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CHAOS FATIGUE
The Company Killer

Why an Evolution in Maintenance is
critical in manufacturing and mining
SEAN MICHAEL STAYNER

Copyright © 2017 Sean Michael Stayner
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical
means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing
from the Publisher.
Publishers:
Inspiring Publishers
PO box 159 Calwell ACT 2905, Australia.
Email: inspiringpublishers@gmail.com
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Author: Stayner, Sean Michael
Title: C
haos Fatigue - The Company Killer: Why an evolution in maintenance
is required in manufacturing and mining/ .
ISBN: 9781925477917 (ebook)
Subjects: O
rganizational change
Manufacturing industries.
Mineral industries.
Industrial efficiency.
Industrial productivity.

Foreword
A
focus on fundamentals. A practical, step-by-step approach
guaranteeing improved performance. That’s what Sean Stayner
presents in his new book, Chaos Fatigue.
No sexy theories or complex equations here. Instead, Stayner pro-
vides a common sense approach for unlocking the productivity hidden
in manufacturing. Wasted productivity hidden in plain sight beneath
the chaos and day-to-day fire-fighting in the plant. Wasted productivity
that steals profits that could have been used to expand operations,
pay higher compensation to employees, and pay higher returns to
shareholders.
Stayner makes the case that people and their interaction with the
equipment they operate is the key to improving productivity. In a nut-
shell, to improve productivity, you need equipment that produces
“exactly what’s needed, when needed” all the time. But achieving this is
easier said than done. Equipment doesn’t run by itself. Reliable equip-
ment and quality output only results from people properly operating
and maintaining the equipment. While this sounds (and is) obvious, it’s
amazing how many organizations assume this is happening without tak-
ing deliberate steps to make it happen.
Stayner’s book fills this critical gap. While Lean and Six Sigma
addresses the technical side of process improvement, very little has
been written on how to change the behaviors necessary for achieving
4
Foreword | 5
lasting productivity improvement. What’s new here is the focus on peo-

ple - both operators and management – and how to aligning motivations
that will result in permanent behavior changes that will both improve
and sustain productivity.
In Chaos Fatigue, Stayner uses maintenance as the focal point for
creating this change. “Maintenance” is used here in a collective sense
to include the activities and responsibilities of supervisors, engineers,
operators, and equipment technicians. Stayner uses equipment oper-
ating performance as a surrogate measure of overall organizational
health. When all elements of the organization are pulling together as
a unified team, equipment will run at the engineered rate, quality out-
put will be made, and delivery schedules met. If equipment doesn’t
make “what’s needed, when needed”, time and resources are wasted
and profits lost. Stayner also makes a convincing argument that when
equipment doesn’t run as planned, it’s because people lack the skills,
resources, or organizational support to run and maintain their equip-
ment properly.
It is in this area of human relationships that Stayner’s book makes its
greatest contribution. Stayner “peels back the onion” and examines the
reasons why people are behaviorally misaligned and often work against
each other in an organization. He uses his keen insight of organizational
dynamics and human psychology to outline an easy-to-implement, com-
mon sense set of changes that affect how people manage themselves
and relate to each other. The effect of these changes is profound. As
people see the cumulative evidence of these small changes in their
lives and work environment, they gain confidence in themselves, confi-
dence and trust in their fellow co-workers, and belief in their ability to
control their own work destiny.
The critical role of management is given special attention in this
book. Stayner correctly points out that it’s management’s role to design
and implement the systems and working environment that employ-
ees operate in. Stayner points out the common fallacy of looking for
6 | Chaos Fatigue – The Company Killer
a “magic pill” which will make everything better and the resulting
“Chaos Fatigue” which follows such fire-fighting. In its place, Stayner
lays out a step-by-step management system that leverages the power
of human relationships and truly reflects “our employees are our most
important asset”.
A step-by-step guide for improvement. True team building, personal
ownership, and measurable results. A workplace environment where
it’s enjoyable (and even fun) to work. If that’s what you’re looking for,
give this book a try and start down the road to greater success.
By Marshall Ariza
Master Black Belt
Lean Six Sigma Trainer & Coach

Table of Contents
Foreword......................................................................................................................... 3
Acknowledgements..................................................................................................... 9
Preface.............................................................................................................................11
Introduction to “The Evolution of Maintenance™”........................................13
What is Maintenance?..............................................................................................15
Understanding Chaos Fatigue...............................................................................19
Plant Reliability Starts with Maintenance........................................................22
Constantly Chasing the Magic Pill......................................................................29
The Maintenance Fix Commitment....................................................................32
Repeating the Norm.................................................................................................36
How it All Went Wrong........................................................................................... 40
The Evolution of Maintenance™......................................................................... 44
Understanding Maintenance Basics...................................................................47
How Maintenance Change Programmes Fail.................................................54
7
What is Step One?....................................................................................................59
Basic Areas of Function..........................................................................................63
”Maintenance Planning” and “Maintenance Scheduling”.......................... 74
Leadership is Everything.........................................................................................87
The Five Types of Managers..................................................................................92
Organisational Management Explained...........................................................101
Stayner’s Pack Mentality.......................................................................................105
The Need for Change............................................................................................109
The Maintenance Problem Everyone Misses................................................ 113
Corporate Maintenance Strategy...................................................................... 119
Continuous Improvement Programmes..........................................................122
Centralise-Decentralise the Progress Killer...................................................132
Insanity at Work....................................................................................................... 136
Unions and Militant Works Forces.................................................................... 139
Understanding Computer Monitored Maintenance Systems................ 144
Maintenance Manager verses Budget Administrator................................ 151
The One in Ten Rule of ‘Maintenance Mortality’........................................ 155
Lubrication the Forgotten Art - Doing The Basics..................................... 159
Conclusion.................................................................................................................. 164

Acknowledgements
A
s with any book I have a few people that I need to thank
for their help with this book, the first one is a little spe-
cial. Denis Backhouse was my marketing manager and was
reading through each chapter as they came out. He has been
one of the drivers to get me to complete the book and get it
published. Sadly my good friend Denis lost his battle with cancer
only a few months before this book was complete. I would like to
dedicate this book to him.
I know everyone thanks their wife, however my wife has been
unimaginably tolerant and supportive, as we have changed countries,
towns and cities way too often so that I could work with companies to
perfect this process. Few people would have made the sacrifices she
has to allow me to pursue this obsession.
There were four people who undertook the final read of the book
before it was published, I would like to thank them:
Michael Stayner – my father, who has also pushed me to get this
book finished, and published. His editing work, and all the support that
he has given me has been fantastic.
MaryAnn Birkbeck – my lovely friend from the Enneagram Institute
of Queensland - http://www.enneagramqueensland.com MaryAnn did
a fantastic job of identifying my many spelling mistakes and grammati-
cal errors.
9
Mr Tracey Moran – my long term colleague and friend who shares my

passion for this subject. His technical review of the book and his drive
to help fix this debilitating industry problem really helped to confirm
my commitment to get this message out to everyone.
Keith Mentiplay – a great mentor and sounding board, at the time
of writing Keith is the director of operation in Australia’s largest dairy
company.

Preface
I
believe that maintenance is the single most misunderstood part of
any manufacturing or mining business. With that being the case it
constantly frustrates me to see maintenance people attending main-
tenance conferences and seminars, but not the Operations Managers
and General Managers who would most benefit from it. I have wit-
nessed experienced keynote speakers “preaching” to the converted in
the knowledge that little of the value of the seminar will work its way
into the business at which the people listening to them work.
If you are a Maintenance Manager reading this, then insist that the
decision makers in your business read this also. If you are an Executive
reading this then you are taking the important first step to understand-
ing the real value that your maintenance department can add to your
business. This book will give you the keys to unlock a plants real value
and sustain the gains that your maintenance department can make.
11

Introduction to
“The Evolution of Maintenance™”
I
joined a new touch rugby team in Australia a number of years ago
and on that team were a number of very talented players. However
in our first game together we got a good old-fashioned thrashing by a
team that had no real stars on their team. As I stood on the field gasping
for air I realised that our new team consisted of a whole lot of players
doing their own thing with the hope that once or twice they would put
something together and we would score a try (touchdown).
The other team however had a small number of simple set plays that
they had clearly practiced and most importantly they were commu-
nicating with each other using terms and code words that only they
understood.
So what is ‘The Evolution of Maintenance™?’ It is exactly what we
needed in our touch rugby “team”, putting together a team that under-
stand their roles, understand how to communicate, and have set plays
that everyone understands and follows. From there you just step your
way through a logical path of evolution that, if followed, will lead you
quickly to championship winners in sporting terms.
It is only after your maintenance department has established them-
selves as a team, with set plays they follow and a language they all
understand, that they can work effectively with the other operational
13
teams. Effective teams lead to continuous plant improvement and this

is the only pathway to efficiency, plant reliability and most importantly,
improved profits.
What I have done over many years is to build a standard for how
maintenance should be run, and implement a change management pro-
cess to step people through the change process as quickly as possible.
This is designed to get maintenance to functional and give the people
in an organisation the tools they need to get to world class.
In this book I demonstrate how not having a functional maintenance
department will cripple any business that requires reliability to remain
competitive.
I will also show how a lack of function in maintenance will render
useless any continuous improvement programme.
The Evolution of Maintenance™ process demonstrates that organi-
sations that genuinely want to be world class can fast track the process
and be sustainably successful.

