How Maintenance is Like a NASCAR Spotter at Daytona

So I was up late last night watching the Daytona 500 NASCAR race and I began to notice a few things as I watched the many issues that occurred during the 500 mile event. Here are three comparisons of how the Spotter and the Driver relate to the maintenance and operations partnership. 
Spotters look out into the future. They see oil, water, debris, weather changes, and crashes on the track well in advance. This extra time allows the spotter and the driver to plan out a path of lowest risk or maximum gain. Maintenance does this with CMMS or EAM data, life cycle costing calculations, and various simulations like reliability modeling. When maintenance uses good data to build good models and communicates effectively you can make strategic changes to reach the goal whether that is winning a race or winning a championship.
Spotters give you visibility into your blind spots
This blind spot could be beside your car where your Hans safety devices will not allow you to see or on the opposite side of the track where another car is making a strategic move. Spotters see issues and they provide you with instruction to help you get around them or benefit from them. Maintenance does the same thing using the predictive tools. They identify problems early on the P-F curve and this allows for the team to plan out the repair or replacement instead of being surprised in the heat of battle. In the picture you would always prefer to be the 5 car and not the 17. When maintenance uses the correct tools with the correct training, communicates effectively AND operations listens and provides on track feed back then together they can many times drive around the crash and not always end up in it.
Spotters only work when you have a relationship with them built on total trust.
The spotter is going to come on the radio and scream "brake and go left now." There is no time to discuss why or why not this is a good idea. You can't ask him to prove to you that that is the best course of action. You have to trust him and move immediately. That takes a strong relationship. The same holds true between Operations and Maintenance. Maintenance will come to Operations and say that a failure is imminent and action is required. If the trust is not there then it will be hard to react in a timely and effective manner.  You have to build that trust by continuously working together delivering good advise and learning from the mistakes. Making calls together and providing feedback to both sides regularly.
If Maintenance works as the Operations Spotter and they become a cohesive team then you will see the benefits in higher throughput, more on-time deliveries, and most of all higher profitability.Now lets go win the race.

You Don't Need an Asset Manager!?!

This week I am attending the Global Forum on Maintenance and Asset Management (GFMAM) executive meeting in Rio de Janerio Brazil. We are talking about things like the reliability, Asset Management Landscape and the upcoming ISO 55000 standard. One point that has been discussed quite a lot is the concept of an Asset Manager. In the US we are seeing companies and individuals "upscale" their titles from maintenance to reliability to life cycle management and now asset management. The sometimes missed point is that each of these is substantially different from the one before. You could argue that maintenance is a subset of reliability and reliability is a subset of asset management but even if you don't agree with that I would suggest that you might agree the scope of asset management is none the less very broad. If you would like to see GFMAM's asset management landscape which outlines the many elements click on the link above. So based on the breadth of the topic of asset management many of us have come to the conclusion that one person can not acquire the necessary level of knowledge to adequately manage the full scope and will not have the necessary time and focus.
My current understanding affords me the opinion that the best solution is an asset management core team. This team would be made up of an engineering manager, maintenance manager, operations manager, and a financial manager working together. If we use this structure we can cover all of the topics of the asset management landscape with an individual who has the understanding of the core concepts of asset management but also has the specific knowledge of the topics in their area of focus and function.  On the other hand if your organization goes with the stand alone asset manager, by the global definition, the individual will be overwhelmed and could find themselves in conflict with the other managers. By the nature of the job description the AM will play in the other manager's sandbox and at the least create a perception of minimizing their power and influence. 
What are your thoughts? Have you seen the asset management landscape? Do you have an operations or maintenance manager that reports to asset manager?

