functioning at their optimal performance, change faulty components, rebuild failed components, understand the intricacies of how each component works in its system, and learn the individual personality of each system in order to assist in ensuring its reliability. They learn how to make adjustments that are component specific or system reliant and not just what the nominal setting should be. There is a lot more to knowing how a system works and how to make it perform at its peak than understanding the theory.
DEGREE VS. APPRENTICESHIP
In comparison, a four-year engineering degree does not teach you any of this. You learn a lot about what things are and what they are supposed to do. You learn social science, English, math, psychology, and many other things, but you don’t learn how to make anything work. Most of the time you are being taught by professors who lack practical experience and have nothing more than an academic knowledge. They offer theory but no hands-on experience about how to implement these theories and make things work. The belief that this is enough is compounded by the decision by senior leaders that this is enough to give you the tools to lead reliability efforts. Again, do not get me wrong, I have several degrees, but none of them in and of themselves grant me the ability to lead reliability. It is my journeyman level skills that do that. It was the shift in senior leaders’ decision making that has led to the hiring of engineers to lead reliability that started the death spiral. At first it did not have a big impact because there was still a lot of bench strength in the trade ranks. This covered for the lack of trade skills possessed by these engineers and unqualified leaders. However, over the last 30 years this approach has eaten away at maintenance and reliability like a cancer, until we arrive at today, with the continued practice of hiring engineers causing the trade bench strength to leave us. This combination is killing reliability because there is no one left to develop the next generation of skilled tradespeople and if left unattended this will eventually lead to its death. The fix is for the few remaining reliability professionals to do something to turn this around. The first step is for our industry to understand that we have a problem. This is tough because it requires a large portion of today’s leaders to admit that they are not qualified for their positions. The next step is to be willing to do something about it.
On a positive note, there are some who know they lack these abilities. The problem is that we turn to miracle drugs for a quick cure, in the form of consultants. This makes things worse, because the majority of consultants suffer from the same disease. They are engineers without the trade skills, spouting fancy sounding programs with quick fixes. They all use the terms “best practices” or “world class,” but these are little more than empty promises rooted in no real substance. There is no substitute for hard work. Copying what consultants say they achieved somewhere else will make them rich and you worse off than if you did nothing. Their goal is to get paid, not your organization’s success.
You do not gain a competitive advantage by copying others. True leaders create and do not need to copy. Each organization is its own entity, and you cannot copy your way to success. Reliability leadership needs to consist of people who can create on their feet using years of experience and education. The respect of the reliability personnel is necessary, and that comes from the shared experience of doing the jobs we are asking them to do. To lead the changes necessary in any organization, you must have a leader who has done the work and is not reiterating a theory. They have held each reliability position and can train and develop the personnel needed to drive success.
TOP MANAGEMENT TEAM
With an ever-increasing competitive business environment, corporations need to take advantage of every opportunity to maximize their resources. The composition of a top management team (TMT) is of critical importance in accomplishing this. A successful top management team is usually comprised of members who have higher educational levels and have risen through the ranks. The tenured team members are normally made up of members that have risen only through the operational ranks, or worse, transferred from another organization or industry and having even less qualifications. The most recent wave in senior leader promotion is to elevate attorneys or accountants who have no practical manufacturing experience. They focus solely on leading by policy or the bottom line. The effect of the TMT composition has a direct effect on corporate strategy and competitiveness.
With the increase in corporate competitiveness and the need to do more with less, Top Management Teams are looking for ways to eliminate waste from their organizations and maximize the use of their existing resources. Opening their eyes to an untapped resource will intrigue not only TMT but reliability professionals looking to advance within the reliability arena and within their organizations. Where there was once a ceiling for these professionals, there may now be an opportunity.
When I get asked if leaders are made or born, I answer made. In the multitude of leadership training classes I have attended, I have heard more times than not people answer this question with they are born. I always chuckle because if that was true, why are we all in this class? I have included four major objectives for the leadership discussions in this book. The first is to provide a deeper understanding of what makes up leadership development. The second is to challenge the notion that leaders are born. The third is to give an explanation of what elements comprise leadership efforts. The fourth is to develop full leadership potential and create an ability to turn those they lead into leaders.
COMMON CAUSES OF MACHINE FAILURE
Equipment fails for a lot of reasons and not all failures are the same. The term “failure” or “malfunction” means that the equipment has stopped functioning the way it was designed to. I call this unreliability of the equipment or component. An example of this would be if a pump is designed to pump 10 gallons per minute, but as it ages its output is reduced to 8 gallons per minute, this is a form of unreliability. Using the Pareto Principle, we know that 80% of the failure occurrences are caused by 20% of the causes. The same is true if 80% of all downtime is caused by 20% of the plant’s equipment.
Machines do not die—we kill them! Though equipment fails for a lot of reasons, they all fall into one of three major categories: improper lubrication, contamination, and improper installation. This book is designed to help you understand the pitfalls associated with efforts to eliminate these problems and how to properly address them using a hands-on, practical, common sense approach.
UNDERSTANDING RELIABILITY EFFORTS
To achieve reliability, an organization needs to understand that there cannot be a company or production plan and a reliability plan. There should only be one plan, and the name is not important. I refer to all plant operational efforts as reliability. If you visit any organization that I have worked with or in, you will hear and see a lot of reliability focused approaches. Integrating production and reliability is the only path to success. This is easier said than done.
Across most industries, the words maintenance and reliability have become synonyms. This could not be further from the truth. If your organization believes that these words are interchangeable, you have a big uphill battle. The difference between maintenance and reliability is vast in effort and focus. To maintain, you strive to keep the status quo. You are not improving your processes because you believe you have achieved your desired approach. A maintenance effort is something the maintenance department is responsible for. Most organizations that have maintenance departments are operating in silos and look for maintenance to do all things involving
