Talecris Biotherapeutics is a global biotherapeutic and biotechnology company that has just launched a Total Process Reliability initiative. They believe they have found the answer to transforming the equipment failure rate of a 21 day average to 415 days. The Total Process Reliability initiative is a comprehensive training program with an emphasis on equipment stewardship and a systematic approach to increasing employee engagement. Talecris sees this program as an ideal approach to solving equipment problems. The Talecris article is posted on the Maintenance Technologywebsite and goes into more detail of the Total Process Reliability initiative for those that are intrigued.

The Total Process Reliability has many other aspects to it, like building a new culture, dealing with change and challenges, and training leaders. Talecris seems to be on the right track in recognizing that reliability engineering is crucial to their organization. Reliability engineers and predictive maintenance are aways to help companies avoid equipment problems that usually lead to production issues. Although I think that this a positive step for Talecris Biotherapeutics to be taking, the I would guess that the cost of training their own employees to due the routine equipment tests and maintenance must be high. Which leads me to believe that it would be more beneficial to organization to hire a reliability engineer or predictive maintenance professional to do the job.