What is Maintenance?
I
believe that the first step to fixing your maintenance is to understand
what the core business of maintenance is, or should be. I believe it is
this simple:
“Work undertaken that sustains or improves reliability in your
plant”.
A simple test is to review all the work undertaken by the mainte-
nance department in your plant and see what percentage of the work
fits the definition. In many cases the percentage of real maintenance
work is very low and in some cases non-existent.
So maintenance is about sustaining reliability in a machine and ulti-
mately all the machines in the process. I would then say that it is the
job of maintenance to ensure “equipment reliability”. So the question
is then if you do not have good equipment reliability in your plant and
you are spending money on maintenance, then what is the money being
spent on?
The truth is that money is often spent on activities that are not
strictly maintenance. Don’t get me wrong, these are activities mainte-
nance can undertake but they are not strictly maintenance.
So then what is not strictly maintenance?
➢ Improving the operation of the plant by modifying it

➢ Fitting and adjustment of change parts.
15
➢ The installation of new equipment.

➢ Responding to breakdowns.
You are probably asking yourself ... why it is so important to under-

stand the difference?
Well it’s very simple - if your maintenance people are spending their
day modifying machines, installing machines, attending breakdowns
or the fitting and adjustment of change parts, then they are not doing
work to maintain the machines. In essence, your maintenance peo-
ple are not doing; ‘work undertaken that sustains or improves reliabil-
ity in your plant’. This means your maintenance people are not doing
maintenance!
I can hear you saying that these other things that your maintenance
team do are very important; improving the operation of machines, fit-
ting and adjustment of change parts, and the installation of new equip-
ment. However consider this; if there is zero maintenance in there,
you will lose equipment reliability and inevitably get caught in an ever
increasing occurrence of breakdowns.
Don’t get me wrong; these are functions that can be undertaken
by maintenance departments - but not at the expense of real mainte-
nance. So what I am saying is, do real maintenance first - the other more
exciting work comes second.
I often hear people saying “but it is the job of maintenance to fix
breakdowns” and, yes this is true, however breakdowns only come
about because your maintenance is ineffective in ensuring the reliabil-
ity of the existing plant. If you are a maintenance person you may think
this is a little harsh. However, consider why machines fail and cause
downtime? Yes Ok there is one other thing “errant operator behaviour”,
however this is also very curable but not covered in this book.
In the traditional downtime measuring model of splitting downtime
into the two areas of ‘maintenance downtime’ and ‘production down-
time’, keep in mind I don’t endorse this type of course measure for
What is Maintenance? | 17
downtime (to find out why, you will need to keep reading this book).
From this measure we often get the following results.... “Maintenance
failed to fix the machine fast enough causing downtime” and from main-
tenance you get.... “Production operator assembled the machine incor-
rectly causing it to break on start-up”.
Instead of just looking for a department against which to assign
blame, if we complete a root cause analysis of the failure and identify
all the actions and conditions that lead to the failure then we will find
such things as; The operator on that day had only been with the com-
pany three days and the man who usually assembled the machine was
away sick, the new man had an idea about how to assemble it so he
did. Remember he was asked to do so and he had requested training in
this machine and was told the existing operator (who was now off sick)
would show him.
Now, the failure has already occurred, so the downtime can not be
avoided, maintenance has someone to blame and production do not
want to beat up the man who stepped forward to help. So, mainte-
nance blame production, and production respond that we need more
maintenance people to fix breakdowns faster, and so no one changes
anything.
Clearly, in this particular case, what production needs is a training
procedure with laminated reference guides for people to follow when
they are assembling the machines. This will allow production to build a
succession plan for operators and get consistency in the assembly and
disassembly of the machinery. Once again this is not covered in this
book but is very fixable.
Is maintenance then responsible for writing instructions on the
assembly and disassembly of machinery and should they supply train-
ing assistance to production?
The question is; will this improve or sustain the reliability of the
plant? The answer is Yes. I am not saying that it is now the responsibility
of maintenance to write and deliver all training.
What I am pointing out is that here is a problem that will repeat if
nothing is done. The instructions are normally in the owners’ manual
in the maintenance library, half the time this is good enough to use
for training. Maintenance is there to fix other problems - why not fix
this one? Can maintenance get involved in building a training model for
operation? Not if they are busy fixing breakdowns.
Long term we want maintenance and production to work together
on this but it has to start somewhere and this is just another way that
maintenance can add value to the plant and work to build strong rela-
tionships with production. However this happy circumstance will almost
certainly NEVER occur without clear guidance from enlightened man-
agement. Guidance from enlightened management comes in the form
of identifying the problems presented in this book and building a plan
to cure this manufacturing disease.
So to summarise.... there is a lot of work that maintenance can do to
improve and sustain the reliability of the plant, so it is important that
we don’t just have our maintenance people chasing breakdowns, doing
assembly that production operators can be trained to do, or installing
new machines. We need to have them focused on work that adds value
to the existing plant first, and this value comes only from proper main-
tenance. This is the first step to getting reliability from any plant.

Understanding Chaos Fatigue
L
et’s face it, controlled maintenance functions like maintenance
checks, routine activities and documentation are not as much
fun as modifying machines, installing machines, attending break-
downs or the fitting and adjustment of change parts. These activities
are clearly more exciting and rewarding for your maintenance people.
And the most exciting one of all is responding to breakdowns, and this
I believe is the biggest maintenance killer because it becomes like a
drug for your maintenance people - Yes, I’m serious, a drug!
Here’s why I believe this is the case; everyone wants to feel important!
To a production manager, there is no one more important in the
world than a maintenance person when the production line is broken
down. When the line is fixed the maintenance person is congratulated
for the great work they have done in fixing the breakdown quickly.
It is not unusual to hear General Managers point out an individual
from maintenance and praise how good a job they have done because
they fixed a breakdown that could have cause major problems with
plant output. This gives this maintenance person fifteen seconds of
fame and it feels good, thus feeding the need for more breakdown
success.
With more breakdowns comes less reliability and a reluctance to do
preventative work, as this does not give the same level of satisfaction,
in fact there is often no reward for good maintenance except an easier
19
life at work. It is quite normal to go to a plant and see every mainte-

nance person just responding to breakdowns. There are two problems
with this....
The first problem is that when you wait for a breakdown you not only
have the cost of fixing it but also the cost of the plant downtime.
The second and ultimate cost of breakdown is turnover of staff due
to ‘Chaos Fatigue’. Continued and increasing breakdowns, as is com-
mon in breakdown maintenance mode, will inevitably burn out your
maintenance staff.
This burnout is due to a number of factors....
Firstly having to face every day the ongoing and repeated break-
down dramas that were once fun but quickly become fatiguing.
The second step is pressure from management on the maintenance
staff to fix the plant faster, which inevitably leads to ‘The Blame Game’
(this is covered in the chapter entitled ‘insanity at work’). Ultimately this
all leads to a major breakdown in relationship between maintenance,
production and management.
You wind up with a maintenance team who are combative, bitter,
defensive and unproductive. And it is not long after this that your key
maintenance people start to leave. You are then forced to employ a
new team, but by not addressing the root cause of the problem their
path to burnout begins.
“The battlefield is a scene of constant chaos.
The winner will be the one who controls that chaos,
both his own and the enemies”.
Napoleon Bonaparte

