Public Course
Learn alongside leaders from other plants at a scheduled location. Lunch and refreshments are included each day.
See course locationsPractical · Plant-focused · Built from experience
The Reliable Method Workshop
A 3-day workshop on leading reliability improvement
You are expected to improve production, manage costs, support your people, and prepare the operation for what comes next. Then the day changes. A familiar piece of equipment fails, planned work gets pushed aside, and the improvement you wanted waits another week.
Over three days with Jeff Parker, learn how to make a stronger case for improvement, choose priorities that fit your plant, and build the support and follow-through needed to make progress last.
The workshop expands on The Reliable Method: What Separates the Best Plants from the Rest.
Three ways to take the workshop.
It is the same 3-day workshop. Choose the setting that fits your team.
On-Site
The same workshop, at your plant or the location of your choice. Call or email to talk through dates and what your team needs.
Ask about on-siteOn-Demand
Coming soon
An online version of the workshop is in development. It is not open for enrollment yet.
On-demand statusPublic Course
Upcoming locations and dates.
Dallas, TX
May 11–13, 2027
Tuesday–Thursday
Venture X – Dallas / Addison
17250 Dallas PkwyDallas, TX 75248
$1,895 per student
- Lunch and refreshments included each day
- Course hours 8:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m.
- In-person registration opens at 8:00 a.m.
- Certificate of completion
Louisville, KY
July 27–29, 2027
Tuesday–Thursday
Builders Exchange of Kentucky
2300 Meadow Dr, Suite 100Louisville, KY 40218
$1,895 per student
- Lunch and refreshments included each day
- Course hours 8:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m.
- In-person registration opens at 8:00 a.m.
- Certificate of completion
Questions about public courses
Call or email with a question about a date, location, or registration.
On-Site
Bring the workshop to your plant or the location of your choice.
It is the same 3-day workshop, led by Jeff Parker, for the people who share the decisions in your organization. Hold it at your facility or another location that works for your team. In-person attendees receive a certificate of completion.
Call or email to inquire. We’ll talk through dates, location, the group, and what your team needs from the three days.
Phone
(412) 336-3223You can also use the contact form and tell us you want the workshop on-site.
On-Demand
The online course is coming soon.
An on-demand version of The Reliable Method Workshop is in development. It is not open for enrollment yet.
Public and on-site are the ways to take the workshop now. If you want to hear when the online course opens, call (412) 336-3223 or email crew@reliamag.com.
Brochure
Download the course brochure.
Eight pages: why to attend, what you will learn, the three-day outline, who should attend, and Jeff Parker’s background.
Get ahead of the problems that keep pulling you back.
By the end of a reactive day, the team has worked hard and the plant is running again. The same problems are still waiting to be solved.
That cycle costs more than downtime. It consumes the time, attention, and capacity the organization needs to get better.
Give your team a better way to get ahead.
For plant, maintenance, reliability, operations, and engineering leaders ready to build a more dependable operation.
01
See what is holding you back
Recognize the gaps behind recurring problems.
02
Choose what to work on next
Focus resources on priorities that fit your starting point.
03
Keep the work moving
Put ownership, support, and follow-through around those priorities.
Work toward a more predictable week.
- Fewer recurring disruptions.
- More confidence in production commitments.
- More time to improve the operation.
Reactivity ties up capacity. Reliability puts it to work.
Return with better answers to the decisions you face every week.
Where should we start?
How do we justify the investment?
Who needs to own the work?
Why are we still dealing with the same problems?
The workshop helps you answer those questions with a clearer view of your operation and a more practical approach to improvement.
Make a stronger case for resources
Connect reliability to the outcomes management and finance care about, including productive capacity, cost per unit, safety, environmental performance, customer commitments, and employee engagement.
Put your next dollar and hour to better use
Recognize your operation’s starting point, understand the dependencies between improvement activities, and choose a sequence that helps your efforts build on one another.
Get more from the capabilities you already have
See how maintenance strategies, work management, engineering, and operating practices connect, and identify where coordination or resource gaps are limiting results.
Build shared ownership of plant performance
Clarify the commitments needed from production, maintenance, engineering, and management so improvement has support across the operation.
Turn meetings and metrics into completed work
Use measures to identify barriers, assign responsibility, and follow actions through to results that matter on the floor.
Keep progress moving when priorities compete
Protect future-focused work, strengthen stakeholder support, and reinforce the practices that help your team stay ahead of recurring problems.
Return with 3–5 improvement priorities.
An initial set to review and refine with your team.
What needs to happen first
Prerequisites and first actions.
Who and what the work needs
Proposed ownership, resources, and support.
How progress stays visible
Follow-up and review.
Here is where we are getting stuck. Here is what deserves attention next. Here is what we need to make it happen.
Course Outline
Three days, six sessions. Each day ends with what you take back to your plant.
Day 1
Build the case. Choose the right starting point.
Make a stronger case for support and focus your effort where your operation needs it most.
1. Make the case for the resources you need
The business case for reliability
Getting support for reliability starts with explaining what the business stands to gain. Learn how to connect equipment performance to the priorities already on management’s agenda and present a credible case for the investment required.
- The business value beyond the repair bill. Connect reliability to capacity, cost per unit, safety, environmental performance, customer satisfaction, and the effective use of people.
- The funding conversation. Explain the opportunity, the resources needed, and the assumptions behind the expected value in terms management and finance can evaluate.
- The transition from reactive to reliable. Understand why improvement may require added support at first and how to set realistic expectations for investment and results.
