Dan Daley's blog

It seems that almost every magazine and book on maintenance has a section on Key Performance Measures or Key Performance Indicators. Most of the articles provide a long litany of measures that are viewed as being useful in one way or another. While performance measures are important, the thoughtless application of long lists of them is counter-productive.

In my experience most organizations are made up of two special kinds of individuals: Heroes and Bulldogs.

Heroes are those individuals who keep themselves highly visible and are always in a position to take some action that will be viewed as critical to the organization.

Bulldogs, on the other hand, are not nearly as attractive and they simply bite into their responsibilities and hang on until they are completed.

Close scrutiny will frequently show that at the very root of the issue being handled by the Hero is a problem that was created by the Hero himself.

As the old saying goes, “Your system is perfectly designed to deliver the results you are receiving”. I have looked for a source to attribute this saying to and cannot find one. Despite that fact, it is too valuable a concept to be ignored.

It seems that an increasing number of the ads being shown on television feature an individual standing, arms-folded on camera saying “I am the CEO for Company X and this is what I will have my people do for you.” When I see this kind of ad, I really wonder the purpose. In the end it seems that the CEO simply wanted to feed his or her own personal ego and get his or her face in front of the widest audience possible. Maybe there is still someone from a long-past junior high school class that he or she is still trying to impress or make regret having broken-up with.

Not too long ago, I found myself describing a problem with turbocharger bearing failures to a young engineer. By way of background, the young engineer was involved with control system software and only indirectly involved with bearing failures. The control system software was being modified to include an algorithm intended to prevent bearing failures. It turns out that the young engineer did not know what a bearing was or how it worked.

When it comes to ensuring that we obtain the level of reliability we need, there is something to be learned from citizens of the state of Missouri. For quite some time Missouri has been known as the “Show Me State” and the stubborn refusal to accept claims without physical evidence of proof. This article will provide the reader with some suggestions concerning just how to benefit from this Missouri philosophy.

We all have experienced those situations when something really important has gone badly. Looking back, it was evident that more attention should have been paid to the issue but it was somehow missed. Had we made the conscious choice, we would have paid far more attention to this issue and less attention to some other things. Even the most conscientious individuals experience this situation at some time or other.

Several years ago I started a new job in an industry that was new to me. The people working for me knew I had a lot of experience but they also knew it was not in their industry. Part of the reason an “outsider” was brought in was because the current staff lacked project management skills and I was being asked to improve those skills.

A long time ago I heard the saying that “Measurement Drives Results”. That saying made so much sense that it seemed to be one of the sage thoughts I needed to add to my arsenal of really smart ideas. My arsenal of smart ideas includes other tools like:

• Your system is perfectly designed to deliver the results you are getting.
• Once the cat is out of the bag, you need to start thinking about how to deal with a cat and not a bag.
• It is what you learn after you know it all that counts.
• Among others.

Different organizations vary widely in terms of the amount of follow-up they perform after a failure. Organizations at the “fire-fighting” stage have no choice other than to move onto the next fire with very little follow-up of the last failure. More mature organizations have systems and resources in place that cause them to analyze the few failures they experience so they can address their true cause. One thing is clear; the organizations that focus on eliminating cause have an increasingly smaller number of failures as time passes.