Plant Reliability Starts

with Maintenance
L
EAN, which is reportedly derived from the Toyota Production
System, dominates the manufacturing and mining worlds cur-
rently – a custom designed process for continuous improvement
within Toyota. Elements of Six Sigma are often added and new names
are created such as Operations Excellence. However most of these
processes are currently related.
Over the past 20 years, some interesting statistics have emerged
from high-speed manufacturing. LEAN fails to achieve any result on
a company’s bottom line 75% of the time, and it fails to hit its planned
bottom line result 98% of the time. The irony of this is that high-speed
manufacturing companies blindly continue to attempt to implement
this process with no more than a 2% chance of success.
I desperately needed to know why this was the case. LEAN has
reportedly shown good results in Japan, its country of origin and in low
speed assembly and manufacturing. So the question was “Why is it so
unsuccessful in high speed manufacturing.” There will be a number of
you saying, “Well, we did LEAN and got great results”. Indeed, this is
something I hear often.
I agree that a successful 5S programme (where the place is looking
really tidy) or an improvement in work-life balance is all-good. But the
22
Plant Reliability Starts with Maintenance | 23
real question is, “How much money did this add to the bottom line of
the company?”
Success of any change process needs to be measured in the bottom
line results – if the profit of the company has not increased in eighteen
months then the continuous improvement programme is simply not
working.
LEAN focuses on process reliability, and throughout its imple-
mentation it makes a number of assumptions - the first one being
that the maintenance department is “functional”, meaning that main-
tenance is planning and scheduling work and optimising employee
utilisation etc.
The next assumption is that if the company is currently profitable,
the added pressure of focus group meetings and 5S activities in the
early stages has an instant effect on output.
Showing a reduction in output in a compromised company can cause
that company a lot of problems (Hamel, G.2000*).
* Gary Hamel is chairman of Strategos and a visiting pro-

fessor at MIT. In his article “Corporate liposuction” ... in
Business Week July (2000) pp 2 - 10. He stated...
“...of 50 companies, including Fortune 500 companies such

as Kodak and Unisy, 43 experienced ‘significant downturn in
earnings’ after three years of Lean”
We have consistently demonstrated in high-speed, and FMCG

manufacturing, and mining that functionality in the maintenance
department is the critical first step to quick and early improve-
ments in plant output. If you focus on process reliability (as
LEAN does) and the maintenance department is not functional
then results will be slow and disappointing assuming you even
get a result at all.
We need to understand why this is the case.
● To get plant reliability you must have process reliability.

● To get process reliability you must have equipment reliability.
● To get equipment reliability you must first address ‘Plant Build
Quality’ and ‘Maintenance Effectiveness’.
The diagram below shows how this is the case. To be an effective

organisation you need to have control of the top line. First you need
an operational plan showing what needs to be produced, and then you
need a consistently reliable plant to product the required products.
When and only when you have these two can you meet the commit-
ments to your customers.
To get a consistently reliable plant you need to have ‘process reli-

ability’ – this means the people in production are delivering the right
product on time. However you can’t get process reliability without
‘equipment reliability’. If the operator pushes the start button on a
machine and it won’t start, or won’t run properly then there is nothing
more they can do. It is important to note that LEAN focuses on process
reliability, NOT equipment reliability!
I’ll stress again ... you need equipment reliability first. This comes
from two factors, and two factors only! ... ‘maintenance effectiveness’
and ‘plant build quality’
Plant Build Quality

It is very important to first look at the process you have and ask the
following questions...
➢ Was the process built to do what it is currently required to do?

➢ Is the process capable of producing every product and specifi-
cation required of it?
What I am asking is ... What ‘modifications or improvements’ are

required to get your plant to run reliably day after day? In these cases
all the maintenance in the world will not make this part of the plant reli-
able, to be consistently reliable you will need to modify it. Ever factory
I have gone to has had production plant that is not capable to running
reliably at the nameplate speed from the day it was commissioned.
It is important that a complete list is made up of possible plant
improvements to ensure that all improvement options can be consid-
ered against the benefits of return. Under most countries’ tax rules
these improvement jobs would be capitalised in the accounting asset
register and depreciated over a number of years so will not have an
impact on the maintenance budget.
Maintenance effectiveness
The company is spending money on maintenance - that is a given.
The question is ... is ‘maintenance’ being done? –
Maintenance = ‘Work undertaken that sustains or improves reliability
in your plant’.
With the maintenance divisions of manufacturing companies that
I go into, their days are predominately filled with breakdowns. There
are often a small number of improvement jobs in there, and on occa-
sion there may be some preventative work. But in most cases any pre-
ventative work is set up to make the life of the maintenance people
easier and not necessarily targeted at reliability.
Why are breakdowns so bad? Firstly they are very expensive, I like
to explain it this way; imagine driving your car until the tyres were so
worn that they burst. Imagine also that your car does not have a spare
tyre because you had determined that it was too expensive to buy one,
and finally you do not have a jack or wheel brace (tire iron) because
they are special service tools and were optional extras.
I can hear you say “But you don’t buy cars without these items” - and
you would be right, - However - for our plants we regularly buy equip-
ment in exactly this manner - no special service tools and very few (if
any) spare parts.
However returning to the example of our hypothetical car - You are
driving to work in this car and the front left tyre bursts because it is
worn right down.
You now have no option other than to call a tow truck. This tow truck
will take you to the nearest tyre shop for the repair. You have also fore-
gone the opportunity to shop around for the best price from tyre sales
and special deals, as you need to get it fixed right now to get to work.
Let’s look at the dollars of this situation; you have to pay the tow
truck driver for the towing of your car, say $80, you have to buy the new
tyre at $40 more than the sale price you could have had it for, and you
are now two hours late for work. Now you could leave the car with the
tow truck driver and get a taxi to work and back to the tyre shop after
work so you have now reduced your down time by half but slap on the
$30 taxi fare
Now if you had replaced the tyre before it failed and purchased
a pair on sale, you would possibly have gotten them for around $120
each, and would have planned for the car to be dropped off at the tyre
shop therefore incurring no down time from work.
However now due to the tyre failure and the tow truck etc. it has
cost you a total of $270 for the one tyre replacement, and what’s
worse is if you stick with the same philosophy of maintenance, you
will have to repeat this four times before all the tyres are replaced.
Additionally, remember we have not put a cost to your downtime

either! Remembering you will be late for work four times – this being
the downtime in this case.
So if you add up the sum cost of the breakdown it is now two and a
quarter times the possible price of the planned and scheduled replace-
ment of your car tyres.
Let’s look at how we would normally address the problems with the
tyres. The rules regarding car inspections vary significantly from state
to state and country to country, but this is a typical legal requirement.
The tyre must retain more that 1.5mm on tread, over three quarters of
the width, over two thirds of the circumference. When you have less
than this you must change your tyres.
Most modern tyres have “wear blocks” moulded in. When these
blocks are apparent, it is time to change the tyre. A simple visual inspec-
tion is all that is called for with no measurement or judgement required.
The blocks are either apparent, or not. End of inspection.
In the maintenance world this is called ‘On Condition Monitoring’
which requires that you check your tires periodically and replace them
only when they reach their legal minimum requirements.
With tyres, that will likely be around 25000 to 55000 kilometres
depending upon your driving habits and the type of tyre.
Sadly with plant maintenance this does not end up happening, and
to address the problem some maintenance people will plan to replace
the tyres, on some arbitrary time-base.
The easiest way to do this is to change the tyres every time you
change the engine oil. This is known as ‘Fixed Time Maintenance’. But
once again, by applying the wrong maintenance philosophy to the
problem, the results are also undesirable and unnecessarily expensive.
Now if we go with this arbitrary “Time – based Maintenance”, we will
change the tyres every 10000 kilometres regardless of whether they
need changing or not. So if we look at the results of this, the tyres are
now costing us more than two and a half time what they should have
cost, however there is no down time so management are happy and the
maintenance department seems effective.
Now I want you to replace the word tyre with the word ‘bearing’.
Why?
Because bearing condition can be monitored using condition-moni-
toring equipment like vibration analysis, or as a minimum a stethoscope
or even a screwdriver up to your ear.
There is a good chance that your maintenance people are responding
to failed bearings on a regular basis, or if they are not then they will be
changing them every 12 months at a maintenance shutdown. Depending
on the operating conditions and the type of bearing, most normal
applications will see bearings last at least 5 years or longer if they are
installed correctly and lubricated correctly.... however that is a complete
other topic. But you can, I hope, begin to appreciate how easy it is to be
spending 2 – 3 times as much on maintenance than you need to!
And they don’t teach this anywhere in Australia, or much of the rest
of the world! Only embittered old maintenance guys who have run their
own machinery, realise the simple efficiencies of selecting the optimum
maintenance regime for each piece of equipment.
So maintenance effectiveness is selecting and applying the right
maintenance philosophy to the correct piece of equipment. This needs
to be based around the need to avoid down time and based on the
most economic way to maintain your equipment.
Once you have both plant build quality and maintenance effective-
ness addressed you will find that your plant will start every time the
start button is pushed.
ONLY then, can you begin to focus on process reliability.
And this is the fundamental error of every Lean-based package in
that they assume plant build quality and effective maintenance as “giv-
ens”. They NEVER are - givens! And this simple underlying fact will
guarantee the failure, or at best partial and unsustainable success of
any Lean package used.