10 Points to Ponder That Can Improve Your Key Performance Indicators Immediately

Here are 10 Points to Ponder That Can Improve Your Key Performance Indicators (KPI) Immediately:
1.    Spend time planning for KPI implementation
Decide who needs to know about the metric or indicator and what they need to know. Who is affected and who can affect the KPI. Communicate the intent of the metric in a way that can be easily understood.
2.    Think about unintentional consequences
Understand what your metric drives. Does it require a second metric to ensure that it does not drive a bad behavior? If you would like to read more about this topic check out this rant.
3.    Limit your focus to ten indicators or metrics or less at each level of the organization.
Even if you track many indicators in your EAM/CMMS the focus needs to be on a short list. It is OK to have a list of focus KPIs and monitor KPIs. Focus on your key performance indicators and ensure organizational understanding. Monitor your results with the common indicators. Here is a link to more information on this topic.
4.    Manage behaviors measure results.
You must identify the behaviors that you want to change and address them directly with that portion of the organization. Ensure that your indicators align directly to those organizational changes.
5.    Cascade indicators down from corporate goals.
If your primary indicators do not align and support the corporate objective then you will have organizational confusion. The process works best if indicators are developed from the top down. 
6.    Leading verses lagging indicators
You don't drive your car using just your rear view mirror. Use indicators that tell you more than just what you have done. They should help you understand what you can expect in the future.
7.    Use your metrics to ensure the truth.
Many of the indicators have corresponding indicators that work in a checks and balance fashion. This allows you to use one indicator and then if there is a question about the validity of the number you can check with the other indicators.
8.    Have metrics that both operations and maintenance share accountability for.
Consider not building or reinforce organizational silos. Try to select indicators that both operations and maintenance and others affect and share them as part of their performance reviews.
9.    Understand the components that make up the metric.
Many organizational struggles are over both metrics definitions and the data that is used to calculate them. Create or use an existing KPI standard and document the data sources.You can find the SMRP Metric Compendium here.
10.    KPI’s are not forever
Change the metrics you focus on as your business goals change or as you notice that the change in behavior that you are measuring has been completed and has become the new way the organizations works. Here is another entry on this topic.

Two Bonus Thoughts:
Balanced score cards can help in understanding your organization.
Do not compare what is not the same. Indicators cannot be bench marked well with other facilities if they are not calculated the same way.

I hope that this list helps you think about the metrics and indicators that you are using and drives the results that your facilities want. If you have any additional questions please feel free to contact me at shon@reliabilitynow.net

Eliminating the Dog Fight over Reliability

I often hear clients tell stories of the culture of their plant. They use words and phrases like “constant battle”, “eternal struggle”, and even occasionally it has been described as a “dog fight.”
When I ask why they tell me that operation “does not understand reliability” or operations thinks their job is to break it and maintenance will fix it. When I talk with operations they tell me maintenance will not respond fast enough and that they never want to leave the shop. Both sides go on and on but I think you get the point.
Interestingly, when we look at the differences between best practice facilities with a high level of reliability maturity and the dog fight facilities you notice that the mature facilities function more as a cohesive team. Below are a couple of the reasons that I believe drive this difference in behavior.
The first practice I have identified is a combined shared set of goals driven from the top and cascaded down through the organization. In the more mature facilities you find that they have removed the silos that divide the organization and have a common set of goals. Operations and maintenance are accountable for metrics like Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) and also metrics like Preventive Maintenance (PM) compliance and Maintenance Cost. They understand the impact of each and they manage them together based on the business. In facilities with a disconnect you find sub-optimization. Maintenance may look to lower maintenance cost at the expense of production or production may skip preventive maintenance to “increase uptime.” This just fuels the dog fight.
The second is a partnership agreement. This is a key exercise that opens eyes on both sides. Many folks don’t understand the needs of the other parts of the organization. When they work through the partnership agreements they identify the needs of each group and develop a plan to insure they are met. Operations will discuss their expectations for the equipment in the area from a reliability and throughput standpoint and maintenance will use this information to build effective maintenance strategies that can deliver under those conditions. If the operating context changes the two groups have the partnership agreement as a path of communication. As the group works through the exercise they have “discoveries” such as operations and the operators learn that maintenance needs their input and even their help so they should stay with the equipment during breakdowns. Maintenance learns the importance of certain assets to the livelihood of the plant and what expectations the process puts on them. I have seen many reoccurring problems identified and resolved just within the dialogue that occurs while creating the partnership agreement.
In the end if you want to spray the cold water on your facility’s dog fight you need to focus on shared goals and complete understanding between the groups. This will tear down silos and make coming to work a better experience for everyone.