Podcast: Maintenance vs. operations—Improving communication through shop floor accountability

The maintenance organization, they own great counsel. They’ve got to tell you about what's wrong with the asset, what PMs need to be conducted, at what frequency. They own that technical information. And they own efficient execution.

Okay, so the overall owner of reliability needs to be operations. They're making all the decisions based on the great counsel that they get and the efficiency that they're going to get from the maintenance organization.

Now there's always going to be tension there. But the tension goes from, hey, maintenance says they need a 12-hour outage, and production — you're behind schedule — and you only want to give them eight. And then you negotiate how you can get that work done somewhere between eight and 12 hours. That's healthy tension, pressure.

But who owns the reliability at the end of the month? If the equipment wasn't as reliable — you had 10% mechanical downtime and you're normally at four, and you had 20% electrical downtime and you're normally at one — normally that is operations' fault. And I hate to be that blunt, but if once operations puts that on and says, okay, I own it, they start acting different.

When you rent a car, you don't treat it the same as if you own the car. So I think it all starts there. And this is still not in place at most organizations where operations owns reliability. It's rare that it's there, and it's so simple to fix, and it's so impactful.

Okay, so that's definitely where I would start.

Also then, with that, that doesn't magically change things. You’ve got to educate people on what is our reliability system. What are failure modes? What's planning and scheduling? What are PMs? What's predictive maintenance? What's problem solving? You’ve got to educate people on all these best practices, and everybody needs to know their role in it.

Operations is generally the decider. And the decider — I'm sorry to say — is the owner.
Now the maintenance person is the technical expert that's whispering in your ear. Hey man, Joe, you really need to shut down this equipment. In the next eight hours, we need to shut it down. This is going to cause a catastrophic problem. We're going to be down for a week if we don't fix this in four hours. We know how to fix it. We’ve got the parts. I've talked to the two people that are going to do the job. They know how to do it. We've reviewed the drawings with the engineer. We know how we're going to lock and tag. I need four hours. This took us eight hours last time. We've learned from that. We're going to get it done efficiently.

And I'm giving you this counsel, okay? The maintenance job is not easy. I mean, it's not an easy job being the technical expert and efficiency expert. The efficiency one is probably the hardest.

One of the biggest sources of tension and frustration to an operations person is you ask for a 12-hour outage, and it's painful. It's painful to do. We're behind schedule, and I'm shutting the equipment down for 12 hours.

And then maintenance — I shut it down from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. — and maintenance comes out of their shop at nine o'clock in the morning. And then they don't have the right part, and they really don't do any productive work until about 10. And then they're gone for lunch for a period of time. They come back around one, and then they don't get the job finished until three. Then a new crew comes on, and they don't come out until five.

So I shut my equipment down for 12 hours, and I got about four, four and a half hours of productive work. That is infuriating to an operations person. That is infuriating.

Now, there's some truth in there. There are some things that maintenance could improve.
Did we kit the job? Did we verify that all the parts and pieces were ready? Did we tell operations what the equipment condition needed to be in when we took it over? Did we review the lockout/tagout with our people?

We can do a lot of things to improve the efficiency. But like I said, that's the hardest part. We can do a lot of things to improve the efficiency, but just throwing people at it without a plan — without a rehearsed plan — causes a lot of tension.

So what I recommend is a 90-day experiment, okay? And this is a contract between maintenance and operations. Hey, we're going to have our outages as planned. Okay? That means every Wednesday we're going to shut down the equipment for eight hours. We're going to do it as planned. And you give it to me as planned, and I'm going to get the maximum amount of work done during that outage. I'm going to drive for 40% wrench time. We're going to kit those jobs, we're going to stage those jobs, we're going to review those jobs, and you are going to see people out there for that eight-hour period. You are going to see that.

