Tpm in Process Industries (Step-By-Step Approach to TPM Implementation)

Book Description

Process industries have a particularly urgent need for collaborative equipment management systems like TPM that can absolutely guarantee safe, stable operation. In TPM in Process Industries, top consultants from JIPM (Japan Institute of Plant Maintenance) document approaches to implementing TPM in process industries. They focus on the process environment and equipment issues such as process loss structure and calculation, autonomous maintenance, equipment and process improvement, and quality maintenance. Must reading for any manager in the process industry.

Customer Reviews:

An excellent book on TPM.......2006-11-05

Although the book has been intended to focus on the TPM for the process industries, yet I found the book equally valuable for discrete manufacturing. The book explains in detail the TPM pillars and can be used as a guidebook for direct implementation.

Poorly Developed Characters, Thin Plot.......2002-09-04

If you buy this book expecting a corporate thriller, filled with larger-than-life characters and exciting tales of industrial espionage, you will be disappointed. TPM Manager is a tiresome main character---imagine a dumbed-down, cliche-filled John Galt from "Atlas Shrugged." Many times I shouted: Shut the F--- up! as I read TPM Manager spew drivel on the wonders of TPM. Initially, I wondered if Suzuki's book was purely ironic. Alas, the author really believes this nonsense. Here's some free advice: save the money, skip the reorg, don't hire the consultant, refrain from making people "take ownership" over a language that no one really takes seriously and instead show re-runs of the "Love Boat" once a week. It is guaranteed to make your employees run back to their cubicles and do some work.

Simply the BIBLE of TPM.......2001-08-28

Three years ago I used to work for a corporation that used absorbed the TPM (Total Prodictive Maintenance) methodology and made it its own with certain in-house touches.

When we were at the beginning stages of implementing TPM, the officer (that's the name of the role) in charge of the rollout made sure all of management had a good grasp on the ideas captured by this book, and a few even had a chance to meet Mr. Suzuki, to ask him questions about it, only to receive a very concise "Read the book!" as the answer.

The truth is that almost all you need to know to kick off TPM in your industry is hereby contained, however there's one BIG issue I should make you aware of: the book lays down the principles, all of which need to be internalized at all levels within your culture. If that is not achieved (the "zero-loss mentality", for example) you will feel frustrated, and might even be tempted to drop the program altogether. DON'T! If you need to, get consultants, try again, try harder: it's a proven model, and it works, you just have to be (you and your people) very disciplined about it.

TPM in Process Industries.......2000-06-30

I have worked widely using TPM as a practitioner and a consultant. For me this work represents the "bible" that I use to base my work from. The tools apply equally well to high speed lines as well as to process equipment.

TPM for all industries.......2000-04-02

This book is the best I have read on the subject of TPM. Although it is titled for process industries it is relevant for production industries also, showing the differences betwwen the two. It is packed with ideas and shows how to start and run TPM within your industry. I showed it around at work and three of my collegues went out and bought it.

Integrated Petroleum Reservoir Management: A Team Approach

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Integrated Petroleum Reservoir Management: A Team Approach
Abdus Satter , and Ganesh C. Thakur
Manufacturer: Pennwell Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0878144080

Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina

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Shocking material in a chewy read
Superb study of US state's use of mercenary drug-runners
Parapolitics metastasize into deep politics
Essential reading
The Truth that Hurts

Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina
Peter Dale Scott
Manufacturer: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0742525228

Book Description

Peter Dale Scott's brilliantly researched tour de force illuminates the underlying forces that drive U.S. global policy from Vietnam to Colombia and now to Afghanistan and Iraq. He brings to light the intertwined patterns of drugs, oil politics, and intel

Customer Reviews:

Shocking material in a chewy read.......2006-10-15

A hard-to-follow structure and a dry, academic writing style make this powerful and much-needed book less accessible than it should be.

Spurred in part by the near-unanimous 5-star acclaim among the Amazon reviewers, I bought this book. I was a bit disappointed. Not because of the content: Scott's authority comes through strongly as a concerned, longtime, and deep observer of the deliberately hidden dimension of U.S. foreign policy operating in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina. Writing since the time of the Vietnam War, he has dug and dug into these things, and we are the beneficiaries of his spadework.

