At a Midwestern plant that made components for air conditioning systems, operators routinely engaged in unsafe behavior yet nobody seemed to understand it was unsafe. The operators were graded on their “utilization time,” and that grade went into their performance appraisal. Raises, training allocations, and layoff risk were all highly related to the performance appraisal.
Most of the operators ran single-station machines (one operator per machine). A few lines had multiple operating stations. On these lines, every operator could see the other operators were taking the same hit. But when an operator of a single-station machine had downtime (either unscheduled due to a failure or scheduled due to preventive maintenance), the operator would bug the maintenance person so badly that one began hanging a sign on the machine upon arrival. The sign said, “Are we there yet, Mom?”
Because the operators would do this, maintenance people would be distracted while trying to perform their work. The work took longer, and more mistakes were made. But the problem also resulted in injuries, such as the machinist who got rattled and ended up breaking a finger. Or the electrician who turned his head to answer yet another question and shorted his screwdriver across L and N, resulting in a nasty burn.
The first solution that the maintenance manager implemented was to tell the maintenance workers to simply ask the operator to leave the area. If that did not work, then the maintenance worker was to leave the area and report directly to his supervisor. If you’re a maintenance worker, this may feel wrong to you because you have a job to do. But understand that you have a job to do safely, not just a job to do.
The next solution was to address the scheduled downtime in the operator metrics. The operations managers, after some discussion, agreed it wasn’t the operator’s fault that they didn’t plan work for the operator during downtime they knew was coming.
Once the maintenance manager got that win, he asked how it’s fair to blame operators for unexpected breakdowns — and if there is some way production could easily reassign them to other tasks or machines. Operations took some reasonable steps forward on this issue as well. Combined with relief from taking a utilization rate hit on scheduled downtime, this provided substantial pressure relief to the operators. That meant far less incentive for them to try to “push” maintenance people to hurry things up.
The operators weren’t trying to do anything wrong. They were merely responding to pressure and incentives that were wrong. The maintenance manager first used mitigation to deal with the problem, then root cause analysis to solve it. You can draw several practical lessons from this example.
About the Author
Mark Lamendola
Mark is an expert in maintenance management, having racked up an impressive track record during his time working in the field. He also has extensive knowledge of, and practical expertise with, the National Electrical Code (NEC). Through his consulting business, he provides articles and training materials on electrical topics, specializing in making difficult subjects easy to understand and focusing on the practical aspects of electrical work.
Prior to starting his own business, Mark served as the Technical Editor on EC&M for six years, worked three years in nuclear maintenance, six years as a contract project engineer/project manager, three years as a systems engineer, and three years in plant maintenance management.
Mark earned an AAS degree from Rock Valley College, a BSEET from Columbia Pacific University, and an MBA from Lake Erie College. He’s also completed several related certifications over the years and even was formerly licensed as a Master Electrician. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE and past Chairman of the Kansas City Chapters of both the IEEE and the IEEE Computer Society. Mark also served as the program director for, a board member of, and webmaster of, the Midwest Chapter of the 7x24 Exchange. He has also held memberships with the following organizations: NETA, NFPA, International Association of Webmasters, and Institute of Certified Professional Managers.