I inherited a maintenance department.
It wasn’t the first time I had run one. But inheriting this maintenance department was different.
The previous maintenance manager was fired after an operator suffered a lost-time accident. The reason: not fostering a culture of safety.
The maintenance planner had stepped in the role at first. However, it overwhelmed him after a couple of months and he asked to step back.
No pressure.
But there were a lot of things missing from this group. There were clear leaders, but none as strong as what I had at my last place.
As a result, there were newer hires who showed promise but didn’t have a performance standard. There was infighting about who got the best treatment or did the best job. And key machines went down for hours every couple weeks.
A lot of this was going to come on me. I needed to try something different.
I had one thing going for me, though. The company had implemented the Four Disciplines of Execution, or 4DX for short.
So I bought the book and read it cover to cover. It opened so many possibilities!
What’s Wildly Important?
I had plenty of fires to put out if I was going to make a success of this shop. First, I had to figure out how the shop worked and what management expected.
The previous manager made his name sticking exactly to the budget. This could leave the techs without the tools or parts they needed.
And the parts they did have got organized where only the 2nd shift lead would understand. Not a good place to be when you want to bounce back from failures.
Also, operators were calling techs off the initial call for minor things. A two-hour job could take four. Or even six.
I wouldn’t know it, either. No one recorded what work they did.
This would keep them at the plant past the end of their shifts more than three days per week. And many of them were fathers with kids to take care of at home.
If that weren’t enough, the technicians couldn’t log into the tracking system. Once they got in, they weren’t savvy enough to close the work order.
With this input from the team, we found equipment would run longer if we managed our systems better.
Lead Measures & Standards
Maintenance is straightforward: If it breaks, fix it. But there’s plenty of opportunity to make it better by fixing small things before they happen.
So I put the shop’s expertise to work. Everyone got an area to inspect weekly. This way, people had a reminder to look for things that could go wrong. Or were already broken but hadn’t completely failed.
To keep the operators happy, we built a new system with Google Forms and Sheets to request work. To keep the techs happy, we made the operators deliver printed copies before work would start. Techs could take care of work in the order received or move to the more important job.
This fed into daily tracker the planner kept of whether every technician turned in a work order that day. You can’t complain about jumping between jobs if you don’t turn in your paperwork.
Not having to write work orders, the technicians focused on turning wrenches. It was what they were best at.
They could even prepare for big jobs instead of getting called to them all the time. This instead of forcing everyone to remember their own login.
Follow Through on Commitments
We took those lead measures and met weekly to figure out the next step. I drove the importance when I asked, “What do you see out there that will keep you from going home on time?”
Remember, most of them were fathers with kids at home. They wanted to spend time with their families after school.
So everyone would come up with 1-2 items they could work on that week. It might take equipment down to change a bearing, but it was something we could plan for.
Somethings they needed took more effort than they could do on their own. So I or the planner could take as an action item ordering the part. Or planning time for a machine to be down. Or bring in a contractor for extra manpower.
Even the next step in a larger project I was working on could be an item. This gave the shop visibility into the future state.
And acknowledged I heard their concerns.
Scoreboard Tracking
Those leading indicators fed into our scoreboard. We’d mark whether each person completed last week’s commitments to the group.
If yes, we’d fill the box with a satisfying green. If not, I found someone to be able to help finish the task.
After all, we didn’t want it hanging around long enough to bite us when we already knew about the problem. That would look silly.
Along with this came three charts for our main production machines. If we did our jobs, the bars for maintenance uptime would climb over time.
And they did, increasing by as much as 7 percentage points. It went straight to the top and bottom lines.
Operations made more of the products they needed. Knowing what we planned helped them manage their schedule and staffing around us.
All while the technicians were going home to their families on time.
Why Use 4DX?
If you’ve worked for a large company, you may have had a consultant onsite. They come with a special mission to find everything that’s wrong at your location. Then they leave you with a checklist so thick it’s impossible to get through. While they walk away with a lucrative fee.
Even worse, you’re demotivated.
Everything you need to do to succeed is always hanging over your head, just out of reach. It leaves no time to appreciate your accomplishments with so much left on the list.
This drains you over time. All while management wonders why you couldn’t finish everything in a 90-day window.
But, maybe you’ve heard about the benefits getting a little bit better each day. Outside experts are great at solving specialized problems. But, for the most part, the people working on the floor are the closest to where 80 percent of your problems are.
It’s a thorn sticking in their sides, too. Not resolving them is costing you their loyalty.
Regular check-ins and visible progress on what’s important will give your front-line workers wins they can build on. And it will even show on what’s important to management outside the plant.
So to get better while getting everyone on board, think about using 4DX. It works no matter what you inherit.
Do you have a case study that needs to be brought to life? Book a call with me today to see where I can help.
Promethian Impulse, LLC 