How to overcome a blame culture

Transforming a blame culture starts with a proactive shift in perspective. Consider leading this change yourself—take ownership, embrace accountability, and drive the transformation needed to create a more constructive environment. 

Waiting for someone else to solve the problem may leave you in a holding pattern, so why not be the one to initiate the change? This proactive mindset, combined with the strategies that will be outlined in this column, will help you address many of the obstacles common in high-stakes operations.

Knowing your potential operational losses enables stronger proactive planning to prioritize maintenance actions

In a manufacturing context, recognizing the true range of operational losses is essential. Traditionally, plants have focused on 16 primary losses, but it’s increasingly clear that there are at least 30 major sources of inefficiency. This expanded view allows for a more accurate analysis of losses that may have previously gone unnoticed. 

Understanding these nuances and applying the right metrics will help communicate the scope of improvement opportunities to others in the organization. This way, the goal changes from assigning blame to fostering a sense of collaboration, encouraging the entire team to rally around a shared mission of improvement. Changing the blame culture starts with these first steps in building awareness and transparency.

1. To begin, focus on a single line’s performance over a typical production day to clarify current state versus potential. Start by identifying the line’s design rate, which often gets muddled with theoretical maximum output. In many cases, the theoretical max represents a historical best-case scenario rather than a realistic benchmark. The line's design rate, however, is what the equipment was initially intended to produce, taking into account both product specifications and production demands.
2. Next, determine the line’s scheduled production hours, excluding planned downtime. Planned downtime includes necessary breaks, shift changes, or scheduled maintenance that temporarily stops production but is accounted for in operational planning. Subtracting planned downtime from total scheduled hours provides you with the net scheduled runtime.
3. Finally, compare this with actual output to identify the gap between design capability and current performance. This data-based approach will illuminate opportunities for improvement while keeping the focus on continuous development rather than placing blame. In the end, understanding these metrics and effectively communicating the insights will help guide your team toward meaningful change and operational excellence.

Let’s look at an example

Let’s say your design rate is 100 units per minute. That would be 6,000 units per hour. Now let’s say your scheduled run time is 16 hours. If you multiply your design rate by the scheduled time, that is 96,000 units that should have been produced at 100% OEE, theoretically. 

Subtract your actual production against the theoretical units. If your actual was 30,000 units, it would be 96,000 units – 30,000 units which equals a gap of 66,000 units. Now, let’s say you had a 30-minute breakdown. That would mean, based on our current math, that we, as maintenance, lost 3,000 units of production. We own that. 

So, in your next meeting, with your new data, when the blame starts to be thrown around, stop the conversation and bring up the math. Use some tact, and understand that you want to convey the message that you are here to help, but the conversation should go something like this:

“I appreciate you all pointing out the opportunity we must get better. We own that 30-minute breakdown, and we will do our best to create solutions so that it does not occur again. That is 3,000 units that we cannot get back. But I have a question.

From what I can gather, when we installed that line, it was designed to do 6,000 units per hour. We were scheduled to run 16 hours yesterday, which means we should have produced 96,000 units. We only produced 30,000 units. Outside of my breakdown costing us 3,000 units, can someone explain to me where the other 63,000 units went?

We have spent most of our morning talking about the 3,000 units we lost, but I would love to help find the other 63,000 units. Any takers?”

You have now taken the lead in the conversation, so this now requires the ability for you to identify and define your loss buckets and opportunities. So, what are the losses that exist? 

In my next column, I’ll cover the 7 “Big” losses that exist in manufacturing and why they matter.