Most people understand that if you are person is conditioned to act a certain way and it becomes a habit, it would be difficult to change that behavior merely by giving the person new information. Habits can be difficult to change, especially if they have been learned and practiced for a long period of time. They become more deeply ingrained the longer they are practiced. This is true whether the behavior was learned consciously or unconsciously. Merely giving the person a better way of doing things may not change his behavior even if he is convinced that the new way is actually better. The old familiar ways are more comfortable even when a better way is known.
If that person also has doubts that the new way is practical and would be beneficial, then he will become even more apprehensive about making that change. While all of this is understood by most managers there is still an expectation that telling their personnel of the better way to perform tasks will be all that it takes to implement those changes. When it is perceived that there is a system in place that works with the old behavior and may not work with the new behavior for the difficulty of change becomes greater.
Think about the tasks commonly performed by mechanics. Many of them are performed to standards learned by experience. For example when tightening a hold down bolts on a motor, most skilled mechanics will pull out the wrench with sufficient force or leverage to achieve the work they perceive would be “good enough”. That estimation of “tight enough” comes from their experience. Over the years that came feedback on their work primarily from complaints that what they performed on a machine was insufficient. If a bolt should vibrate loose, it was not tightened enough. If the bolt was over tightened, permanently stretching the bolt and weakening it, chances are you would not receive any feedback.
The assumption would be the torque was “good enough”. When the most maintenance mechanics only estimate when tightening a bolt when torque wrenches are available? In most cases, this is due to the fact that the bolt torque specifications are not readily available at the job site. Changing that behavior will rarely happen simply by telling the mechanic that you should use a torque wrench when tightening hold down bolts.
In order to have a good chance of getting the mechanics use torque wrenches on a routine basis several things would have to change. The mechanics would need information about those bolts available to them at the job site. For example, making sure torque wrenches are available, calibrated and in good working condition is just the start. If there aren’t any gaps in the mechanics knowledge of how to use these properly hands-on training is required. If the work order contained information from a database about the proper size and grade of bolts for that machine, the torque spec and where to find a replacement for a damage bolt or washer in the storeroom, you would have sufficient information to do the job right.
Would all of this be enough to ensure proper habits would be in place for mechanics tightening hold down bolts? Not necessarily. There is another issue that is even more basic that we have to deal with. The late W. Edwards Deming said “Your system is perfectly designed to give you the results you are getting.” This means that if you want better results you have to improve the system. So what is it about the system in a typical plant that makes change so difficult? To understand the problem one has to examine the typical experience of an industrial mechanic. When performing a maintenance task such as installing a new machine, changing a bearing or coupling or doing an alignment, what is considered success? The best he can hope for is that his work was good enough. So what is considered “good enough”? An easier question to answer is “What is not good enough?” If the condition of the machine is noticeably inadequate he will receive negative feedback. Some of this he can observe himself if he can examine the machine when it is put back into production. If it is noisier than usual, it runs hotter or it vibrates so much more that it noticeable by touch, than that it not good enough. When the machine condition is measured with instruments and compared to standards, that good enough threshold may become a bit harder to achieve. What tells the mechanic that his work was sufficient? No news is good news! After years of working on these tasks on many machines a mechanic develops an instinct about where that threshold is.
The problem is that something else is learned by his experiences, often subconsciously. When he has tried to go beyond just good enough by taking a little more care, being more precise and paying more attention to details, the response he gets is usually not a compliment about what a great job he did, but rather it is a complaint that it took longer to do the job. If the machine runs smoother and more efficiently, nobody notices. However, if it takes even moderately longer to do precision work, he is considered a less efficient worker. While nobody wants to do mediocre work, an experienced mechanic often recognizes when he has reached the point where, in his experience, it is good enough not to get complaints and that any further improvements would not be appreciated and may even be discouraged. In other words, there is a disincentive for doing precision work! Just telling the mechanic that we now want him to do his work with precision will not change the system and in all his experience, he knows it.
While this problem does not exist in every industrial plant, it is by far the most common situation. What is needed is nothing less than a change in culture, which is always a huge task. Here are some key elements that will make a difference:
- Make sure each person has the training, tools and time to do it right. Plan on allowing sufficient time to do the job right whenever possible. This will take some changes from supervisors and managers.
- Get the essential information to those on the front lines. Torque specs, alignment and balancing tolerances, shaft run out tolerances, lubrication type and amount, bearing fit tolerances, etc. These can be kept in a database (CMMS or other) and attached to work orders. This will not happen overnight as a lot of data needs to be collected to fill that database. However, no one should be sent to do the job without the information necessary to do it right.
- Get feedback in the form of solid data to the mechanics. After an installation or repair, when condition monitoring measurements are taken (such as a new vibration baseline), a basic report should reach those who worked on it. This requires some basic training so that there is some literacy in that technology so that the feedback is understood, but it does not require mastering in depth analysis. It may happen by the mechanic checking out an overall vibration meter and taking readings himself. At any rate, it would no longer simply be ‘good enough’ or ‘not good enough’. Rather there would be ‘not good enough’, ‘pretty good’, ‘good’, ‘very good’, and ‘fantastic!’ The mechanic can tell the difference and he knows others can tell the difference, and appreciate it (which leads us to the next element).
- Show appreciation for precision work, not just getting done quickly. Resist the temptation to reward saving the day by “fire fighting”. Instead, let emergency work be treated as unfortunate but sometimes necessary but show real appreciation for precision work. This will mean changing paradigms and breaking habits for managers and supervisors as well. People can tell what you really value so there must be a real “change of heart”.
- Get the message across that “We are serious about this change!” Don’t let it be called “the flavor of the month” with the expectation that it will not be taken seriously or will blow over. Require documentation, inspections and sign offs until everyone gets that precision work is not optional.
Having you mechanics attend training classes on how to do precision maintenance is a crucial step toward reliability of your assets, but it must not stop there or the results will be disappointing. Obviously there is much more work to do. In order to raise the bar from good enough to the best that can be done, the system has to change. And to make it really happen, so does the culture.