My issue is more with the structure and presentation of the book. As other reviewers have noted, the book is in fact mostly a reprinting of some of Scott's earlier writings, with some new, brief introductions. This means the book is not really unified, but more a collection of essays with some overlap and repetition which I found sometimes confusing. Counterintuitively, it moves backward in time, starting with a discussion of Afghanistan in 2002 and progressing to Colombia in 2001 and Indochina from 1950 to 1970. The book is not a single narrative or a single argument, and its unity suffers for this.

Scott delivers what should be the most sensational pieces of information--such as that presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon all had strikingly intimate ties to organized-crime figures--in a dry, unemphatic way that makes for a strangely subdued, scholarly tone (with copious end-notes), and thus a less engaging read than it should be.

Also: if you are not thoroughly familiar with things like the progression of political and military events in Indochina leading up to the Vietnam War, you will find the book heavy going, since Scott assumes this knowledge on the part of the reader.

All of that being said, this book is very important, and Scott has done a huge service to us all in writing it. In the nature of things, he can't create a seamless narrative of American skulduggery in its wars since World War Two, since this has been kept secret. But he presents a host of suggestive and damning evidence of systematic, covert wrongdoing by American intelligence and military operatives working opportunistically with drug traffickers and organized-crime figures, often without the knowledge of the administration they are ostensibly serving. These people have taken the adage "the ends justify the means" to the extreme--although what the desired "ends" actually might be is often far from clear.

So: five stars for content and its importance; three stars for presentation. We need more Peter Dale Scotts--a lot more of them. His ideas need to be popularized, but it seems that Scott himself is not the guy to do that.

Superb study of US state's use of mercenary drug-runners.......2005-03-21

This is an outstanding and revelatory book, a brilliant account of a drug-trafficking empire. He shows how US protection for their drug-runner allies has led to the huge increase in drug trafficking in the last 50 years.

The US strategy of opposing national self-determination involves alliances with drug-traffickers like the Sicilian Mafia, the Triads in South-East Asia, the Contras in Nicaragua, the Kosovo Liberation Army in Europe, the death squads in Colombia and the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. As President Johnson's Secretary of State Dean Rusk said, the USA "should employ whatever means ... arms here, opium there."

From the 1870s to the 1960s, the British rulers of Malaya farmed the opium franchise to the Triads. The US state first copied this strategy in 1949, when it armed the defeated Kuomintang's drug networks in Burma and Laos, after the victorious Chinese revolution began to eliminate Chinese opium, then the source of 85% of the world's heroin.

The US state encouraged its allies to enrich themselves through drugs, while it blamed the communist enemy for the evils that its allies were committing. From 1949 until at least 1964, the US told the UN Narcotics Commission that China was responsible for drug imports into the USA. In fact, the drugs were trafficked from Burma and Thailand, under the protection of the Kuomintang troops backed by the CIA. The Hong Kong authorities stated that they "were not aware of a traffic in narcotics from the mainland of China through Hong Kong" but "quantities of narcotics reached Hong Kong via Thailand."

The US state assaulted the whole region of South East Asia between 1950 and 1975, just as it is attacking the Middle East today. An earlier effort at regime change in Laos in 1959-60 was a disaster, putting drug traffickers in power. Opium production soared during the years of US intervention, the 1950s and 1960s, and plummeted in 1975 after the Vietnamese people kicked US forces out of the region.

US military interventions lead to bigger drug flows into the USA. After the US intervention in Afghanistan in 1979, the Afghani-produced proportion of heroin consumed in the USA went from zero in 1979 to 52% in 1984.

Later, the Taliban government cut opium production from 3,656 tons in 2000 (90% of Europe's heroin supply) to 74 tons in 2001 (US State Department figures), wiping out 70% of the world's illicit opium production. US forces, in alliance with a drug trafficking network, the Northern Alliance, defeated Al Qa'ida, another drug trafficking network. The US funded the Northern Alliance warlord and terrorist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, making him the world's biggest heroin trafficker.

Under US occupation, Afghan opium production has risen from 3,700 tons in 2002, to 3,400 tons in 2003, to 4,200 tons last year. The Financial Times wrote, "The U.S. and UN have ignored repeated calls by the international antidrugs community to address the increasing menace of Afghanistan's opium cultivation." It is now the world's leading producer of illicit drugs, producing 90% of the heroin sold in Britain and Europe. President Karzai of Afghanistan has made Rashid Dostum, a warlord, drug runner and terrorist, his military chief of staff.

According to the Colombian government, the antigovernment guerrillas of FARC (the supposed target of the `war on drugs') had 2.5% of Colombia's cocaine trade; the government's allies, the paramilitary death squads, had 40%. Drug production in Colombia and its drug imports to the USA have now doubled to a new record.

