Improving Maintenance and Reliability Through Cultural Change. Stephen Thomas G.
was, the men indicated he was inside the vessel. After about five minutes he emerged; I noticed he did not have on the proper protective equipment required by the permit issued for entry. He explained that he needed to see the workers in the vessel. He added that the required safety equipment was not needed based on the current state of the job, even though the entry permit stated otherwise. The organizational values of my company were not only that safety was important, but also that following the rules to maintain the safety of all personnel was of primary importance. As a result, I fired him on the spot and had him escorted from the plant.
The purpose of this example is to show one of many organizational values at work. Let’s compare what happened to our definition and see how this event was affected by the value system.
Basic belief
Safety through training and continual reinforcement of the rules was a basic belief of everyone in the plant. A company employee would never have entered a vessel without proper safety equipment. Contractors who received comprehensive training should not have violated this rule either.
Collectively understood and universally applied
By continuously applying the same set of rules and regulations, everyone understood and applied them in their daily work. This should have applied equally to the contractor.
Wholly accepted way to behave
The rules were recognized by everyone as the only accepted way to behave. For those who did not follow the rules, the recognized negative outcomes included employee discipline, dismissal, or even worse – getting hurt or being responsible for getting someone else hurt.
What achieving success feels like for the business.
The company lost an additional day while the contractor flew in a replacement supervisor. Nevertheless, the company had such a strong safety-oriented value system that it made clear to everyone it would rather lose money than have someone get hurt.
Internalized
In my case, as with my immediate supervisor, the safety value system was well internalized. When confronted with this situation, I did not hesitate; I shut down the job and fired the supervisor. Upon hearing of this action, my supervisor started screaming, not at me, but at the contractor for violating the safety regulations. Having worked with us for along time, the contractor should have internalized the rules as well.
Organizational values also apply in the area of plant reliability. If the values of our foreman and the plant management in the previous example were reliability-focused, then the question of diverting the preventive maintenance crew would never have crossed his mind. Conversely, when confronted with a rapid response issue, the collective values said that stopping a job for a customer – even one of low importance – was unacceptable, but diverting the preventive maintenance crew was well within accepted behavior.
I am sure that each one of us has experienced the written company value statement.These are often the long written-out documents that are posted on bulletin boards or sent home to us in the mail from the corporate office. Many of these statements represent in fact how the firm at the shop floor level performs, but often this is not always the case. Often the written word describing how those who run the business perceive we should behave runs contrary to what actually takes place. Some examples of this contradiction are show below.
Figure 4.3 Written vs. actual values
In these cases, the daily dilemma that we face as employees is selecting which set of values to follow. The answer is that ultimately we follow those values that are in line with the actual behavior of our work society. We follow the unwritten rules, not the ones posted on the corporate bulletin board. The main reason for this is that the written values are ideal, but not always relevant to the day-to-day performance of our work. Evidence is around us all the time because we see how managers, peers, and the workforce act and react in real life. Furthermore, if we were to follow the written word (when it is different from what actually takes place) we would be brought back into line by peer pressure. We would be instructed on how work really gets done around here.
A wide discrepancy often exists between the written and the actual behavioral values within a company. When both are in alignment, a company or plant can be considered healthy from the standpoint of organizational values and work culture. In a later section I will address the issues around a value system in need of change.
We shall examine four areas in this section so that you will be able to recognize value system problems at your plant. In each case, the values of the organization have gone astray. The areas are: 1) values that are no longer relevant or are obsolete, 2) values that are inconsistently applied, 3) values that fail to match organizational reality, and 4) values that meet resistance from the organization.
No Longer Relevant or Obsolete
Values that are no longer relevant need to be changed. However, the real question that needs to be addressed is how do we know when values that have served us well for years are no longer relevant to our business?
Take, for example, reactive maintenance. For years this was the standard mode of operation for a great many plants. It was an accepted value. It developed from a combination of poor equipment reliability, inexpensive manpower costs, and the high cost and business impact of equipment being unavailable for production. Plant maintenance forces became expert at rapid response or, as it was commonly called, “fire fighting.”
Over time, manufacturing equipment became more reliable and technological tools to predict equipment failure improved. The result was that the strategy of fixing things that broke was replaced by a strategy that targeted predicting failure before it happened. This approach was far more cost effective. Yet the rapid responder value has continued to thrive in many plants. Clearly this value has outlived its usefulness. The way we can recognize this is that the new value, in this case, reliability-based repair, enables us to perform in a much more effective and efficient fashion.
Inconsistently Applied
Another area where values can create problems occurs when they are inconsistently applied. Inconsistent application sends mixed signals to the organization. Standardized behavior with regard to organizational values is essential because it provides guidance, direction, and support for consistent decision making.
Let us look at the example of emergency maintenance. Many plants define an emergency job as one that threatens production, the safety of the employees, or that of the surrounding environment. These jobs are typically worked until completion or until the true emergency aspect of the work is resolved. This approach is a value of the company, indicating clearly that it will take the proper action to correct emergency problems. However with limited resources, production teams frequently label jobs emergencies so that they can divert resources to their problem-of-the-day, away from other areas where they are working. Then when the day tour comes to an end and the maintenance organization is looking for authorization to work overtime, the work is no longer an emergency. If management allows this practice to happen, the value of emergency response will be eroded because of inconsistent application.
Fail to Match Organizational Reality
In many cases, a mismatch develops between the expressed value of the company and what actually happens on the shop floor. This area is similar to inconsistent application but worse because in this case the company’s stated values are not followed and everyone knows it. Inconsistent application of the values can be corrected through closer monitoring, but mismatched values destroy the credibility of the firm. Because everyone knows the value is hollow, they ignore it. This problem can