O P I N I O N CHAOS THEORY OF MAINTENANCE MANAGEMENT The fact that you have 10 March 2017 read past the title suggests that a nerve is already twitching when maintenance and chaos is used in the same sentence. Let’s just leave it out there that perhaps the non-performance (in actual, management or political terms) of your maintenance department has irked you at some time. So, why is it that so many maintenance departments in industry become embroiled in stress, finger pointing and sweaty KPI’s? What makes plant reliability so difficult to manage? Simple, humans. Even more than that, maintenance engineering humans. We will come back to that thought later. I have spent many years guiding sites and companies towards maintenance excellence and have been fortunate to be involved in success stories measured in reliability, profits and satisfaction. But I have also seen efforts doomed to failure from the outset or railroaded by changes in management. So, what makes the difference? Systems and processes. I have seen attempts, (some of them lauded internationally) that start out with the highest academic processes and the sexiest three letter acronyms. High priests and converts spout dramatic factors from on high whilst gathering their medals. The acid test is when you scratch the surface of the site 1-2 years later; are the maintenance plans really being actioned? Is life continuously learning and improving? Far too often the answer is a resounding ‘No’. It is one thing to create fabulous maintenance plans and even better if you install a flash computerised maintenance management system to run them, but it is the systems and processes of running your maintenance management that true success will live and die by. Back to the humans. After meticulous study of mislaid perfect plans, I have made an earth shattering psychological discovery. I will call it ‘The Carlyle Effect’ (all modesty intended). Here it is… maintenance engineers do not like being systemised. It’s true. If you work in a manufacturing process you get it; the need to have systems and processes to prevent chaos. Even tradesmen working in engineering manufacturing get it; there is a plan – I need to work to it. But your average run of the mill maintenance department tradesman is hard coded to lean towards chaos. Leave him to graze naturally and he will devolve to firefighting and squeaky door priorities as quick as look at you. Give him a maintenance schedule and he will quickly shovel the hard jobs to the backlog and wonder off to do the favoured jobs. And when something does break, watch him squeal onto the job, sirens and lights blazing, to save the day with his mission critical skills. Smaller sites will display the ‘irreplaceable engineer’ syndrome; Mr Fixit who may appear to have the site running perfectly, but has all the info locked in his head. What value does he really offer you? By the same genetic path that drew him to like fixing broken things, he is averse to being told what to do and when to do it. He wants to make his own choices. Sound familiar? Let me elucidate further by couching maintenance management in manufacturing (widget) terms: • You manage a team of blue (maintenance) widget makers. • Your customers don’t really understand blue widgets but they do like red (non-maintenance) so they flood you with red widget orders. • No one seems to care that you make more red widgets than blue. • You have a backlog of widgets that you will never achieve. • Your customers don’t have a lot of faith in your widget making ability and would go elsewhere if they could. • There is no formal widget making schedule. It pretty much works on who’s yelling at you the loudest. • You spend most of your time explaining to customers why the promised widgets were not made or why they broke straight away. • Your widget makers spend most of their time waiting for widget parts or access to the widget making machines. • You need a massive store of widget parts because you never know which widget you might need to work on next. • If you did give your widget makers a list of widgets to make they would pick out the nice-to-do widgets and leave the rest for the ‘back log’. • Some widget makers ignore the widget schedule and just make what they think is best. • Some widget makers have learnt lots about making widgets over the years but they keep it all in their heads as their own little insurance scheme. • Your budget is grossly overspent and you are unable to make all the blue widgets you need. • You seem to be forever repeating the same widget making mistakes. • The chief widget maker can never retire as the place won’t run without him. Opinion by profile manager at Maintenance Engineering Society of NZ (MESNZ), Craig Carlyle THE
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