Parapolitics metastasize into deep politics.......2005-03-01

Peter Dale Scott illustrates clearly that one of the main aims of the US foreign policy is control of oil, because the US is heavily dependent on foreign oil and oil markets.

The Vietnam war was based on the Southeast Asia domino theory, which raised concerns about the Indonesian oil assets. The war was all about preventing communist regimes from taking control of oil reserves.
Other examples are Iraq, Afghanistan and Unocal's oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea, Colombia and Occidental Petroleum's oil fields or Kossovo and the Balkan oil pipeline.

In order to control oil resources the US backes armies and governments that are heavily involved in drug trafficking. The end justifies all means.
This kind of powerplay is exercised by covert means (parapolitics). Unfortunately, those policies tend to metastasize into deep politics. As the author states: 'they become an interplay of unacknowledged forces on which the original parapolitical agent no longer has control'.
The result is that the US and the world are inundated with drugs. One cannot find one dollar note without drug traces.

This book is partly a rewriting of an older book of the author 'The War Conspiracy'.
Although it is more confusing and lesser deep digging than his Magnum Opus 'Deep Politics', it is a disturbing and impressive report.
Not to be missed.

Essential reading.......2003-07-16

Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina is an eye-opening journey into the deep politics of U.S. intervention in developing and third-world nations. Scott illuminates the connection between American business interests and American foreign policy with a factual depth that leaves little room for doubt. Scott also documents the CIA involvement--often via drug proxies--in furthering covert American interests. The details and references contained within the text add immeasurably to what is already an incredibly valuable and insightful history. This book is essential reading for anyone looking to understand the motivation behind American foreign policy and the military conflicts that have arisen out of American business interests on foreign soil.

The Truth that Hurts.......2003-07-16

Like veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, whom McCarthyites dubbed "prematurely anti-Fascist" for fighting against Franco during the Spanish Civil War, Peter Dale Scott has long been ahead of the pack on the parapolitical underpinnings of US foreign policy. Those desiring to catch up - and thereby plug the mega-gap between Bush II rhetoric and reality - will be wise to start by reading Scott's latest book, "Drugs, Oil and War." Though he focusses on Indochina, Colombia and Afghanistan, lessons Washington learned there - and forgot - are being retaught today in Iraq.

Fat Free 2: More Fat Free and Ultra Low Fat Recipes - No Butter, No Oil, No Margarine!

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Easy and tasty too!

Fat Free 2: More Fat Free and Ultra Low Fat Recipes - No Butter, No Oil, No Margarine!
Doris Cross
Manufacturer: Prima Lifestyles
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Tanita BC533 Glass Innerscan Body Composition Monitor

ASIN: 0761501290
Release Date: 1995-11-01

Book Description

Just when you thought that you’d tried all the great ways to cook delicious fat free and ultra lowfat meals, Doris Cross is back with more fabulous ideas. Fat Free 2 is packed with all new flavor-filled recipes. Now you’re covered from breakfast to dinner—even late-night snacks and desserts! Each easy-to-prepare recipe includes a breakdown of fat and calorie content per serving. Now you can enjoy tasty dishes without guilt! The unbelievably lowfat recipes include:

• Chicken Gumbo
• Garlic-Cheese Homestyle Biscuits
• Shrimp Creole
• Chili Dogs in a Blanket
• Deviled Eggs
• Old-Fashioned Baked Beans
• Sausage and Rice Casserole
• Mexican Layered Dip
• Stuffed Potato Skins
• Cajun Seafood Salad
• Old-Fashioned Blackberry Cobbler
• And Much, Much, More!

Maintaining a healthy diet doesn’t mean giving up great taste. With Fat Free 2, the proof is in the pudding (Banana Cream Pudding, that is, see page 218)!

About the Author

Doris Cross has successfully maintained a 100-pound weight loss using the recipes in this book. The owner of a diet clinic, she conducts health seminars for hospitals and is a popular regional speaker. She is the bestselling author of Fat Free and Ultra Lowfat Recipes (Prima) and lives in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

Customer Reviews:

Easy and tasty too!.......1998-12-04

Quick and easy is the theme for this book. I have tried many of the recipes and they taste just as good as if it were made with fats! I highly recommend this book for those who are looking to cut the fat but not the taste.

