8 ways to spot a fake reliability program

Joe Kuhn, retired plant manager, reliability consultant, and co-host of Plant Services’ monthly podcast Ask a Plant Manager, is known for practical maintenance advice that delivers results without requiring major capital spend. In the latest episode, Kuhn breaks down one of the most common problems he sees inside manufacturing plants: reliability programs that exist on paper but fail in practice. This article is a written summary of that conversation. If you’d rather hear Kuhn’s full insights in his own words, listen to the complete podcast episode here.

Many plants say they have a reliability program, but according to Kuhn, who has visited more than 40 plants in his career, he says upwards of 90% of them have some form of a fake reliability program, or a reliability program in name only.

The issue isn’t a lack of knowledge. “Reliability and maintenance best practices have been around 40 – 50 years. We don’t have a knowledge problem; we have an execution problem,” Kuhn says. When execution fails, especially early, reliability efforts are often the first to be cut, especially when the budget gets tight. “If your reliability program is not producing results in the first quarter that you start the journey, it's going to be the first thing cut during business downturns.”

Here are eight ways Kuhn pressure-tests whether reliability is real and tests for how to tell whether a plant’s reliability effort is creating measurable improvements—or just checking a box.

1. Ask reliability engineers what they did yesterday.

Kuhn’s first test is deceptively simple: ask reliability engineers to describe their previous day.

If the answer includes everything except reliability, such as meetings, administrative work, or emergency firefighting, there’s a problem. As he puts it, when someone says they spent their day on lockout/tagout, helping with unplanned downtime, attending meetings, and interviewing new candidates, “that’s not a full-time reliability engineer.”

A true reliability role is focused on eliminating waste and preventing failures, not being absorbed into general plant activity.

2. Audit planning and scheduling performance.

Planning meetings reveal a lot about whether a plant is proactive or reactive. “You can tell a lot about a maintenance organization by going to their planning meetings,” Kuhn says.

He looks at scheduled versus completed work: Did they have 20 jobs scheduled and got five done? Or 19 done? The gap between planned and completed work tells the real story. Low completion rates typically indicate constant disruption from unplanned work.

If the schedule isn’t being executed, the reliability program isn’t in control.

3. Observe the work on the floor.

Anyone who’s listened to Kuhn’s podcast knows, this is non-negotiable: “I don’t care what you tell me in the conference room. I care what’s happening on the shop floor.”

If crews are consistently doing reactive work, the culture isn’t truly reliability-driven. A real program shifts the balance toward planned, precision work, not constant firefighting.

“I didn’t say I read a report or I sat in a conference room, listened to a presentation. I’m going out on the shop floor and going to people’s offices and making observations,” he says.

4. Validate KPIs in practice.

Metrics alone don’t prove anything. “I don’t believe KPIs that you tell me in an email or in the conference room,” Kuhn says. “I’ve got to see the KPIs in the work being conducted.”

That means observing wrench time, precision maintenance, and execution quality in real conditions, not just reviewing reported numbers.

5. Look for active problem-solving on repeat issues.

A hallmark of weak reliability is recurring problems that never get resolved.

“If you don’t have problem-solving teams working on your strategic issues—the same lubrication problems are number one and number two this year, last year—you’re going to be disappointed,” Kuhn says.

Real programs attack root causes systematically. Fake ones tolerate chronic issues.

6. Run the “tennis shoe test.”

If you’re looking for a real reliability test, try Kuhn’s most memorable diagnostics: the tennis shoe test.

Early into the day, maybe 9 a.m., check what shoes your reliability engineers are wearing. “Do they still have their tennis shoes on, or do they have their work shoes on?” Kuhn asks.

Work shoes suggest time spent on the shop floor, while tennis shoes suggest a program managed from behind a desk. “If you're doing that, I’m almost 100% sure you have an illusion of a reliability culture,” Kuhn says.

7. Check for visible leadership on the floor.

Leadership presence is essential to sustaining reliability behaviors.

“Leadership must be on the shop floor to audit what they expect,” Kuhn says. That includes verifying PMs and reinforcing precision standards.

Equally important, leaders must connect the work to outcomes, helping technicians understand why tasks matter and how they impact performance.

Without that connection, reliability becomes just another task, not a shared objective.

8. Ask production about their role.

Kuhn’s final test is to talk to production, not maintenance.

Ask operators about their involvement in equipment care and the reliability program. Too often, the response is: “Why are you talking to me? Go talk to the maintenance guy.”

That’s a reliability red flag. “They’re leaving significant waste on the table when production is not involved,” Kuhn says. In his experience, “about 50% of the unplanned downtime was a result of production-driven issues.”

A real reliability culture is cross-functional. If production isn’t engaged, the program is incomplete.

Eliminate waste—or risk being the one eliminated

Across all eight tests, Kuhn returns to a single principle: the purpose of reliability is waste elimination of downtime, defects, inefficiency, and unnecessary parts consumption.

If a program isn’t delivering measurable results quickly, it won’t survive. “You can come up with a reliability program that gives you results—tangible, bottom-line results—in a quarter. That’s 90 days.”

Anything longer risks being dismissed as theoretical. “These pie-in-the-sky ideas…this is going to pay off five years from now—I give you almost no chance of being successful,” Kuhn says.

In the end, the biggest risk isn’t that a program fails. It’s that it was never real to begin with.

“You can’t fool yourself,” Kuhn says. “If you’re putting in a reliability program for political reasons to impress a boss who wants a reliability program…but it’s not ingrained in the culture, you’re just fooling yourself.”