And so that's a little experiment you can run, and then see what reliability does on the back end of that. So I love 90-day experiments. That's one of the steps I would take. Hey, let's have a truce. We hate each other, but let's have a truce for 90 days. And you trust me, I'll trust you. And let's see how that goes. Ninety-day experiments are great.

Also, this is really big — a go-and-see mindset. This conflict, this tension that is in the office, in the conference room, in our heads — let's move that out to the shop floor.

Okay, this eight-hour outage, I said that we were going to do this 90-day experiment. We're going to shut it down for eight hours every Friday or every Wednesday. Let's go out there together, arm in arm. Let's see the same thing. Let's go out there at eight. You said that my crew's not showing up until 8:30 in the morning from a seven o'clock outage start. Let's go out there at 7:15, you and me together. We're going to walk out there every Wednesday, 7:15 to 7:45. We're going to observe the work happening and make sure that it's off to a good start. Let's do that.

Let's start from facts that we observe together. That go-and-see mindset is so important, but you need to do that yourself. If I'm the maintenance manager, hey, if I'm putting my reputation on the line for efficiency, I'm going to go out there that Wednesday outage. I'm going to be out there probably four hours, making sure that everything is working well — especially at the start, especially at the handoff between shifts.

If you have a three o'clock shift change, how did we hand that baton off from one crew to the next crew? That is often waste to go after there.

So those are a couple things I would do.

The last thing I would do — and this is a little more advanced — but man, I'm telling you, it's a nice leap ahead, is get your maintenance and operations — get them to get CMRP certifications, Certified Maintenance and Reliability Professional. As an operations person, let them learn the best practices. Take tests on the best practices. And join that club of professionals and say, we are going to do things the right way for reliability.
We had that at my last plant. We had 18 operations people that had a CMRP. I was super proud of that.

PS: Okay, great list. And you gave some very good examples of where you've seen this tension arise. And I wonder if there were any other areas that you could point to where you typically see this kind of unhealthy tension. And once you've got things started and you've got them aligned, what is your advice for maintaining that long term? And what does it take to maintain that as a team?

JK: Well, very simply — and this is going to seem too simple — but it's go and see. It's stop the judgments. Stop the judgments.

At the end of the month, we didn't make our production schedule of 30 million pounds. We only made 25, but that's because of this one outage that happened. Hey, no. We're going to go and see. You've got to have a culture of go and see. It's part of it. You go and see a couple PMs being conducted each month. You go and see an outage. You go and see the equipment being operated.

At my plant, 50% of the reliability issues was how the operators were running the equipment. They were running it outside of spec. They were doing things wrong. And that was a shocking number to me. I thought it was zero. But by going and seeing, you'd see a lot of times, the operators aren't trying to damage things. They're just trying to do the right thing. They don't realize they're damaging something. And once they're educated, you can take off.

So go and see. Having a go-and-see culture. Anytime there's conflict or a problem, try to go find some place to stand and see it. And then you can reduce that problem from a judgment of, “You guys aren't doing your job. You aren't doing your job.” You reduce that to some action you can take. Oh, we didn't have the right pump. We ordered the pump with the wrong base. Maintenance had to send that to the machine shop. The machine shop had to do this to it. We lost four hours. You've got to see that stuff, what reality is like.
And I'm telling you, then the actions become so clear. So clear what you need to do. Stop the judgments. Get objective. Get out on the shop floor.

PS: We like — we love simple around here. Go and see. I don't know, Joe, we may have to rename this podcast “Go and See,” because we talk about it a lot.

JK: Yeah, it's the first step almost all the time.

PS: I know — all the time. I like the point, too, that you made. And I just want to reiterate that tension is somewhat of a normal state. And there should be a little bit of back and forth, give and take between the two. And call a 90-day truce. Make it simple. Give them 90 days.

JK: Yeah, that's probably just a great place to start — just to have a 90-day truce. I'm going to do my job better. You're going to do your job better. And we're going to observe some of the changes through that. And that could be the start to a great relationship.