Constantly Chasing the

Magic Pill
W
hen a production plant is not performing Companies always
seek someone to blame. This is a universal human failing!
When a company has “identified” the person to blame for
poor performance, this person is removed from their position and
another person is brought in to fix all the problems that their prede-
cessor could not fix. This almost never works because the solutions do
not lie within the experience and training of any single manager. Even at
Synergistic we use a TEAM of change managers to bring the full range
of skills necessary.
My absolute favourite is the jobs advertisements that are looking
for a person who can come in and make significant change and stay
for five years to run the department they have fixed. I call this person
the magic pill, the person that will magically fix all the problems with
the same or less resources, than their predecessor. Good Luck with
THAT!
In most cases a maintenance department that is not functional and
suffering from Chaos Fatigue will not be able to be fixed by a lone per-
son regardless of their talent.
They simply do not have the time, experience or the resources to
recover the department while dealing with the pursuing chaos. The
29
consequence of this is the new person will inevitably burn out in less
than eighteen months or if they are an experienced (and cunning) prac-
titioner, they will be able to blame another section or manager in the
plant for all the failings. The net result will be the same
It is normal to see factories that have had successive frontline man-
agement changes chasing this magic pill, with each new person giving
senior management renewed hope that all the problems of the plant
will just disappear.
This is seldom a reality, especially in maintenance. The magic pill
pursuit continues with the same outcome time after time with no one
either seeming to remember the failures of the past or seeing a need
to break the cycle.
The solution is simple. Not EASY, but simple – build a functional
maintenance department. Once maintenance is functional there will be
a solid planning and scheduling processes in place that can effectively
manage the flow of required tasks that the maintenance department
are required to perform.
Once this is established, cause analysis can be undertaken on plant
failures and the required tasks fed into the maintenance workflow pro-
cess with full confidence that this work will actually get done.
An experienced team of change practitioners will be able to imple-
ment these processes and rapidly bring the department back on track.
This brings me to my crucial point.
Managers that are good at change are not the same as the manager
you need to run the department after the department is functional.
In almost every case of maintenance departmental restructures,
the manager making the change is burnt out after eighteen months,
regardless of the level of success. This once again highlights the need
to bring in experienced change practitioners that have a proven change
programme to follow.
Even we at Synergistic have to rest our managers after a restructure
such as this. If we did not do this, we would doom our managers to a life
Constantly Chasing the Magic Pill | 31
of burnout. Given the years that we invest in them, this would be com-
mercial stupidity – just as it is for companies to expect “their” Magic Pill
to succeed where all others fail!
If you take away just one message from this section it is this....
The type of people that can successfully make significant change
in a department are not the same as the people you need to run the
department long term.

The Maintenance Fix

Commitment
S
o you have identified that your maintenance department fits the
chaos fatigue model and you see the need for change. This is a
great start, as the first step in making change is to identify the
need for change. However the next step is knowing what to do to make
the change.
This is what this book is all about.
The secret to making change in your maintenance department
is very simple; if you want to change.... you actually have to make
change.
That’s it. That’s the secret! Well the first one anyway.
Most plants that decide to undergo a change process spend the first
year talking about what they will change to, and then proceed to build
a plan on paper that is so complex that it is practically impossible to
implement.
Consequently very little real, or lasting change happens.
Following this they proceed to talk about the change at seemingly
endless meetings for another year or so in a “joint working party” or an
“action task force”. After a short time the lack of measurable results
from the program increasingly agitates the Senior Management spon-
sor of the change process.
32
The Maintenance Fix Commitment | 33
For this reason it is imperative that there is a clear program from the
outset with targets and deliverables set, along with a fully mandated
Change Manager appointed to ensure that those targets and delivera-
bles are all met on time and in full.
This is where a tested and developed change programme will put
you well ahead. When companies decide to make change in mainte-
nance the first step of the team making the change is trying to work out
what maintenance will look like at the end of the process.
This is where the process of change stalls. Usually the team can’t
even begin to agree on what maintenance looks like!
I need to be VERY clear about this, if you intend to implement any
change process it will be disruptive, potentially painful, and if not imple-
mented correctly, expensive and ineffective.
For nearly two decades, I have been going into companies to make
these types of changes as well as consulting with companies who
believe they have the luxury of time to implement this programme.
Sadly for the first three months - every time without fail - I find that
I get the most significant ridicule from those people who have to change
the least, and are the best off after the change - The maintenance peo-
ple on the floor.
After this very trying three months, they begin to see the real
benefits accruing to them, and begin to work with me, rather than
against me.
Once the maintenance department is in order it is the turn of the
operations people to do the same.
Again, throughout the change process there is inevitably some
inconvenience to operations, and this triggers the operations people
to resist even more vigorously.
Interestingly, maintenance restructures often come about because
of operations dissatisfaction with maintenance. I often find that the
operations people believe that maintenance is ineffective because
they don’t respond to breakdown fast enough.
As you will see by the end of this book, it is not responding to break-
downs quicker that makes a good maintenance department, it is avoid-
ing them altogether that is the real goal.
So the person managing this change will need to be very committed,
pragmatic and self confident, or the pressure of this first six months will
cause this person to fail. To have your Change Manager leave within
this first six months will spell disaster for the change process.
I am keen not to paint a picture of battling staff and industrial dis-
putes as this process will not create a battle of wills. Ridicule is not
resistance it is people trying to understand what it is you want from
them. If you manage this badly at this point you will get resistance and
that is harder to deal with.
However once the executive have signed off on a change programme
the required change process is not optional as it is in the interests of
both the company and the staff to see it implemented. This is what
defines that difference between Change management companies like
Synergistic and consulting companies. Change management required
an executive mandate to make change, a clear and simple change plan
and the expertise to see that change through.
The Evolution of Maintenance™ is a process that can be easily pre-
sented and accepted by a mature workers union. Using the process
The Evolution of Maintenance™ as outlined in this book, with people
experienced in the implementation of this process, we regularly have
maintenance departments on track with good business practices in
place within twelve months.
Within eighteen months the reliability of the plant is dramatically
better, and after two years, the department is on track, productivity is
significantly up and the maintenance budget is attained. By suffering
the pain of quick change in the early part of the change management
process the financial gains for the company come years earlier.
Depending on the size of your plant the gains will be relative to the
economy of scale of the organisation. My experience has shown that
The Maintenance Fix Commitment | 35
the gains are often all profit as in most cases the productivity gains are
supplemented by a reduction in energy and operating costs.
But wait; there is more pain to come.
Along with the emotional human cost of the quick change process is
the financial cost in maintenance catch-up that needs to be taken into
account.
When a plant is being operated in breakdown mode or been run
with an unsustainably low maintenance spend, there is a significant
amount of deferred maintenance that absolutely has to be corrected if
plant reliability is to be achieved.
The only advantage of a slower approach to maintenance change
is that the cost of this maintenance recovery in plant condition is
expensed over quite a number of years.
However as discussed in other chapters the traditional change pro-
gram is prone to failure after about two years, as Senior Managers lose
confidence in the program due to elevated maintenance costs with no
bankable gains. This does not have to be the case! Benefits of more
rapid change are covered in depth in the chapter ‘The Evolution of
Maintenance™’.
The most desirable consequence of fast change from a financial per-
spective is the requirement to recover plant condition in the first year,
and only from this recovery can we see the increased plant gains that
will lead to dramatic financial improvements in plant output. This I refer
to as the ‘Maintenance Hump’ and it also features in the chapter ‘The
Evolution of Maintenance™.

Repeating the Norm
I
n manufacturing and mining companies around the world pressure is
on production executives to produce incremental improvements in
plant output and the corresponding profit improvement that comes
from this.
The average tenure of production executives in the manufacturing
sector is about three years. Following their appointment to the role, a
plan needs to be presented on how this person will do things differ-
ently to their predecessor and deliver the results that their predeces-
sor failed to deliver.
With all the optimism of a new role and with the notion that there
is capability within the business to make this type of change, they pro-
ceed to put together a “continuous improvements team” from people
from within, and sometimes outside the business. After a six to twelve
month process a team is assembled. Now having the extra cost of
around $500,000.00 a year to maintain and support this team, results
need to be evident quickly to justify this decision.
This newly formed team is filled with individuals with differing and
often conflicting views on how the change process needs to happen. A
lengthy process of determining what they are going to do, and how they
are going to do it, is undertaken. Inevitably the outcome is that they will
do ‘LEAN’ or what each individual perceives LEAN to be. Following this
36
Repeating the Norm | 37
six to twelve month settling in process the team gets to work in their
individual improvement challenges.
This process will almost always kick off with a drive for 5S in all areas
of the plants they choose to focus on. Quickly there is a noticeable
improvement in general tidiness in the plant. However, the mainte-
nance department seems to be resisting the improvements programme
and there is no 5S progress there. Pressure is therefore placed upon
the maintenance department to get on board with the programme.
With a Chaos Fatigued maintenance department, all the members
of the maintenance team will be focused on fixing the ever-increasing
plant breakdowns. Taking the focus away from these breakdowns will
inevitably lead to an increase in plant down time. This now creates a
conflict between the priorities of the site manager and the priorities
of the centrally based continuous Improvement Team. From here focus
on all improvement activities stops.
The Production Executive rapidly find themselves two to three years
down the track without any bottom line result. Successive presenta-
tions from the continuous improvements team tout 5S successes in
some departments and improvements in work life balance - but are
unable to demonstrate any bottom line realities!
They blame the lack of bottom line results on the uncooperative site
managers and site maintenance teams.
Net result ... Before the end of three years the continuous improve-
ments team is usually disbanded or disintegrates without achieving any
sustainable results.
With the departure of the production executive from the business a
new person is brought in.
Straight away this person will see the need to improve the produc-
tion output of the plant and seek to put together a continuous improve-
ment team, restarting the “loop” which has just petered out after its
2 – 3 year life span has ended.
The only way to break this totally pointless loop is to appoint a

