About Us
Our History
1975
Marshall Institute was founded in 1975 by George Smith – an internationally known maintenance consultant since the early 1950’s. George was at the forefront of maintenance improvement philosophies and best practices in the U.S. and Japan.
1986
Dale Blann took over from George as the CEO of Marshall Institute to continue educating professionals and optimizing systems, practices and behaviors in the maintenance and reliability field. Dale is passionate about improving the maintenance contribution to organizational performance, and is restless in his pursuit to transfer knowledge to maintenance departments all around the world to support them becoming profit centers within their organization.
1992
Marshall Institute began doing more on-site work with clients. This heralded the beginning of the consulting arm of the business. This combination of onsite consulting and seminar training has proved to be a large benefit to clients.
2021
Today, we continue with the same passion that both George Smith and Dale Blann brought to the company. As we look to the future our constancy of purpose remains; to deliver sustainable solutions to solve our clients’ most significant issues.
George Smith
George was at the forefront of maintenance improvement philosophies and best practices in the U.S. and Japan. It can be said that George had a profound impact on the establishment and the philosophy of Total Productive Maintenance.
George was invited to Japan in the 1950’s to teach the principles of preventitive maintenance. His technical interpreter throughout his lecture circuit was Seiichi Nakajima, an engineer from Japan, who later was credited with creating Total Productive Maintenance. George’s impact on Nakajima was credited in his first book on TPM. Nakajima’s “Blue Book” was heralded as the first of its kind and was the blueprint for all such improvements.
Through Marshall Institute, George wanted to transfer knowledge and skills to elevate the status of maintenance in the eyes of management, and increase the ability of the maintenance personnel to do their job effectively.
Thank you George, for your foresight and passion.