PS: Okay, so stay tuned to learn a little more about Joe and me, where we're going to talk generally about more personal career topics in the second part of the podcast. But this month, we are staying pretty career-related, and we're going to talk about mentors. So Joe, have you had a mentor who has had a huge impact on you? And how do you try to pay that forward?

JK: Well, I talk a lot on these podcasts about my experience and things that I've learned and what I've done right. This question is one of the things I did wrong. I did not have a mentor most of my career.

I read a lot. I came home from work, and I loved reading about business and CEOs and presidents and leaders. Jack Welch of GE, I've read his book several times. But having somebody in the organization, one layer up in the organization, not just my boss, but somebody that may have been in operations, somebody at another plant. Having somebody that I could use as a sounding board and express some things that I was concerned about, some things I wanted to do, in a helpful environment, non-confrontational, non-judgmental environment, I didn't do that well.

But on the flip side of that, I currently mentor just two people right now. Now I've been retired for seven years. I had about seven when I originally retired, people that I mentored and coached. But when I was working, I spent — and I'm not exaggerating here; this is something that I measured — I spent about 30% of my time in a week, 30%, mentoring people. Thirty. That is insane.

But I talk a lot about going and seeing and going out to the shop floor. I never did that alone. I always had somebody with me. And when you're going out and you're watching something, there's a lot of dead time while you're watching something happen. You can actually mentor somebody. Bring an engineer along with you. A planner. A fellow leader.

If you looked at my calendar, you would see that I had all these one-on-one times. I was learning things from them, believe me. This wasn't all one way. Mentoring is not one way. It's two-way. You learn a lot. But that's just where I spent my time.

Actually, one of the things I was really proud of is I started something called Alcoa University. Basically, it was formalized mentoring. It was, how do you lead safety? That was a class in Alcoa University — how do you lead safety? And we had somebody — I didn't lead this one — but we had an operations manager who would lead. He'd be in charge of putting together a syllabus and a two-hour class on how to lead safety, how to lead environmental, how to manage a team, how to manage an individual, how to give performance reviews — all these mentoring tool opportunities. We formalized it, and I just thought it was fantastic.

I think mentoring is something that I didn't do well, and I'm trying to overcompensate for that, when I had the opportunity to create Alcoa University, spending my time that way. I didn't have mentors, but I was really pushing that down in the organization.

And honestly, I think my ego was too big. I think I said, I got this. I got this. I know this. And that hurt my career sometimes.

If you ask me what's my number one regret in my career, I'll say I didn't have a mentor every single year. That's what I would say. This is not the first time I've been asked that question.

I'm also continuing that on my YouTube channel, I made 250 videos on reliability maintenance, and I'm approaching 1,000 total videos — so another 750 on mentoring people through retirement. And it is such a powerful thing. You don't have to learn everything in your career from your own mistakes. The smart people learn from other people's mistakes, and you can do that by having a mentor.

I actually encourage people to have two mentors. Find somebody in the organization you really admire — their style — and then maybe somebody that's in a nontraditional area. If you're a maintenance manager, or say you're a maintenance planner, maybe it's a maintenance manager from another company. And maybe it's somebody in HR. Maybe it's somebody in accounting — somebody that's totally different from your business. Maybe they can offer you something that's unique. They can offer a different perspective on the business. You'll pick up little bits of knowledge from them.

But here's what a lot of people miss about mentoring. You also have one or two more advocates for you. So whenever there's a closed-door meeting of the leadership team, you've got a couple people on that leadership team who have worked with Joe. They know how Joe thinks. They know what his career interests are. They know his strengths, and they want you to be successful. So your name may get mentioned for an opportunity. That is huge. Get advocates for you — not only the nuggets of information that you're going to extract through their failures. It's powerful.

The last thing I'll mention on mentors is a lot of people say, I don't want to waste their time. Joe's busy. I don't want to waste their time. It is the highlight of my week. Of all the things that I did in my job, the highlight of my week was meeting with people one on one, trying to help advance their careers. That was the highlight. So don't take that joy away from your mentor. They will love meeting with you.