TEAM of experienced and successful change managers from OUTSIDE
the company, who have a proven programme to follow, and give them
full mandate for change.
“You don’t change direction by going harder
in the same direction”
Piet Beukman
Lecturer Canterbury University

How it All Went Wrong
E
arly last century, right up until the late 1960’s, production and
commodity plants were mostly run by engineers, with the ”Chief
Engineer” being the man who made all the decisions. These were
the guys that built the plants, had the marine certificates to operate
steam on site, and knew how everything worked.
Throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s came a radical change in direc-
tion: The era of corporate raiders and asset strippers. Companies were
brought and assets stripped out, overheads leaned down, companies
cut up and on-sold as so-called “profitable business units”. This was
now possible because of improvements in automation rendered these
chief engineers less critical. This process involved significantly down-
sizing of engineering divisions and getting rid of everyone who didn’t
add value right at that moment.
This saw lubrication technicians, draftsmen, drawing office work-
ers, stores people, tool room controllers, plumbers, painters, builders,
administrators and more all let go. I’m not saying that change didn’t
need to happen, but the time was brutal on maintenance departments.
In many cases the electricians and fitters were reduced to an unsus-
tainably low level.
This business unit would immediately demonstrate significantly big-
ger profits stemming from the reduced spending and overheads, how-
ever this was unsustainable. By year two or three, things would start to
40
How it All Went Wrong | 41
get serious, with deferred maintenance issues resulting in poor reliabil-

ity. By seven years, if nothing was done to turn this around, the plant
was almost unrecoverable and grossly unprofitable. But of course the
asset strippers had long since sold the business and moved on!
As a part of the change in plant culture, control of the plants now fell
to the production people. The focus for production was to have break-
downs fixed faster. With all the maintenance administration gone, pro-
active maintenance activities were no longer generated and the slide
into breakdown maintenance began.
Within ten years, maintenance planning skills and scheduling pro-
cess had been lost. In the days before computers the process of main-
tenance was just done manually, using folders, card systems and hand
written work orders. Moving into the era of computer managed main-
tenance systems (CMMS) we have all the tools we need but have lost
the methodologies for using them correctly.
To make things worse, we have bred a generation of management
who believe that improving plant performance demands uncontrolled
budget slashing to reduce cost. Often we see companies that have
gone through three or four management changes where the only focus
has been further reducing maintenance costs. Ridiculously, often from
maintenance budgets that were inadequate to start with.
This has been allowed to happen for two reasons. Firstly the lack
of function in maintenance doesn’t allow maintenance managers to
present facts and data that support the level of funding required to
maintain their plant (see the chapter - maintenance managers vs. bud-
get administrators). Secondly the people controlling production in the
plants now don’t understand what maintenance really is – they assume
it to be no more than a bunch of blokes who come when called to fix
broken stuff – and the quicker the better!
If we want to move toward a more efficient future in manufactur-
ing and mining, these two factors are absolutely crucial and need
to be addressed. With accounting based or production based plant
managers, an educative process to effectively and genuinely help them

understand what they don’t know is critical. They don’t know that they
don’t know!
If this book can bring an awareness of that “Need to Know” then it
will have done these new generation managers the greatest service in
the fulfilment of their careers, and to the improvement of productivity
within their plants.
“For progress we must look to the future,
for wisdom we must look to the past,
but without wisdom we cannot progress”
Michael Stayner
My Father, and a really good guy.

The Evolution of Maintenance™
S
ynergistic’s Evolution of Maintenance™ was developed firstly to
set a minimum standard for how maintenance should be run, with
documented processes that step you through to a world class
standard. This allows us to measure if standardised processes are in
place and have been implemented in the correct order. This also allows
the ability to implement the same functionality across multiple plants
within the same company.
This has a number of advantages – most of which are obvious. In
particular, the ability to promote from one site to another through a
controlled succession plan. Managers moving across facilities will be
totally familiar with all the processes and systems, as they will be the
same as the plant they came from. This allows companies to genuinely
develop and use their human capital, ensuring business performance
continuity and removes the continual search for the “magic pill”.
The real challenge with the development of Synergistic’s Evolution
of Maintenance™ was to put the change process of maintenance
into a logical sequence. We did this by building a standard, defining
what processes need be in place for a maintenance department to
be ‘functional’ and then built a logical road map from there to world
class. Throughout the process, fundamental parts of PM, TPM, reli-
ability management, HR, Occupational safety and RCM etc. are
engaged.
44
The Evolution of Maintenance™ | 45
Our unique point of departure from all other change managers is

that the elements of these programmes are engaged at the right time
and in the correct order.
It is important to note that ‘maintenance is maintenance’ regardless
of the industry. Whether you are manufacturing cars, fast moving con-
sumer goods (FMCG), maintaining a power station or a mine site, the
maintenance processes don’t change. The same rules apply. Agreed,
there are areas of specialty in every sector and in some industries risk
is higher and must be accounted for – but it is all still maintenance.
So let’s break down The Evolution of Maintenance™ process.
Over the 17 years of our development, we have defined that there
are 190 processes that need to have been successfully implemented to
get to world class in maintenance.
But the good news is that to be “functional” in maintenance there
only needs to be 43 of these processes in place. However once again,
it is crucial that these be the correct processes implemented in the
correct order.
Once a maintenance department is functional, then, and only then,
can Chaos Fatigue be cured.
The first step is to measure what processes are already in place. If
you want to make change, it makes sound sense to only implement pro-
cesses that need implementing. If there are processes that are already
functional and properly implemented, we identify them, work with
them and implement supporting processes around them.
The key beginning to this process, and unique to Synergistic, is the
Gap Analysis that is designed to measure where the department is, as
against where it needs to be.
What sets the gap analysis apart is that this is not a desktop study;
this is a validation audit that looks at the functionality of every pro-
cess required for a maintenance department to be functional. From
the Evolution of Maintenance™ Gap Analysis, we create a list of crucial
tasks and the correct order in which to complete them.
Put differently, we not only ask questions and note the verbal
responses, but either then, or later in the audit, we physically validate
the response. Any disparity in response versus validation is often not
the result of any attempt to mislead, but is a genuine belief on the part
of the manager accompanying us on the audit, but in which he is, in fact,
mistaken.
A simple illustration … we may ask, “Are there Material Safety Data
Sheets readily available and up-to-date for a particular maintenance
product – let’s say food-grade lubricants. The Manager may respond
in the affirmative, as he has in the past seen these Sheets, may in fact
have provided them himself and truly believes that he is justified in
answering, “Yes.”
But upon validation, we so often find a very different physical situ-
ation, whereby the MSDS are not readily available, or incomplete, or
out-of-date. This in turn tells us that there is no system for ensuring that
somebody is held responsible for the custodianship and availability of
these documents.
What may seem like a trivial matter here could turn into a legal and
compliance nightmare if, for example, food contamination occurs as
a result of incorrect lubricants leaking onto or into foodstuffs. If you
have ever been investigated after something has gone wrong – isn’t it
interesting how everyone is an expert in hindsight.
A gap analysis is not about showing up how bad you are it is about
building a list of processes – in the correct order – than need to be in
place if everyone wants their life at work to be easier. Then it is about
sorting out what resources are required to put enough of the correct
processes in place so a maintenance department can be functional.
Once a maintenance department is functional Chaos Fatigue is magi-
cally cured in maintenance.

