Materials Performance

OCT 2017

Materials Performance is the world's most widely circulated magazine dedicated to corrosion prevention and control. MP provides information about the latest corrosion control technologies and practical applications for every industry and environment.

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A34 OCTOBER 2017 MATERIALS PERFORMANCE NACE INTERNATIONAL: VOL. 56, NO. 10 Special Lectures KEYNOTE SESSION Commander Mike Abrashoff will be the featured keynote speaker at CORROSION 2018 in Phoenix, Arizona. Abrashoff, a former commander in the U.S. Navy, is a world-renowned expert on management techniques, leadership, and the importance of workplace culture. At the age of 36, the Navy selected Abrashoff to become commander of the USS Benfold — at the time, the most junior commanding officer in the Pacific Fleet. The immediate challenges that faced him on this underperforming Naval war ship were staggering: exceptionally low morale, high turnover, and unacceptably low performance evaluations. Few thought that this ship could improve. In many ways, the USS Benfold was actually an extreme example of the same problems facing many organizations today. The solution was to establish a system of management techniques that Abrashoff calls The Leadership Roadmap. At the core of his leadership approach on the Benfold was a process of replacing command and control with commitment and cohesion, and by engaging the hearts, minds, and loyalties of workers — with conviction and humility. "The most important thing that a captain can do is to see the ship through the eyes of the crew," he says. According to Abrashoff, The Leadership Roadmap is a practice that empowers every individual to share the responsibility of achieving excellence. "It's your ship," he was known to say. His former sailors to this day still remind him of it. By every measure, these principles were able to achieve breakthrough results. Personnel turnover decreased to an unprecedented 1%. The rate of military promotions tripled, and the crew slashed operating expenses by 25%. Regarded as the finest ship in the Pacific Fleet, the Benfold won the prestigious Spokane Trophy for having the highest degree of combat readiness. Most important — this transformation took place with the same crew. What had changed was the ship's culture as a result of Abrashoff's leadership style. Abrashoff recounted the leadership lessons from the turnaround of USS Benfold in It's Your Ship, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, with over 800,000 copies sold to date. This extraordinary interest in Abrashoff's leadership journey and the Benfold's organizational lessons led to two follow-up books — Get Your Ship Together and It's Our Ship. Those books took readers deeper into ways these principles have been put into action by business leaders in their own organizations. Prior to commanding the USS Benfold, Abrashoff served as the military assistant to Secretary of Defense William J. Perry. He also helped draft the air defense plan for naval forces in the Persian Gulf in 1990, coinciding with Iraq's invasion of Kuwait; and served as the executive officer of the cruiser Shiloh, where he deployed to the Persian Gulf in support of United Nations sanctions against Iraq. PLENARY LECTURE Dr. Andresen's expertise is in the area of corrosion and environmental effects on mechanical properties and integrity of materials. His research has focused on corrosion and environmental fracture of iron- and nickel-base alloys under conditions of interest to the energy industries. Dr. Andresen is the author of over 450 publications, holds 26 patents, has given hundreds of invited talks, and written numerous chapters for books. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of NACE International and the American Society for Metals. He has received two Whitney Gallery of Achievers Awards and two Dushman Awards from GE, the Speller Award from NACE, the U.R. Evans Award from the British Institute of Corrosion, and was selected as one of "50 Stars to Watch" by Industry Week in 1996. He has served in many capacities in professional societies, including the NACE Board of Directors (2005-2007); Board of Editors for CORROSION journal (1994-present); NACE Research Committee Chair (2005-2007); NACE Awards Committee Chair (2011-2014); Technical and General Chair of the 2015 International Conference on Environmental Degradation in Nuclear Power Systems – Water Reactors; Expert Panel for Sandia National Laboratories; and the Advisory Panel for the Halden Test Reactor in Norway and the Idaho National Lab Science User Facility. Plenary Lecture – A Brief History of Environmental Cracking Major, widespread incidents of environmental cracking occurred during the industrial revolution, with over 50,000 deaths and 2,000,000 injuries from steam boiler failures in a single year in the 1850s, in the United States alone. This was the impetus behind the slow process of developing pressure vessel and boiler codes, which were first issued ~60 years later in 1914, and were developed by mechanical engineers to improve design margins against overload and fatigue design. This talk highlights some of the industrial history of environmental cracking and suggests that our limited understanding and management has been affected by early, simplistic approaches that persist to this day in the code. The reality is that stress corrosion cracking can occur over a very broad spectrum of conditions, including in very resistant materials, in high purity water, at low corrosion potential, at low stress, etc. Both plant experience and careful laboratory observation have altered our understanding of environmental cracking, and eroded much of the lore surrounding immunity and thresholds. Multidisciplinary phenomena are more challenging, but environmental cracking is resolvable and merits focused effort, both in R&D; and in implementation in codes. This is especially true in high- temperature water environments – the conditions of the original industrial problem. Dr. Peter L. Andresen | Monday, April 16 | 8-9 a.m. Mike Abrashoff | Tuesday, April 17 | 8-9 a.m.

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