Maintenance and Reliability Best Practices. Ramesh Gulati
integrity, and social responsibility.
Corporate Strategy
Strategy is a very broad term that commonly describes any thinking that looks at the bigger picture. Successful organizations are those that focus their efforts strategically. To meet and exceed customer satisfaction, the business team needs to follow an overall organizational strategy. A successful strategy adds value for the targeted customers over the long run by consistently meeting their needs better than the competition does.
The strategy is the way an organization orients itself toward the market in which it operates and toward the other companies in the marketplace against which it competes. It is a plan based on the mission an organization formulates to gain a sustainable advantage over the competition.
The objectives must be:
• Focused on a result, not an activity
• Consistent
• Specific
• Measurable
• Related to time
• Attainable
Goals and Action Plans
The major outcome of strategic planning, after gathering all necessary information, is the setting of goals and action plans for the organization based on its vision and mission statement. A goal is a long-range aim for a specific period. It must be specific and realistic. Long-range goals set through strategic planning are translated into activities that will ensure reaching the goal through operational planning. Examples of an M&R goal include achieving 90% PM compliance and reducing the overtime to less than 5% in a specified period.
Change Management and Implementing Change
No matter how many goals are set or how grand the vision is, an organization can go only as far as the organizational culture will allow it. Best practices are improvements, and improvements are change. A real (effective) change cannot happen unless the employees accept the change with a heart; that can’t happen without having a desire for change. The employees have to have trust and see some benefits for them and for the overall good. The intended change may not bring a financial gain but instead ease of operation, maintenance, work safety, etc. Employees must see “what’s in it for me” (WIIFM). The organization needs to have a change management process to implement a change effectively.
Several models can be adopted to implement change, including:
• Prosci’s ADKAR (awareness, desire, knowledge, ability, and reinforcement) model
• Kotter’s eight-stage process change model
• Kurt Lewin’s change management model—unfreeze, change,refreeze
• The McKinsey 7-S model
• Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits model
Some of these change models and processes are discussed in more detail by the author in 10 Rights of Asset Management by Ramesh Gulati and Terrence O’Hanlon.
Any organization that will succeed in bringing about a culture change must have some form of a change management process. Even if the organization does not have a formal (written-down) process, one will exist in that organization. However, the success rate of any changes will probably be limited by the charisma of the leadership or the vision of its team.
Changing the culture from reactive thinking to proactive follows a similar process to what was discussed in,“Leadership and Organizational Culture.” It has to be shown why preventive and condition-based approaches are better than reactive work. Making people change what they do or how they think takes time. After all, it took them a long time to build their current habits. People do certain things in certain ways. In turn, when we ask them to do things differently or ask them to buy into our plan (vision), we are taking them out of their comfort zone. We must have very convincing reasons for people to change; we must inspire them to accept change. Clear reasons would help greatly in the implementation process. We have found that implementing changes in small steps or a small pilot area helps the process. Figure 2.8 shows the culture change process.
FIGURE 2.8 Culture Change Process
Organizational change management takes a structured approach to change, helping executive management, business units, and individual employees make the transition from the current state to a desired future state. The goal is to assist employees in assimilating change: to minimize the disruption of expectations and loss of control that can easily lead to resistance on the part of those who must actually change.
Two key elements of any successful effort to change the culture are:
1. Influencing the behavior to change
2. Overcoming resistance to change
To influence the behavior to change, the following actions are suggested:
• Increase understanding (i.e., why the change is needed and how it relates to vision).
• Set goals and expectations.
• Establish a process for praise and recognition.
• Define and clarify roles.
• Establish and standardize processes and procedures.
• Create discipline, develop tenacity, and be persistent.
To overcome resistance to change, the following actions are suggested:
• Listen and communicate.
• Create awareness.
• Educate and train to create understanding.
• Get team members involved and let them see some success.
• Empower team members to improve and tailor the process—change if needed.
Role of a Change Agent
The change agent is another important person who helps implement changes successfully. Change agents have the clout, conviction, charisma,and resourcefulness to make things happen and keep others engaged in implementing change. They usually have some skills including:
• They understand the organization’s politics to get work accomplished but do not participate in the work.
• They have a good understanding of processes, the improvements needed, and interface issues, including any financial impact of the change.
• They are keen analyzers who can persuade and defend changes to every level of the organization.
• They speak several organizational languages or have certain backgrounds or traits—marketing, finance, operations, engineering, etc.
• They have a passion for improvement; in essence, they bring order out of chaos.
The change agent is a very important role in an organization that is trying to implement a reliability culture. This role should be filled by a senior management person who has respect for and the trust of the people.
What Is Reliability Culture?
Can we define reliability culture? What does it mean if someone says that organization XYZ has a reliability culture? Is there a metric to measure it? The problem is that culture—any kind of culture—is a “touchyfeely” concept that is difficult to define and specifically measure.
We can see the impact of a reliability culture on the outcome or services provided by the organization. Reliability improves the bottom line of an organization because it can meet the customer’s needs on time and cost-effectively. In a reliability-based