Understanding Maintenance Basics
A
n important part of fixing a reactive maintenance department is
for them to understand, in a broad sense, the path that needs
to be followed to get to functional and ultimately world class.
The 190 processes of maintenance all fit into this evolutionary path.
World Class
Predictive Maintenance
Criticality based Maintenance
Preventative Maintenance
Reactive
I have described the evolutionary path in this way so we can under-

stand how the processes are lined up but also so it is easier to explain
how the evolution path fails.
First let’s overview the different steps of the process:
Reactive. At this most basic and reactive level, the maintenance peo-
ple wait until the failing machines have stopped and they are called
47
upon to fix them. The problem with this is that the downtime from the
failures gets more expensive as plants get bigger and economies of
scale work against you.
Preventative Maintenance. Historically this has meant pulling things

to bits to survey their condition. In Synergistic’s programme this is not
the case. The reason we do not pull things to bits is that even when
your maintenance people are skilled you can still expect ten percent of
the equipment that is pulled to bits to fail on start up (see more in the
chapter ‘The one in ten rule”).
We strongly discourage the disassembly of equipment for the pur-
pose of these checks at this stage, if possible. Instead this step in the
process should be used to collect information on equipment and to
determine the overall condition of the machinery. For example go to
each machine (one at a time) and collect the information for the CMMS.
While collecting this information all your maintenance people need
to do is make a specific list of what in that machine needs to be checked.
Too often we see a directive that reads something like “Check vari-
able transmission” followed by a tick box … Check what – specifically?
The directive as it stands invites no more than a cursory examination
and “Tick ‘N Flick” (pencil wipping).
Contrast with the simple and clear directions …
Item: Variable transmission.
1. Check drive belts for wear or damage

2. Listen to gearbox and motor bearings for excessive noise
3. Check gearbox oil level
4. Check for oil leaks
5. Check motor and gear box temperatures
6. Check torque of slide arm bolts
7. Measure motor running Amps
8. Mega the motor winding
Understanding Maintenance Basics | 49
If Maintenance tasks are being set up for the machines for the
first time then keep them simple – people will complicate it mov-
ing forward. Get the Tradesmen who know the machine to talk
you through what needs to be done, and do this at the machine
so you can ask questions to ensure the right tasks are being cre-
ated. Within the development programme we teach the tradesmen
three maintenance philosophies that will be followed when creat-
ing these tasks.
Another option is to get out the books from the manufacturers and
follow their recommendations. However, there are a number of prob-
lems with this. Amazingly, many machinery manufacturers know very lit-
tle about maintenance, therefore the quality of their recommendations
varies dramatically in effectiveness. Secondly it is normal for machinery
manufacturers to insist on checks that are excessive in both what you
should check and inspection frequency.
This is done to ensure that the machines get through the warranty
period without catastrophic failures for which the machinery supplier
would be liable. By all means use these recommendations, but be pre-
pared to exercise judgment about the inspection frequency. In quite
a number of cases where machinery manufacturers offer contracts to
maintain the machinery for you there will be lots of checks – that is how
they maximise their “back end sales” – turning up to do checks and then
selling you replacement parts.
In a true maintenance environment you want to do as few checks as
possible and to replace as few parts as you can to achieve reliability.
By all means read and consider the manufacturer’s recommendations,
but be sure you validate them. This can be done by just going to the
machine and having a look as suggested before. Assuming that there
has been no PM work done in the plant before then, any checks are
better than nothing!
While setting up the PM checks you will find work that needs fol-
lowing up. Some of it will be urgent, some of it can wait. It is important
the urgent work gets done, but don’t bog the planner down (or per-
son setting up the system) with this work while they are setting up
the CMMS! These tasks need to be allocated to and followed up by
someone else.
All other required follow up work that needs to get done but is not
urgent must not be missed. Keep a list of this work and enter mainte-
nance work requests onto the CMMS only when the system is ready,
and ensure that the priority is set correctly. It is extremely important
that you don’t roll out the formal maintenance checks until the system
is fully set up and ready to go.
It is really common to go into plants where the maintenance
department is not yet functional (as measured by The Evolution of
Maintenance™ Gap Analysis). I always seem to find that having imple-
mented about half the assets and having put some PM’s against the
assets the CMMS begins to generate PM and follow up work. This
promptly overwhelms the maintenance department and the CMMS
build is never completed.
Check list for this step

At the completion of this step you must be able to achieve all the
requirements below …
1. Establish equipment numbering system and number all equip-

ment on CMMS
2. Develop PM program for each piece of equipment
3. Provide PM check list work orders from the CMMS
4. Include part requirements for planned jobs
5. Provide necessary drawings for jobs from links to the CMMS
6. Arrange for special tools and equipment
7. Provide cost information from equipment history
8. Work from weekly maintenance schedules negotiated with
operations
Strict rules of the PM phase

1. Keep the checks simple but capture as many as possible on each
machine
2. On these first checks (during set up) capture all the follow up
work but only do the urgent follow up work
3. Don’t let the person setting up the CMMS plan the urgent follow
up work as this will slow down the set up and implementation
4. Don’t start the roll out of the formal maintenance PM checks
until the whole system is ready
Criticality Based Maintenance

At this phase we implement a process that is loosely related to the
criticality measure in Reliability Centred maintenance (RCM). However,
since I am of the belief that a full RCM risk assessment is overkill in
most maintenance environments, I have leaned it down to allow for a
smoother application.
Most maintenance departments categorise their plant between 1
and 5 for criticality or they use some sort of criticality matrix chart.
I say that this is too much in most plants that don’t have serious conse-
quences of catastrophic failures, therefore you only need categories 1
to 3. For example:
➢ Cat. 1 - If this machine fails it will stop the process.

➢ Cat. 2 - If this machine fails there is a limited time before the
process stops.
➢ Cat. 3 – There is built in redundancy so this will not affect the
process.
The reason for only three is that clear rules can be applied to these
three categories. By following these rules you can quickly identify
where to focus your maintenance efforts. This will ensure that you
don’t apply expensive predictive processes to equipment that is not
really going to give you justifiable reliability gains. The rule that I apply
to each criticality is as follows:
➢ Cat. 1 - Asset based checks with a high level of predictive

maintenance.
➢ Cat. 2 – Route based inspections with low level (yes/no) predic-
tive maintenance.
➢ Cat. 3 – Operator Route checks with follow up managed by
maintenance.
It is important to understand that what I am presenting is the lightest

possible processes that can be implemented and still achieve a result.
In production plants that do have significant risks in the process, it is
recommended that more formal and comprehensive criticality assess-
ments be undertaken
I have used RCM (Reliability Centred Maintenance) assessments in
such plants with great success. There are some very good consulting
companies out there that can train and coach your staff to complete
this step. Keep in mind however, that the more comprehensive the pro-
gramme the more it costs to set up and run, therefore there needs to
be real risk in the process to justify this type of extended programme.
In the right application however, there are significant benefits.
The most important thing that needs to be highlighted is that no
level of criticality study should be undertaken until your maintenance
department has completed the requirements of the first two steps of
the evolution process. Attempting to jump ahead by doing any form of
criticality study will see you putting money into a high-end programme
that will not be sustainable because the foundation of your mainte-
nance department has not yet been built.
Predictive Maintenance Step

It is extremely important that this predictive maintenance step
is done after the criticality study. At this point, having identified the
criticality of each piece of equipment we now need to apply the correct

form of predictive maintenance to the category 1 and category 2 pieces
of equipment to ensure that we are effective in predicting the upcoming
failures and to ensure that we are doing it as economically as possible.
It is very easy to waste money on unnecessary activities at this point.
Every plant that I have gone into that have set up some form of predic-
tive maintenance activity have been doing considerably more predic-
tive maintenance on significantly more plant than is necessary.
Often I have found this is because an external provider for condition
monitoring has been given a mandate to complete a study and come
up with a recommendation. Over-checking has two benefits for these
people - firstly they will charge more for the extra unnecessary work
and reliability of all equipment will improve whether it needs to or not.
Worst than this is the flood of information generated on equipment
condition for machines that will not affect downtime. Often the focus
then becomes ‘what is going to fail the soonest’ and not what will have
the largest effect on plant downtime. Keep in mind that running some
low criticality equipment to failure may be the most economic way to
operate it if the failure does not affect downtime.
This generates the “I told you so” factor with the condition monitor-
ing company, as every time there is a plant failure in a critical area (Cat
1) that causes downtime, they will produce the last report that shows
deterioration in the condition readings. These Cat 1 items are often
neglected due to being overwhelmed by volume of Cat 2 and Cat 3
items that appear to need more urgent attention. This will inevitably
overwhelm your planner and lead to avoidable Cat 1 failures causing
downtime.
By completing this step properly you can take control of the scope
of the input from your condition monitoring providers, and better than
this, you can use this scope to get a range of quotes to complete the
work. You will be surprised at the amount of maintenance money this
will save you.

