When David Berger’s column for this issue arrived in the office, all I could think of was that famous scene from the movie “300”: “THIS! IS! ASSET MANAGER!!!”
This article is part of our monthly From the Editor column. Read more from Thomas Wilk.
David launched his column in January 1992, which is the same year that the Toronto Blue Jays won their first World Series. This is something that I hope pleases David, who is based in Ontario and who also was excited when the Toronto Raptors took the NBA championship earlier this year.
David’s column first appeared in the January 1992 issue of Plant Services. At that time George H.W. Bush and Brian Mulroney were in office, and Boyz II Men and Kriss Kross shared the top of the charts with Eric Clapton, Nirvana, and En Vogue. The Chicago Cubs’ Kris Bryant was busy being born, and U.S. Navy Admiral Grace Hopper died.
David’s first column was headlined “An Overview of CMMSs” and was positioned as the first in a series of 12 Q&A columns where readers would mail (not email) him their questions on topics including: preparing for your CMMS, work-order control, equipment history, predictive maintenance, and cost-justifying a CMMS. And in this first column, David immediately addressed some obstacles that he observed were preventing maintenance teams from succeeding with their CMMS systems:
“Less than a decade ago, management would tell me as a consultant that maintenance people were incapable of data entry, because their fingers were too big and greasy. ... Also, users were often not involved in the initial (CMMS) decision-making process. This created bitterness and resentment toward the system, and toward the people who shoved it down their throat.”
The editors of Plant Services also included a sidebar story introducing David as their new contributing expert on the topic of asset management software, with a headline that read “Answers to CMMS Questions – An Expert Who Meets the Need.” And in describing the mission of this new column, the editors wrote,
“(T)he problem, we realized, is that objective answers are not easy to come by in this specialized field.”
Anyone who has followed David in Plant Services (or even just sampled his work) knows that he has more than lived up to this original billing and has provided objective answers to readers seeking out information on how to maximize the value of their CMMS investment. His column this month continues this tradition of course, advising readers on how greater integration and more powerful analytics are driving the evolution of CMMS systems toward smarter, more-adaptive solutions.
I happen to be the sixth chief editor on Plant Services who has had the good fortune to work with David, and I offer my most sincere and heartfelt congratulations to him on reaching this goal. There are 24 MLB pitchers who have won 300 or more games, but there’s only one Asset Manager.
