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Preventive Maintenance or Preventable Maintenance?
Training Update - by Richard Kurtz

While our customers want us to train their personnel, they may not have programs or systems in place that will ensure the continuity of what we begin. The result is that when we go back six months later, we often find that personnel has changed, training documents have been lost and they are back to the “if you can’t fix it, get a bigger hammer” mentality.

In a recent article, HSB Reliability Technologies, a reliability and maintenance consulting groups, reported the results of their analysis of hundreds of manufacturing facilities over the years. One of their findings was that, “…40% to 60% of all maintenance at plants was unnecessary. Of those preventable maintenance actions within the purview of the production/operations and maintenance department, 30% to 60% could be attributed to human performance deficiencies (emphasis added). That is, a lack of proper training, insufficient training or inadequate human factors engineering (job aids, incentives and environment). When expressed in terms of hours worked or cost, unnecessary work exceeded necessary work by a margin of 3 to 1 in some cases. This is a significant expense, resulting from the lack of a few hours of instruction.”

When we finish our training at a customer’s plant, we often take it for granted that they will continue the programs we have initiated. Based on what has been said here, this may often not be the case. What can we do to help our customer base understand the importance of continuous training efforts?

At every opportunity, we need to emphasize to all levels of our customer’s management the benefits of a structured, on-going training program. Steven Sorensen of Sebesta Blomberg says, “Organizations and institutions that value training will provide for it in some fashion. Unfortunately, many training programs are loosely-structured, informal and lack well-defined objectives. In such cases, training is ineffective, inefficient and fails to achieve the expected results. Additionally, training is too often reactionary and conducted in response to a crisis that might have been avoided in the first place if training had been planned for and based on identified training needs that support operational goals and objectives.” He goes on to say “ Organizational cultures that don't support a comprehensive and effective training program are common and they virtually guarantee higher training costs and a lower ROI (Return on Investment) - the fatal flaw in many training programs.” He also indicates that one time training is insufficient and will result in higher operating costs, unreliable equipment, increased downtime, etc.

We often talk about how our services can return some fantastic ROI’s for our customers, but we don’t often talk to them about what they need to do to ensure that these returns are not just a flash in the pan. As a true partner with our customer, we have a responsibility to constantly remind them that continuing training needs to become a part of their company culture if they want to achieve the best results.

How do we go about doing this? Well, as they say “stuff” rolls down hill. We need to make the decision makers aware of the value of solid training programs. The next question - how can we do that? One suggestion is to document the savings we have already achieved for them. At the beginning of my career (before the invention of the wheel) I worked for a company that was able to demand a 10-15% premium for their products because they included the services of an engineer, like myself, who would regularly go into the customer’s facility and do training and process improvement projects. We would document the hard and soft dollar savings and present the reports to top management. It wasn’t so much the reports, but the chance to sit down with the decision makers and talk about how the process was of benefit and what could be done to enhance it. It was pretty amazing how often our products and services became “institutionalized” and the competition could reduce price all they wanted and still not make any inroads.

How about documenting some of our savings, mailing the report to the CEO and then following up with a phone call to discuss it? Let’s think about all the ways we can get our customers to think of us as an integral part of their business plans.