You can't PM your way to reliability. You can't plan, schedule, or buy your way there either. No predictive technology, no silver bullet, no budget increase will get you off the failure treadmill.

The only path to reliability is reducing the defects and waste entering your system faster than they're added. This course shows you exactly how - and you'll complete a real project at your own facility before you're done.

Built by Joel Levitt from 35+ years in the trenches and over 1,000,000 published words on maintenance management. This isn't theory. It's a system.

The Problem:

Your best people are stuck in reactive mode. The same breakdowns keep showing up. The same parts keep getting replaced. Forty percent or more of your maintenance effort is repetitive work that shouldn't exist.

Above the waterline, you see labor, parts, and contractor costs. Below it - scrap, downtime, reduced yield, wasted operator time, safety exposure, and reputation damage. That's the maintenance iceberg, and most organizations never look beneath the surface.

What You'll Learn:

This course walks you from identifying waste and defects all the way through completing, measuring, and presenting a real improvement project. Seventeen modules, zero filler.

• How to identify the 7 types of waste hiding in your maintenance operation
• A repeatable framework for turning complaints, parts data, and work orders into improvement projects
• Root cause analysis that's fast, practical, and focused on permanent fixes
• How to calculate ROI and payback so your projects get funded
• The defect pool concept and why PM, planning, and PdM alone will never get you to reliability
• How to pick the right projects - low-hanging fruit first, avoid the pitfalls that kill momentum
• How to execute, measure, document, and present results that build credibility with management
• How to build a lean maintenance team slowly, stack wins, and scale the program over time

Real Projects. Real Savings.

Every concept is anchored to actual case studies from working maintenance departments.

LED Lighting Replacement — Swapped 250W metal halide lamps for 54W LEDs. Annual energy cost per fixture dropped from $3,500+ to $100. Same light output. Longer life.

Boiler Filter Installation — Ever-Pure filters extended boiler warranties from 1 to 7 years. Projected $37,500 in avoided maintenance across 14 units, with $134K+ potential across the full fleet.

Door System Analysis — Proved aluminum doors save over $2,000 versus wood and $800+ versus steel per opening over a 15-year lifecycle. Changed all future specifications.

Air Brake Valve RCA — Traced recurring valve failures to a neglected air dryer filter and contaminated compressor. One root cause analysis eliminated a failure pattern that had been tripling costs for 9 months.

What You Walk Away With:

• A completed DE/Lean project. Not a hypothetical exercise — a real project at your facility with measurable results.
• The 7 Lists framework. A repeatable system for mining hidden defects from complaints, disruptions, parts data, repetitive jobs, labor hours, and cost data. Use it for years.
• RCA methodology. Focused on speed, practicality, and permanent removal of defect causes — not bureaucratic paperwork.
• ROI and business case skills. Calculate return on investment, payback periods, and build proposals that actually get funded.
• Project templates and forms. Proposal forms, planning sheets, brainstorming logs, and evaluation matrices ready to use.
• SIP Logbook system. A documentation method to track every Small Improvement Project, building an institutional record of wins that compounds over time.

Who This Is For:

Maintenance technicians tired of fixing the same thing twice. Supervisors and planners managing reactive workloads. Reliability engineers looking for a practical defect elimination framework. Plant and operations managers who want to shift from reactive to proactive. Facilities managers in schools, hospitals, and commercial buildings. Anyone responsible for maintenance budgets and cost reduction. Teams building or sustaining a lean maintenance culture.

Included Materials

• 3.8 hours of video instruction across 17 modules
• Complete 80+ page course workbook with exercises and case studies
• 7 brainstorming workshop exercises with log sheets
• Project proposal templates, planning sheets, and evaluation matrices
• ROI calculators and brainstorming frameworks you keep forever
• Quizzes with answer keys for every module
• Certificate of completion
• 1-year course access

Course Outline

• Lean Maintenance Foundations
• Understanding Defects and Where They Come From
• Small Improvement Projects (SIP): The Engine of Change
• Seeing Waste: The Maintenance Iceberg
• Breakdowns, Corrective Work, and DIYF
• CMMS, Work Orders, and Data That Matters
• Planning, Scheduling, and PM/PdM Basics
• Predictive Maintenance Technologies
• PM Task Development and Shutdown Opportunities
• Stores, Parts, Purchasing, and RCA
• Teams, Brainstorming, and ROI Thinking
• Finding Hidden Gold with Defect Lists
• Turning Lists into Strong Projects
• Selecting the Right Lean or DE Project
• Documenting and Managing SIPs
• Executing, Measuring, and Presenting Results
• Sustaining Momentum and Scaling Wins