How Maintenance Change

Programmes Fail
98%
of all companies who attempt to get to world
class fail. It is interesting how all the companies
with any of the programmes they choose to run
seem to make the same mistake. Having made the all-important step of
identifying the need to change, they launch into it putting together PM
checks for everything. However before they have completed this step
they buy predictive tools (vibration analysis equipment, thermography
cameras, oil analysis etc.) and use these tools on everything because it
is lots of fun to do so.
In the case that the maintenance department doesn’t get approval
to buy these tools they often move to contracts with outside pro-
viders who come onto the site and do a survey that encompasses
everything they can possibly do (because that’s how they get paid)
and supply reams of data from all this analysis to the maintenance
department.
Consequently the feed back of data from every asset on site, many
of which have not been entered into the computerised maintenance
management system (CMMS), overwhelms the maintenance depart-
ment. The continued bombardment of data for the predictive checks,
two thirds of which are on equipment that doesn’t require this level of
54
How Maintenance Change Programmes Fail | 55
attention, if any attention at all, is left to a CMMS that does not have
systems in place yet to prioritise or complete this work.
By not getting all the assets on the CMMS, this stops the develop-
ment of more preventative checks on the critical assets as you move
forward. Secondly the follow up work from the checks can not be prior-
itised, planned and scheduled because the system is not ready to pro-
cess the influx of work that ranges everywhere from extremely critical,
to work that will have little or no effect on reliability.
The worst part of this is when data from vibration analysis is trended
and vast amounts of effort is put into the collection and processing
of this data when far simpler checks such as hand-monitoring bearing
temperatures, or listening with a stethoscope to bearings and gear-
boxes will provide far more understandable information!
World Class
Reactive
In effect what has happened is that the important step of complet-

ing the asset load into the CMMS has not been completed therefore
checks have not been set up for all the equipment. By not doing this
and moving forward you run the risk of not entering equipment that is
of high criticality. These critical assets often never get loaded.
The Maintenance Hump

Following Synergistic’s Evolution of Maintenance™ has consequences
for the maintenance costs in your plant. In the short term, they will rise.
They must, in order to address the backlog of work. Incidentally this

doesn’t happen in a greenfield plant it only happens in a plant that is
already running and suffering Chaos Fatigue due to sustained mainte-
nance budget slashing.
If you are a Maintenance Manager attempting this you need to
ensure that the programme sponsor in Senior Management is aware
of this and has made financial allowances. The consequence of this
change process is this ‘Maintenance Hump’ (as highlighted previously).
When this hump is applied to the Evolution of Maintenance™ it looks
something like the diagram below. The faster you make change using
this programme the bigger the hump. And the worse the starting con-
dition of your plant the bigger the hump must be! Synergistic can assist
financial planners with estimates of the size and duration of this hump.
World Class
Reactive
The reason for the hike in maintenance cost is due to the requirement
to continue doing breakdown maintenance while committing labour to
preventative maintenance checks and maintenance inspections.
There is a cost to this labour as well as the requirement to repair
things that are found to be wrong with each machine that is being
inspected. It is generally safe to say that if a plant has been stuck in
breakdown mode for months to years, and assuming that the appropri-
ate maintenance checks have not been undertaken, which is often the
case, then the remedial work to recover the plant’s condition will be
extensive. Hence the hump in maintenance cost.
How Maintenance Change Programmes Fail | 57
However … the hump is only temporary. When the condition of the

plant has been recovered it is possible to predict a majority of the
upcoming maintenance work and thus avoid a majority of breakdowns.
Avoiding breakdowns has the advantage of only having to repair the
equipment and not having to patch it again and again to get produc-
tion running. Also it removes the rush to get parts for the next time
the plant is down with emergency elevated freight costs along with not
being able to negotiate a better price for the required parts.
Senior management MUST be made aware of the hump coming, and
also be reassured that correctly done, the hump will be levelled by the
use of our programmes, and never reoccur.
Payback for funding the hump can be as little as three to six
months. We have seen it in three to six WEEKS! This is just the
nature of unplanned panic parts purchasing and out-of-control failure
maintenance.
“There is never enough time to
fix it properly but there is always
enough time to do it five times”
Matthew Callaghan.
Maintenance reliability expert

What is Step One?
B
efore you start any change process, a validation audit of the
maintenance department is critical to establish where you are
in comparison with where you need to be. This will allow a way
to track and report your progress both to the team and to the pro-
gramme sponsor. Secondly a correctly constructed Audit will identify
what processes are functional. This is important, as it makes no sense
to replace processes that have been successfully implemented and
are getting results.
As you can imagine there is a gap analysis that is undertaken by
Synergistic Manufacturing Systems before we start any change pro-
cesses. This gap analysis is specific to The Evolution of Maintenance™
change process and is designed to measure process functionality in all
ten areas of a maintenance department. Having a measure now allows
us to have three levels of accreditation that can demonstrate that prog-
ress is being made.
Once the gap analysis is complete a comprehensive list can be made
up of required processes that need to be implemented. This list will
have processes set up in the correct order to get the department to
functional or if the maintenance department is already functional a
list of processes that will move the department toward world class in
maintenance.
59
I intend to explain this further. We have determined that for any

maintenance department to be ‘world class’ there are 190 processes
that need to be implemented. These processes are over 10 areas of
the maintenance department and are set up in the correct order – this
is very important. In a majority of maintenance departments we go into
we see processes that are really high level processes that have been
implemented.
However without the low level processes that combine to make your
maintenance department functional, your maintenance department
will not see any outputs from these high level processes. Often these
high level processes are the fun ones, the processes that are presented
at conferences as being the “things to do” in a successful maintenance
department. These are also the processes that are taught at universi-
ties as being the things that need to be in place!
The Evolution of Maintenance™ gap analysis validates these 190
tasks in the correct order and measures the implementation effective-
ness out of 100 points. Now we take an average over 10 areas of the
maintenance function. You can only score points for processes that
have been implemented in order (meaning if you have done the fun
stuff at the top but is not supported by critical processes in the middle
you don’t score). To be functional in maintenance in our audit you need
to score over 30 points out of 100.
Once you have a score of over 30 with each area of maintenance
function over 20 your maintenance department is “functional”. When
a maintenance department is function it has around 43 of the 190 pro-
cesses in place. This is the minimum you will need to sustain to avoid
“Chaos Fatigue” in the maintenance department. “Functional” is a per-
fect base line from which to build a continuous improvement plan to
move the department forward. With a maintenance department that
is functional there is time to complete the implementation of further
improvement processes.
What is Step One? | 61
Here is the important part – the major advantage we get from having
an audit that is mature is we are able to predict how a maintenance
department will fair without going through a controlled change pro-
cess. We are able to predict that a maintenance department that
scores under 20 on its total average score will not be able to recover
without intervention due to the pursuing chaos caused by this lack of
function. Here is the worrying bit – the average first gap analysis score
to date for all gap analysis exercises we have done is 11.2 out of 100!
This tells us that the majority of production facilities that we get to
do gap analysis in are stuck in this Chaos Fatigue cycle. This means
these maintenance departments will be turning over maintenance man-
agers and maintenance employees and they are not able to climb out
of the chaos. This is not because of a lack of competence; it is because
there is not enough function in the maintenance department to avoid
the inevitable chaos and the Chaos Fatigue cycle continues.
From this chapter – “you can manage what you measure” – by mea-
suring where you have started and building a plan, you can measure
progress on the evolutionary path.
“An objective without a plan is a dream”.
Douglas McGregor
Management professor at the
MIT Sloan School of Management

Basic Areas of Function
T
here will be a number of you who will read this chapter and
think that this is really simple and why would I even cover it.
However I want you to read this and ask yourself a question
“Can my maintenance department tick the box on everything in this
chapter”. The processes talked about in this chapter only form a small
part of the required processes to be “functional in maintenance”. But
these are the bits that trip up most maintenance departments when it
comes to the gap analysis.
Getting the structure right is the key to building the foundation of
your maintenance team. This is a case of deciding where you want to
be when the change process is complete and building a structure that
fits where you want to be. You then need to agree on a maintenance
structure with the change programme sponsor. One of the major prob-
lems with maintenance structures is they are set up around reactive
activities.
The corporate leaders perceive the need for “shift cover” as the
most important thing. Often arguing that “you don’t need people on
site when the plant is not running” This is like saying “you don’t need
to take you car to the garage for servicing – just change the sparkplugs
while the car is idling at the traffic lights. The structure needs to reflect
the proactive needs of maintenance.
63
So structure is critical, followed by the process of writing position