Audel HVAC Fundamentals, Heating System Components, Gas and Oil Burners and Automatic Controls

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Audel HVAC Fundamentals, Heating System Components, Gas and Oil Burners and Automatic Controls
James E. Brumbaugh
Manufacturer: Audel
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0764542079

Book Description

Your guide to keeping the heat on

Whether you’re an apprentice or a veteran HVAC technician, you know that technology changes and you need to keep up. This fully revised guidebook covers everything you need to know to install, maintain, and repair the components that run, regulate, and fuel both old and new systems. From oil burners and steam line controls to the newest chip-based technology and environmental regulations, Volume 2 helps you keep the heat on.

Install and repair thermostats, humidistats, automatic controls, and oil or gas burner controls
Review pipes, pipe fittings, piping details, valve installation, and duct systems
Find new calculations and environmental guidelines
Learn the best ways to handle hydronics and steam line controls
Deal with solid fuels and understand coal firing methods
Refer to data tables with conversions, formula cross-references, and manufacturers’ lists

The Audel HVAC Library

Book Description

With the global rising energy demand, the Caspian region will be one of the most important geo-political areas of the 21st century. In the context of the current restructuring of the international political economy, this book concentrates on two main aspects of the post-Cold War era: the post-Soviet geopolitics of Central Asia and Caucasus, and the contemporary conflict and cooperation between regional powers, Western powers, and transnational corporations around the Caspian region's energy resources.

Customer Reviews:

The best study on caspian region since fall SU.......2000-06-01

Amineh, M.P. (2000), Towards the Control of Oil Resources in the Caspian Region, (New York): St. Martin's Press 264.

With the disintegration of the Soviet Union new oil and gas sources have become available for the world. As energy supply will be one of the main problems of the coming millennium, the Caspian region (Russia, Iran, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Azerbaijan) as one of the major global oil and gas sources will play a crucial role in this respect. Amineh's book is one of the few recent studies that deal with the developments in the Caspian region since the fall of the Soviet Union. It is an important book to the current struggle for the control of energy reserves in this region

By looking at political, economic, strategic, historical, social, and cultural aspects this book draws a complex picture of the competition on exploitation and transport of energy resources from the Caspian region. The author shows how this struggle takes place between various actors: the advanced industrialised countries (the United States and Western Europe), their backed Transnational Corporations and the regional powers Russia, Turkey, Iran, and also China and Pakistan.

According to the author, the developments in the post-Soviet Central Asia and Caucasus cannot be set apart from the current structure in the International Relations and International Political Economy characterised by international trade, the transnationalisation of production and finance, and the internationalisation of state activities. Through an increasing economic and cultural interdependence this process reduces the power and effectiveness of governments at the nation-state level. This manifests itself especially in the involvement of transnational corporations and transnational oil corporations through joint ventures for the exploitation and export of the Caspian energy resources, the most important ones being the Kazakhstan-Chevron joint venture known as Tengizchevroil and the Azerbaijan Offshore Oil Project. As world wide energy demand will rise in the coming millennium the question on who will gain control of energy resources will be a major topic. All countries involved in the region and also the Central Asian countries themselves aim to hinder Russia from regaining dominance in the region. Up till now Russia controls the only existing pipeline and has used this as a means of pressure against Central Asian countries. The discussion on the construction of possible alternative energy outlets is a crucial issue in this context. According to the book: '[t]he problem with pipeline politics is that it must combine often opposing economic and political interests'. The United States does not want Iran to become dominant in the region and therefore rejects any possible pipeline that would run through Iranian territory. Georgia hopes for a Western pipeline. As a transit country it could profit from tariff revenues. Regional conflicts such as the war in Nagorno-Karabakh, Chechnya, the PKK issue in Turkey and the Taliban rule in Afghanistan as well as the civil war in Tajikistan are mentioned as major obstacles to co-operation in the region especially concerning the pipeline issue. Chapter VIII discusses the problem of the various possible short-term and long-term pipelines. Several alliances have been built around the Caspian's energy resources. Whereas the United States support Turkey's involvement in the region as a reaction to the US-sanctions Iran seeks close ties to Russia, especially in the nuclear field. The author outlines the involvement and activities as well as the contradictions of the various interested actors in the region. Russia sees it as a natural given and historical fact to be active in the region, showing this especially in the military field through their financial support of the Central Asian armies. However Russia's activities are constrained by its own economic problems. It therefore has to keep friendly relations to the West for investment in Russia. Iran and Turkey refer to their historical and cultural links to the Central Asian region in connection to their activities there. Iran has own large energy resources and hopes to be able to develop its resources by expanding its infrastructure toward Central Asia. Also other Asian countries, especially China and Pakistan who see the Central Asian energy resources as a necessary precondition for their own economic development try to develop closer ties to the region. The author looks in detail looks at the energy resources and major oil and gas projects in the former Soviet republics in the Caspian region: Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan

