While a plant’s efforts in areas related to reliability, availability, and maintenance (RAM) indicate appreciation for equipment assets, who or what beyond the HR department makes it a point to show similar “appreciation” for the site’s human assets?
To put it in simpler, more personal terms, does your organization appreciate its workforce as much as it appreciates its equipment?
It’s been said that an under-appreciated workforce is an unmotivated, unhappy, inefficient workforce. Such workers rarely, if ever, perform well in crucial areas. If that’s happening anywhere in your operations, how will the business ever achieve its highly interdependent safety, reliability, and profitability goals?
World-renowned efficiency expert W. Edwards Deming provided the answer in the early 1950s. His “14 Points for Management” addressed the needs of employers and employees alike and are still relevant today.
Deming aimed his “14 Points” at manufacturing operations. Several years ago, in an effort to reflect the realities of process-plant environments, I rewrote Deming’s points as follows:
1. View every maintenance event as an opportunity to upgrade. Investigate its feasibility beforehand; be proactive.
2. Ask some serious questions when there are costly repeat failures. There needs to be a measure of accountability. Recognize that people benefit from coaching, not intimidation.
3. Ask the responsible worker to certify that his or her work product meets the quality and accuracy standards stipulated in your work procedures and checklists. This presupposes that procedures and checklists exist.
4. Understand and redefine the function of your purchasing department. Support this department with component specifications for critical parts, then insist on specification compliance. “Substitutes” or non-compliant offers require review and approval by the specifying reliability professional.
5. Define and then insist on daily interaction between process (operations), mechanical (maintenance), and reliability (technical and project) workforces.
6. Teach and apply root-cause-failure analysis from the lowest to highest organizational levels.
7. Define, practice, teach, and encourage employee resourcefulness. Maximize input from knowledgeable vendors and be prepared to pay vendors with application-engineering service for their effort and assistance. Don’t “re-invent the wheel.”
8. Show personal ethics and even-handedness that are valued and respected by your workforce.
9. Never tolerate the type of competition among staff groups that causes them to withhold critical information from each other or from affiliates.
10. Eliminate “flavor of the month” routines and meaningless slogans.
11. Reward productivity and relevant contributions. Let it be known that time spent at the office is, in itself, not a meaningful indicator of employee effectiveness.
12. Encourage pride in workmanship, timeliness, dependability, and the providing of good service. Employer and employee honor their mutual commitments.
13. Map out a program of personal and company-sponsored mandatory training.
14. Exercise leadership and provide direction and feedback.
FOLLOWING UP WITH ‘CARE’
In early 2000, the consulting company Systems Approach Strategies (SAS), Port Perry, ON, Canada (systemsapproach.com), brought Deming’s “14 Points” “into sharper focus through the development of a new training course. Using the acronym CARE,” the course noted that organizations excel when management gives consistent evidence of:
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- clear direction and support
- adequate and appropriate training
- recognition and reward
- empathy.
That last point (empathy) represents the foundation of the CARE concept. Empathy also seems to be one of the most neglected aspects of management. Without it, i.e.,the ability to put one’s self in the shoes of the individuals one manages, a manager, regardless of his or her area, will never know, understand, or bring those workers to their full potential as employees and people.
Empathy alone, however, will not deliver full results for an organization. Success begins with clear direction.
My next article for The RAM Review (scheduled for Nov. 30, 2019) will discuss details of “clear direction” and the importance of role statements in providing it.TRR
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Heinz Bloch’s long professional career included assignments as Exxon Chemical’s Regional Machinery Specialist for the United States. A recognized subject-matter-expert on plant equipment and failure avoidance, he is the author of numerous books and articles, and continues to present at technical conferences around the world. Bloch holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering and is an ASME Life Fellow. These days, he’s based near Houston, TX. Email him directly at heinzpbloch@gmail.com.
