poorly organized. Within a few weeks, he had begun to introduce the ideas he expands upon in this book which brought the plant uptimes which had not previously been thought possible. It was clear that his rich background in maintenance, reliability and management was a huge advantage to any organization.

I believe Dr. Wright is in fact correct in his analysis, and that his book will be a huge advantage to your organization as well.

For almost 40 years I've been involved in the processing and manufacturing fields in various roles, and have seen how the maintenance structure can either set up a company for success or failure. Nathan Wright's no nonsense approach to building maintenance systems gives you the tools needed to operate as a world class department. Follow his sound principles based on his extensive experience and you too can take your organization to the next level.

Dr. Nathan Wright’s approach has been refined through years of experience. He is a hands-on professional with tremendous technical and leadership skills and this makes him a valued partner for anyone involved in maintenance, engineering and management. Being a Certified Lubrication Specialist, it is refreshing to work with Nathan because he recognizes the true value of not just the application of lubricants, but also premium quality products and support provided by supplier. It is this combination in effort, led by one of the top lubrication professionals that will make a tremendous impact on overall reliability. He warns those looking to take this easy path that they are about to miss many opportunities, and these misses create a risk to their reliability efforts.

His approach is a simple straightforward one, designed for anyone to understand. Don't be reactive and stop missing out on the last true competitive advantage, contact Nathan today!

For over 40 years I have had the privilege of examining and working with hundreds of exceptional leaders and specialists in a broad range of business disciplines. My fellowship with Dr. Nathan Wright has been one of the highlights of that experience.

Dr. Wright has a unique grasp of the realities of the business world and the often- confounding challenges associated with focusing and guiding the energies of leaders, managers and workers within an organization. His understanding comes from his extensive background in manufacturing, mining, and consumer products, giving him the ability to see the dynamic balance between the policy and process issues of an organization and the people challenges that make or break implementation and execution of any change effort.

As a teacher of leadership skills, he brings the hands-on experience of having turned around ineffective teams by developing both the skill set and the mindset of leadership in those he has coached and mentored. He has a no-nonsense approach to training and development, which stems from a keen awareness of what people need to know and do, and what they don’t need to do, to achieve the outcomes demanded in today’s global economy.

Nathan Wright's approach to maintenance and reliability is inspiring! He describes that it is the implementation of basic concepts through your people, in your plant, is the key. I recommend you read his book to establish a clear path for your professional development in maintenance.

We have had the privilege of working with Dr. Nathan Wright in regard to maintenance and reliability and appreciate his step by step guidance and leadership. His programs have been user friendly and robust, and our entire maintenance and production teams have relied heavily on the information we have implemented for greater performance, reliability, and decision making. I’m confident a company can achieve a significant return on investment (ROI) if you follow the certification program the right way and involve as many applicable associates in the process.

I was fortunate enough to be able to work for Nate multiple times. Nate was an incredible mentor to me. As a young man aspiring to be an engineer, I cannot thank Nate enough for what he has taught me. I witnessed Nate develop programs and processes that not only benefited equipment and the company, but also the employees. With great leadership skills, experience, knowledge, and certifications; Nate is a man that pushes to accomplish goals which involve everyone around him. Still being in school unsure of where my career is headed, Nate helped formulate some thought on my future. Not everything is taught in the classroom, the rest is something that comes from years of experience and hands on work. Many lessons from Nate will be carried on and hopefully implemented wherever I end up. I can thank Nate for playing such a huge role in shaping how I look and think about lubrication and maintenance reliability.