However, the exploitation and export of the Caspian energy resources is also constrained by various aspects. The struggle for power between the ruling faction and the popular Islamic oriented Welfare Party (now Virtue Party) in Turkey, or between the more liberal faction around president Khatami and the traditionalists around Ayatollah Khamenei in Iran, are obstacles to the involvement of these countries in the region and make other investors cautious to co-operate with them. According to the author another obstacle to development are the internal factors of the Central Asian countries themselves. Ethnic conflicts, poor infrastructure and technology, lack of commercial and legal expertise cause problems to attract outside investments. Further, the legal regime dispute around the demarcation of the Caspian Sea has hindered a rapid exploitation of the Caspian energy resources. These and other aspects contribute to the difficulties around the exploitation and export of the Caspian energy resources.

Book Description

Presents practical methods for detecting, diagnosing and correcting fluid power problems within a system. The work details the design, maintenance, and troubleshooting of pneumatic, hydraulic and electrical systems and components. This second edition stresses: developments in understanding the complex interactions of components within a fluid power system; cartridge valve systems, proportional valve and servo-systems, and compressed air drying and filtering; noise reduction and other environmental concerns; and more.;This work should be of interest to mechanical, maintenance, manufacturing, system and machine design, hydraulic, pneumatic, industrial, chemical, electrical and electronics, lubrication, plastics processing, automotive, process control, and power system engineers; manufacturers of hydraulic and pneumatic machinery; systems maintenance personnel; and upper-level undergraduate and graduate students in these disciplines.

Subsea Control and Data Acquisition: Technology and Experience (Advances in Underwater Technology, Ocean Science and Offshore Engineering)

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Subsea Control and Data Acquisition: Technology and Experience (Advances in Underwater Technology, Ocean Science and Offshore Engineering)

Manufacturer: Springer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0792306988

Fluid Power Design Handbook (Fluid Power and Control, 12) 3rd Edition Revised & Expanded

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Fluid Power Design Handbook (Fluid Power and Control, 12) 3rd Edition Revised & Expanded
Yeaple
Manufacturer: CRC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Introduction to Fluid Power

ASIN: 0824795628

Book Description

Maintaining and enhancing the high standards and excellent features that made the previous editions so popular, this book presents engineering and application information to incorporate, control, predict, and measure the performance of all fluid power components in hydraulic or pneumatic systems. Detailing developments in the ongoing "electronic revolution" of fluid power control, the third edition offers new and enlarged coverage of microprocessor control, "smart" actuators, virtual displays, position sensors, computer-aided design, performance testing, noise reduction, on-screen simulation of complex branch-flow networks, important engineering terms and conversion units, and more.

Russia's Oil Barons and Metal Magnates: Oligarchs and the State in Transition

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a slightly different view of oligarchs

Russia's Oil Barons and Metal Magnates: Oligarchs and the State in Transition
Stephen Fortescue
Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Economic Conditions | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 1403986177
Release Date: 2007-01-23

Book Description

Russian politics have been dominated over the last decade by the relationship between the oligarchs and the state. The existing literature is damning of the oligarchs, on two major grounds: they won their wealth and power corruptly, and rapaciously stripped the assets they had so dubiously obtained. This book contains a critical analysis of each of the claims made against them. In doing so it presents a detailed analysis of the place of the oligarchs in the Russian political economy.

Customer Reviews:

a slightly different view of oligarchs.......2007-06-11

The interesting aspect of Fortescue's book is how he manages to present the Russian oligarchs in a somewhat more favourable light. By now, the predominant view inside and outside Russia is that the oligarchs acquired their assets by virtually looting the new post-communist nation. When ownership and rules were extremely vague.

The book steps through the 90s, looking at the top companies ruled by the oligarchs. Like Yukos or Norilsk Nickel. The author describes numerous managerial decisions made, like centralising authority, or continuing to open or close mines. The mechanisms of transfer pricing are explained. Where often value was extracted from the companies and then moved overseas.

A key part of the book is how taxes are paid (or not) to the government. The minimisation of this was a major charge against them, in the eyes of the government.

The book does suggest that some of the oligarchs' actions were reasonable business decisions, in the context of their environments.

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