The aim is to make the value of reliability easier to explain and the commitment required easier to understand. Early investment and later maintenance savings need to be considered together.
2. Know where to start
The Reliable Method and your starting point
A plant can have capable people and worthwhile initiatives while still struggling to get ahead. Learn how to look across the operation, recognize what is holding progress back, and choose an appropriate starting point.
- Recognizing the actual condition of the operation. Understand the progression through Reactive, Controlled, Proactive, Reliability Driven, and Strategic maturity.
- Seeing why improvement efforts stall. Recognize the effects of weak foundations, competing priorities, resource gaps, and misaligned expectations.
- Knowing what needs to come first. Determine when stabilization is needed and how to use the capacity it creates to build lasting reliability.
Make your next investment fit your starting point.
- Reactive
- Controlled
- Proactive
- Reliability Driven
- Strategic
What you take back: a stronger case for resources, and a clearer starting point.
What would a more reliable operation make possible for your business, and where should you start?
Day 2
Turn your team’s effort into more dependable performance.
Understand where work loses momentum and how to keep the whole operation moving toward the same result.
3. Get the pieces working together
The five categories of The Reliable Method
Your plant may already have many of the capabilities it needs. Getting more value from them requires understanding how they connect and what each needs from the rest of the operation.
Work Management
Turn identified needs into completed work.
Capital Projects
Build reliability in before startup.
Reliability Engineering
Address the causes of recurring failures.
Operational Reliability Discipline covers metrics, ownership, and follow-through. Foundational Elements cover assets, criticality, strategies, spares, standards, and roles.
Examples connect maintenance strategies, planning, scheduling, precision execution, and engineering decisions to the support needed for good work to produce better results.
4. Turn meetings and metrics into completed work
Operational reliability discipline
A meeting should help work move forward. A metric should help people make a better decision. Learn how to give daily, weekly, and monthly routines a clear purpose and make progress visible across departments.
Measures that tell you where to act
Connect leading and lagging indicators to execution, equipment performance, and business results.
Conversations that produce decisions
Give operating discussions and improvement reviews a clear purpose, with the right people involved.
Accountability that carries work through
Establish owners, due dates, follow-up, and a practical way to bring unresolved barriers to the people who can remove them.
What you take back: a way to connect priorities, owners, and follow-through so more work gets finished.
What is keeping your people’s best efforts from becoming more dependable plant performance?
Day 3
Put your next priorities into motion.
Build the support and follow-through that help improvement hold up under operating pressure.
5. Keep progress moving when pressure rises
Leading the change
A promising improvement effort eventually meets a difficult week. Production pressure rises. Resources get stretched. Familiar ways of working become attractive again. Learn how to prepare for those moments and strengthen the commitment behind the work.
- Building agreement before the difficult decisions arrive. Align stakeholders around the business purpose, expected value, responsibilities, and resources required.
- Helping people move through change. Understand the concerns that influence support, participation, and ownership as working practices change.
- Reinforcing the work that creates a better future. Protect planning and engineering capacity, support agreed priorities, and recognize the behaviors that prevent recurring emergencies.
The focus is on making support visible in everyday decisions so improvement can continue as the plant manages its operating demands.
6. Choose your next priorities. Make them stick.
Sequencing, ownership, and follow-through
A clear, manageable set of priorities gives your team something it can act on and follow through. Learn how to turn a broad set of opportunities into a practical starting point that fits your operation.
- Choosing priorities in a useful sequence. Address current constraints and select work that makes the next improvement possible.
- Making the commitment specific. Identify prerequisites, proposed owners, resource needs, first actions, and what completion should look like.
- Following progress and removing barriers. Establish a review rhythm that keeps priorities visible and brings stalled work to the right people.
Bring these ideas together in an initial set of three to five improvement priorities for review with your team.
Illustrative example
Make the first move specific
Example priority: Protect two planning blocks next week.
Proposed owner
Maintenance manager
Support required
Coverage for urgent requests during those blocks.
First action and review
Reserve the blocks. Review interruptions and completed plans on Friday.
What you take back: three to five initial priorities, with proposed owners, first actions, and support needs.
What will you put in motion first, and how will you keep it moving?
This is bigger than a maintenance class.
Get more from the expertise your plant already has.
Consider a problem your team finds early. The condition is identified. The work request is written. Then the repair waits for planning time, a part, an equipment window, or a decision about competing priorities.
The technical knowledge exists. Turning that knowledge into a completed repair depends on how the organization works.
| What your team has | What helps it deliver |
|---|---|
| Predictive findings | Time, parts, and an equipment window |
| Engineering solutions | Funding, ownership, and implementation |
| Capital projects | Reliability requirements carried through design and startup |
The workshop helps you understand those connections and make better decisions about what they need. You gain a way to connect specialized capabilities to business priorities, recognize where progress is being limited, and help departments work toward a shared result.
Who should attend
The workshop is for people responsible for plant performance, improvement priorities, resources, and execution across departments.
Plant and facility managers
Connect reliability to production commitments, operating costs, and capacity to improve.
Maintenance managers and superintendents
Build the case for resources and stronger maintenance execution.
Reliability leaders
Connect improvement priorities, ownership, and business results.
Operations leaders
Strengthen equipment readiness and dependable production.
Engineering leaders
Connect capital and reliability decisions to long-term operating value.
Bring the people who share the decisions. Return with a clearer basis for agreeing on priorities, committing resources, and supporting execution.
Three days away. A clearer direction when you return.
- A stronger case for resources.
- Three to five initial priorities to review with your team.
- A clearer approach to ownership and follow-through.
Work Reliable.