In production facilities, breakdowns not only cost money but can interrupt production enough to send customers looking for a more reliable supplier.
A typical scenario in a plant is a production line stops due to an equipment failure, and now the production manager is sweating over the delivery schedule. So he makes sure the maintenance manager understands just how important it is to get that equipment running immediately. The maintenance manager then puts pressure on the repair techs rather than helping out by assigning additional resources (e.g., a helper to run for parts, manuals, etc.).
The message the techs get is the one that’s sent: Don’t “waste” time by solving the cause, just get the thing running again. So that’s what they do. This usually means a bigger, more costly failure down the road.
Change this dynamic by estimating annual downtime prevented and how much extra time it will take for root cause analysis and repair. Then get the monkey off your back by asking production to choose. “Do you want two more hours of downtime today, or twenty more this year?”
