Hello fellow practitioners! Apologise for
missing in action for a while. I have been working on various asset management
roles that have been rather frustrating. I suppose the usual time an
organisation accepts that they need a Reliability/ Asset Management personnel
is when they would have been pretty deep in the mud pit to get out themselves.
Nothing is new when we admit that every Reliability/ Asset Management role is
rather frustrating. Only weirdos like us who cannot live without a good
challenge would roll ourselves into the mud pit for fun. Perhaps we have an
insane definition for fun…
Yesterday, my colleagues and I were
discussing the conflicting goals of reliability target against overtime payment
to maintenance crew. The more reliable your plant is, the less overtime labour
cost will be incurred.
I don’t want to start off on the wrong
context that I am against overtime payment and portray that I put full support
behind capitalism to pay the workers the least, and extract the most profit out
of every hardworking family breadwinner here. This is purely a discussion from
our team’s experience, and in my opinion should be managed. The billion dollar question is… How?
Culture at organisation A, we experience
frontline maintenance crew collaborating among themselves to “create” urgent
overtime work sustainably, either through poor workmanship, or intentional
slowdown of work completion.
Notice that I mentioned culture of the
organisation, instead of practice of the organisation? You’re right on the
money! It is a culture issue, but which part of the culture? Whether we realise
it or not, it is applicable to most if not all organisations out there. Culture
is built over the years by the organisation’s LEADERSHIP. I capitalised the
letters to put a strong emphasis on it intentionally. Imagine below:
Leadership at organisation B, leaders who
lead by example, support sustainability, accept individuality, embrace continuous
improvements. Leadership that believes in nurturing the next generation, and
bringing out the best in you with committed support to train you to do your job
well and give their best to groom your career aspirations.
Leadership at organisation C, seniors who
boss you around, micro-managing, expect a person to work like a robot precision
with no break, strong emphasis of cost cutting, hiring the cheapest, buying the
cheapest, yet expect the team to deliver high reliability.
I’m sure by now you know which organisation
you want to work for. Leadership makes or breaks an organisation. In reality,
organisation B and C are at both extreme ends of the distribution curve.
Organisation we work for probably sits somewhere in between with a combination
of values from both end of the spectrum.
Every organisation will have their fair
share of imperfections. It is an art to balance how much to give without
turning employees into a spoilt demanding lot, and how much to hold back
without compromising basic reasonable requests. I have experienced an organisation
that refuses to send their employees for training purely because it costs money
and the leadership believes as the employees skilled up, they would leave. What
is the consequential cost to the organisation for not training them? Operating
with unskilled labour? Does such organisation still have a chance surviving in
an ever competitive market?
Back to the original question of how then do
you improve plant reliability without incurring overtime costs? I would suggest
you look into a comprehensive reliability program that involves both operations
and maintenance. To have a reliably operating equipment requires more than
maintenance crew doing a great job, it also require the operations crew to
operate it within the constraint that present itself from time to time. With
the availability of advance condition monitoring technology, most failure
mechanisms can be detected, and replacement can be planned in advance, reducing
unplanned downtime and thus overtime labour cost.
Identical plant availability, and
reliability KPI should be shared among Operations & Maintenance, overtime
payment is to be gradually reduced and finally eliminated further down the
road. This will encourage team work and more collaboration between Operations
& Maintenance that will lead to a more fulfilled work environment, and
higher employee retention.
From another perspective, earnings as a
result of overtime work reduction can be converted into incentive payments to
all deserving employees. With such a scheme, an organisation can be labelled as
stable, reliable and highly rated in terms of its operations and the quality of
its employees who produce excellent deliveries with minimum overtime work. This
would be attractive and who would leave such organisation for another job.
Feel free to share your alternative or
successful experience with me! You can reach me at harry (at) wiwoweb (dot) net
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