All units of the organization share guilt for existing entrenchment of the reactive culture:
- Upper management espouses reliability but fails to budget and staff accordingly. Cost reduction is often emphasized to the detriment of reliability excellence.
- Production managers and supervisors are driven to meet daily production and shipping quotas to the detriment of reliability efforts that optimize longer term output potential (weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual).
- To the detriment of proactive work that is essential to sustained-reliability; maintenance managers, supervisors, and technicians are easily diverted to urgent demands because this is where they historically receive the most applause.
- Materials management is overly focused on the initial cost of new equipment and spare parts, rather than upon life-cycle cost that yields positive impact on reliability.
- Project engineering is focused on the installed cost of capital equipment without adequate provision for maintenance of said equipment (e.g., training, spare parts, periodic access for pro-active maintenance). Stress and dissonance result due to functional incentives and resultant practices that are misaligned with aspirations of the overall enterprise.
Covenantal partnerships should be emphasized and nourished.
Tip excerpted from The 15 Most Common Obstacles to World-Class Reliability: A Roadmap for Managers by Don Nyman (Industrial Press)
