last remaining competitive advantage, I challenge you to read this introduction, and I know it will motivate you to finish the book.
THE BEGINNING
In the quest for a competitive advantage, the world has undergone many transitional efforts. One of these endeavors is the search for process improvement. There have been occurrences of process reasoning in manufacturing that date back to 1100 A.D. and the “Venice Arsenal.” Henry Ford was the first person to incorporate the model production process. In 1913, he combined interchangeable parts with an assembly line and standard work to create what he called flow production. Ford’s problem was his inability to provide variety. He is known to have said that “you can get the Model T in any color you want if it is black.” Here is where Kiichrio Toyoda and Toyota discovered that they could provide variety and maintain continuity of their process flow while revisiting Ford’s original approach, resulting in the Toyota Production System. This system changed the focus from the individual machines to the entire process and made it possible to obtain high variety, low costs, and rapid throughput to respond to customers desires. This system has been labeled a shining example of lean manufacturing. The basic rules of lean are to: identify the value desired by the customer, identify the value stream and eliminate waste, make the products flow through value-added steps, introduce a pull between all steps, and manage towards perfection. This system made Toyota an example of lean to the world. Its success in the implementation and use of lean led to Toyota’s global dominance and stands as validation of the lean concept. The success of lean over the past several decades has created a huge demand for knowledge about lean thinking. There are thousands of papers, books, and media articles investigating the subject. As lean thinking spreads to every country, leaders rush to adapt the tools and principles beyond manufacturing. Lean consciousness is beginning to take root in all sectors, but the belief that anyone can implement any system successfully simply by attending a seminar or taking a few classes, or by having a college degree has prevented the organizations from achieving true greatness. Any true achievement and competitive advantage can only be gained by hard work and leadership.
LEAN VS. RELIABILITY
Lean manufacturing has it place in process improvements. My concern is the erroneous belief that lean can improve reliability. What started as a process-focused initiative has become a broad reaching fix-all that fails in its mission. The use of lean tools in reliability efforts has resulted in attempts by senior leaders to short cut the hard work required to achieve true reliability. Getting a group of people together to figure things out is necessary because few organizations have qualified people leading their efforts, so there is a need to have a meeting or several to group-think every problem. Lean is another example of herd mentality or group thinking. A qualified reliability professional leading your team will know what the root cause of the problem is because of their knowledge and experience. Three things cause unreliability (improper lubrication, contamination, and improper installation,) and I do not need a cross functional team to identify them. Lean, like all other consultant driven initiatives, is a fancy sounding program that over promises and under delivers. I find myself laughing when senior leaders preach Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) as the pinnacle of maintenance, because it is such only in an unqualified reliability professional’s mind. Again, this is proof of what I am saying in this book. There is no shortcut, quick fix, or wonder drug to fix reliability. It is as simple as hard work and qualified leadership. You will find yourself throughout this book either agreeing or disagreeing with me, but the bottom line is I challenge you to really look at why you disagree with me; it is probably because this hits too close to home.
There are no shortcuts or one-size-fits-all programs. Consultants cannot get you there. Shortcuts and consultants will devour your money and waste your time. Look within your organization for leaders and develop them to achieve results. If you do not have a reliability professional in your organization, then hire one and invest your time and money in success.
TRAINING VS. DEVELOPMENT
Another favorite tool of organizational leaders today in the hunt for competitive advantage is the misguided training efforts of their leaders. Organizations have spent billions each year attempting to train their leaders. They reference Jim Collins’ book, Good to Great, in many of these training sessions. Several of these organizations will make reading this book mandatory in the hope that the information contained within will magically transform their leaders into those responsible for the success of the eleven companies in Jim’s book. “Good is the enemy of great. And that is one of the key reasons why we have so few entities that become great. We don’t have great schools, principally because we have good schools. We don’t have a great government, principally because we have good government. Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life.” To give a business the best opportunity to succeed, leaders should be chosen for a role based on their natural ability to flourish in that role. After they are selected, leaders should be given opportunities to develop and grow in ways that will help them meet the requirements of their respective roles. This tailored approach diminishes the desire to provide ineffective, “one-size-fits-all” training and allows the leaders to concentrate on the areas that will make them and their organizations most successful.
If every organization is in hot pursuit of a competitive advantage, how do you find the real deal? Like I stated at the beginning, in my experience I have encountered all the different approaches in this endeavor. It is my goal in this book to share these experiences and assist you in your pursuit of competitive advantage and ultimately show you the untouched opportunity still available to every organization. Many organizations believe, falsely, that they have identified this opportunity but fail to truly understand what it is.
THE OPPORTUNITY
The opportunity I am speaking of is reliability. This opportunity is the result of true reliability, and more specifically, the leadership of reliability. Organizations need a reliability professional directing their efforts. A reliability professional has a lifetime of real-world experience, a journeyman’s license, certifications, professional licenses, and a professional reputation of success. To develop and lead your reliability teams they must have worked as a combination of reliability person, planner, supervisor, reliability engineer, and reliability manager. In addition to this level of practical real-world experience, they need to possess an advanced education with finance, development, change, and leadership concentrations.
Reliability leadership is not a growth position for young engineers nor a position delegated to production managers. Look again to Jim Collins’ book, Good to Great, in which he observes the necessity of having the right people on the bus. “Letting the wrong people hang around is unfair to all the right people, as they inevitably find themselves compensating for the inadequacies of the wrong people. Worse, it can drive away the best people. Strong performers are intrinsically motivated by performance, and when they see their efforts impeded by carrying extra weight, they eventually become frustrated.” Consultants, engineers, and production personnel are not reliability professionals and are the wrong people to lead these efforts. This is not my isolated observation but one repeated throughout literature. Daniel Daly, author of The Little Black Book of Reliability Management, a mechanical engineer, professional engineer, and certified maintenance and reliability professional, states, “I began working as a mechanical engineer. The things I learned in college and the books I used were of limited value.” He goes on to discuss how the experienced folks were the true teachers. He refers to them as the “old heads.” The current propensity to fill reliability management positions with the wrong people has prevented organizations’ transformation from good to great. The first step is to build the right bus and then get the right people on it.
Let’s break this down a little further to help everyone understand what I am saying. When we compare a four-year engineering student to a four-year apprenticeship with the end goal of being a reliability professional, there is no “apples to apples” comparison. During a four-year apprenticeship, an individual will learn how to: troubleshoot electrical and mechanical systems, align these systems,