PS: Great list. So I have to ask you a follow-up question, only because this just popped in my head. I imagine some of these relationships happen naturally, and two people find each other. But if you are someone that's looking for a mentor, how do you recommend finding one? And say you do find one — do you just approach them very directly and say, will you be my mentor? How do you establish that relationship? Or what are some ways that you have found mentors and had those relationships come together?

JK: One — and probably the most popular way — is you could just ask your supervisor. Ask your supervisor and say, hey, I'm looking for a mentor. This is nothing about you. I'm just wanting to get a broader experience level here. I'm a little weak on understanding the financials of the business. I'd like to have a mentor maybe on the financial side of the business. Maybe it's the controller. So the boss is a great place.

Also, a secondary space is just in your daily travels — who do you admire? How they talk, how they think, the decisions they make. You admire them as a leader — ask them. I'm telling you, they will love talking to you. They will love talking to you.

And I was just talking to a gentleman about this last week. He said, okay, so I found a mentor. What do we do next? Well, go on to ChatGPT and ask for a contract you can have with a mentor. Ask it to create a contract for you. And you may say, well, do we need a contract? Well — confidentiality. Anything you say you don't want to go out into the broader organization. But also anything they say — they may talk about their failures. Well, you've got to commit that you're not going to share that in your organization.

So that's probably number one: confidentiality both ways. How often are we going to meet? Who's going to set up the meetings? Okay, let's meet once a month. I'll set up the meetings. If I cancel the meeting, I'm now responsible for setting it up again in the next two weeks.

What are those little rules of how you're going to get together? Because usually — and I think it's a best practice — you try to have a mentor that's at least one organizational level higher than you. At least one. Well, you may be a little bit intimidated getting time on their schedule. So have these rules that they agree to.

And I'm telling you, it'll be the highlight of their week meeting with you.

PS: Yeah, mentor contract. I never thought about that. But thank you, ChatGPT. I may have been perhaps asking that question for myself, but you're making me feel a little bit better in the situation, because I was a little sad thinking about this question, I realized I, too, have really never had anyone in my professional career that I considered a mentor. I had really great professors and teachers in college who filled that role for me, even kind of long after college, but no one in my professional career that I would ever really call a mentor.
And I guess in terms of someone who took an interest in me as a professional and helped guide my career. I have a lot of great co-workers who have supported me along the way, but none that I would really consider a mentor.

Honestly, I've actually had several people in my career, both colleagues and managers, who were the opposite of mentors. This was very early on in my career, and looking back, I think in some way these people were a little threatened by me as a young editor and someone new. They really tried to hurt my career and advancement. I learned to be a little wary of who to trust in organizations when it comes to your career. I guess I developed very tough professional skin.

I ultimately outworked those bullies, and I left those companies long after those people did. Not only do I know what it's like to not have a mentor, I know what it's like to have people actively working against you because you're young and good.

I'm at the point in my career now where I may be too old for a mentor myself, but I would really love to mentor as many young journalists and editors as I can, because I know what it's like when you don't have those mentors. This is a tough business — we really need support. Maybe there's still hope for me out there for a mentor in my 50s. I'm going to take your advice, Joe, and see what I can do.

JK: Good. Even if you're 50 years old in your career, is there some facet of the business that you'd like to know more about? Maybe HR, maybe safety. Think about broadening your general understanding of how your business works.

PS: Yeah, I like the idea of thinking outside of your typical department or the type of people you typically work with, broaden your horizons too.

 

 

About the Podcast
Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast offers news and information for the people who make, store and move things and those who manage and maintain the facilities where that work gets done. Manufacturers from chemical producers to automakers to machine shops can listen for critical insights into the technologies, economic conditions and best practices that can influence how to best run facilities to reach operational excellence.

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