descriptions descriptions for all the roles and setting Key Performance
Indicators (KPI’s) for those roles. Why do we need to do this first?
Firstly this is just good business practice and secondly if you tell some-
one what you want them to do, and then tell them what you want them
to achieve while they are doing it, magically they just achieve.
I was a sceptic in my early days of position description and KPI’s,
I payed little more than lip service and only completed these to get the
HR department off my back. However I have since demonstrated the
value of both position descriptions and KPI’s. The main reason for my
disbelief in the value of these two documents was because no one had
explained their intent.
One of the things that plays an important part in avoiding Chaos
Fatigue is people knowing what they are responsible for at work. Here
is where the position description comes in. I often see position descrip-
tions used poorly with the worst - a list of tasks that the person in the
role is responsible for completing. The position description should be
what is describes in its name – a description of what the role is. This
should leave the position holder with no doubt as to why this position
exists in the organisation.
Now it is time to create the KPI’s for these roles. I have seen this
process go incredibly badly in so many companies. You absolutely
need to have them, but they need to be done correctly. So often
I see KPI’s that are one off tasks, I have seen KPI’s that are clearly
over and above the role the person has been given, and most often
I see KPI’s that are outside the control of the person being measured
by them.
If you do any of these things with KPI’s you will end up making your
people more embittered with the company, a demotivation instead of
the incentive they are intended to be. However used correctly they
are critical in focusing your people on the outcomes that the company
requires. KPI’s need to be the outcomes required from the role, as
Basic Areas of Function | 65
described in the position description, not something over and above

the role.
KPI’s also need to be things that the person in the role can directly
affect and there must be a fair way to measure it in graduations. I spent
a number of years perfecting KPI’s for all roles in maintenance, when
applied correctly are surprisingly effective in focusing the person in the
role on the required results.
Here are the basics that need to be in place:
These position descriptions need to include the following:
➢ Position title
➢ Who they report to
➢ What department they work in
➢ A brief description of the positions prime purpose
➢ The roles objectives including
❍ Operations responsibilities
❍ Financial responsibilities
❍ Workplace Health and Safety responsibilities
❍ Environmental responsibilities
➢ The number of reports both direct and indirect
➢ The spending approval limits for the role
➢ Required qualifications and experience
➢ Desired qualifications for this role
➢ A copy of the departments structure
Right people right roles

This is the key thing to moving forward. Every plant I go to the wrong
people are in the wrong roles, extreme detail people in supervisor roles,
good breakdown and reactive maintenance people in maintenance
planning roles. We use a process of psychometric profiling to ensure
that the correct person is being developed in the succession plan.
During recruitment we also assess the candidates for their suitability.
This can be as simple as looking at their psychometric profiles

using Belbin profiling, Myers-Briggs or my favourite: Enneagram. If you
are not familiar with these, have a chat with your Human Resources
Department. They will most likely use one of these or if not be able to
get you information on one of them.
Belbin is possibly the quickest to pick up and it works well in team
building later on. However it requires input from existing colleagues
for the recipient so this can be difficult for recruitment. I use and teach
Enneagram, as it is the most accurate for determining the right people,
however it is the hardest to learn.
Where new positions are created and existing employees are not
ready to step up to the challenge, recruitment guides need to be used
to assess the applicants and ensure that there is a level of consistency
between interviews. The recruitment guide must be able to assess
both the candidate’s competency and their behaviours to ensure that
the right person is appointed to the right role.
I know that building position descriptions and KPI,s and interview
guides sounds a bit hard. You will be questioning how this will save
maintenance cost but it must be done and it must be done first. If you
don’t make it clear to all your maintenance team what is expected of
them you will significantly limit your progress down the track.
If you have nothing to start with it is hard. I have the advantage
of having templates that have been developed over time to do this
quickly. So you can develop templates and use them to build Position
descriptions and KPI’s for every role. Your HR department should be
happy to help you with this.
Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s)

In more mature companies these will already be in place and should
be linked to an annual pay rise or bonuses. If this is the case you will
have a good possibility of really upsetting your staff if you get these
wrong. If your company does not have a process in place for rewarding
staff based on a measured system then you will not have the despon-
dency over money, however you still need to have KPI’s for your staff.
KPI’s are in place to tell your staff what you want them to achieve in
the next twelve months. They must be agreed with each staff member
and formally reviewed on a minimum of a quarterly basis. However we
have a process that reviews them more often and works to focus the
position holders on task completion while ensuring that all tasks they
undertake are in line with their KPI’s.
These KPI’s must be able to be accurately measured and reported
to all staff that are controlled by them. If you build KPI’s around some-
thing that is not tangible or measured and they have bonuses of pay
rises resting on it you will have very bitter staff when it comes to pay
out time assuming they don’t get what they perceive reflects the effort
they have put in.
Consequently these KPI’s must be carefully thought out and set up.
You do not want your incentive scheme becoming a disincentive to
your staff by generating mistrust and dissent.
Rule for setting KPI’s
➢ Ensure there is an accurate and reliable measure for each KPI’s

➢ Ensure that the staff member can effect change or has influence
in this area
➢ Agree with the employee on the deliverables
➢ Make sure that all the goals are achievable and that 100% is
possible
➢ Ensure that their direct reports share the same risk in the KPI’s
‘Cascading KPI’s’ is the buzz word when building these KPI’s how-
ever at the lower levels in the maintenance organisation I am a fan of
just softening and simplifying the deliverables with the people that
have less influence over the outcomes and bringing a focus onto the
ones that they can influence. It is important that they share the same
goals as their bosses but don’t make it too complicated.
If your frontline Tradesmen (hourly men) are union members and

are paid on a collective agreement then a system can be set up with
the union that incorporates an incentive system. If they are on individ-
ual contracts then the KPI’s should come down to them in the form of
individual KPI’s however at this level try incorporating individual goal
such as training completion in the KPI’s as this is something that they
can influence. Once again, make sure that the goals set are realistically
achievable.
I’m not trying to be negative over this however I have seen many
times where staff have been very disillusioned by bonus or pay rise
schemes based on KPI’s and I have been there myself. I can’t make this
clearer you need to get this perfect if money is involved. Lastly just
keep it simple.
Training, retention and succession planning

It is regularly said that it is getting harder to get Tradesmen (Crafts
and Millwrights) because the market for Tradesmen is growing faster
than we can train them. Tradesmen are certainly getting more expen-
sive however I believe that with the buoyant market for Tradesmen they
are moving jobs easier and more often than before. So if a tradesman is
unhappy in a role they have has only to put themselves into the market
and a new job, with another company, is certain.
What I am finding is that if you are paying the market rates Tradesmen
are easy to get, they are just difficult to retain. Therefore continuing
practices that will lead to burning out your maintenance staff must be
changed and processes that encourage maintenance staff to stick with
their job even in the stressful change periods are important.
To get really good at maintenance in your plant you need stability
both in the direction of the maintenance department and stability in
the maintenance workforce. Getting maintenance people to stay in
your company is not an issue of paying them more, if they are unhappy
they as will ultimately leave anyway. You need to ensure that they find
the job rewarding and that they can see a future with the company.
This is how we link training and succession planning with maintenance
staff retention.
In most commonwealth countries the existence of government run
apprenticeship programmes helps to identify those who are commit-
ted to the path of hands on maintenance work, however trade certi-
fication in trades such as fitting and turning, boilermaker, electricians,
etc. does not mean that they are instantly good maintenance people.
You must train your maintenance people regardless of their current
qualifications and experience. The training programmes provided take
technically competent tradesmen and give them a clear understanding
of the core business of maintenance.
Building a training plan personalised to each member of the mainte-
nance staff is the key to retention. This is not as hard as it sounds, just
build a training matrix on a spread sheet and put every training course
at the top and their names down the side grey out the training that has
not yet been approve for each individual. Include a column for succes-
sion planning, list the role that each individual aspires to and link their
training needs to their aspirations.
Processes and Procedures

The next step is processes and procedures, my company has tem-
plate procedures that support the introduction of clearly defined pro-
cesses to bring order to your maintenance department and allow them
to work professionally with the other teams within organisations. It is
most important that these procedures exist, because when there is a
failure that has been caused by a failure in the system we can look to
what part of the procedures were not followed and fix the problem.
The Communication Procedure

The first procedure is the “Communication Procedure”. It is import-
ant to understand why this is so important to have the procedure. In
every plant that I have worked I have asked the leaders of each depart-
ment what is the biggest problem in the company that they can see.
The answer is always the same “Communication”. Even in companies
that over communicate, communication is a problem. This is especially
a problem in maintenance.
If you need a job done by maintenance then you need to have a
system to follow. Sadly this is often where it falls over. When this is not
clearly defined, to get a job done you can - tap a maintenance person
on the shoulder - send anyone in maintenance an email - mention it in
passing in the lunch room - ring anyone in maintenance and ask them -
suggest it at a meeting where anyone from maintenance is present and
many other way that I can’t even think of right now.
In maintenance you have one opportunity to capture and progress
a request to complete work if you miss this opportunity then the con-
sequences will be blamed on maintenance, and rightly so as you were
asked to complete this work. So the question becomes; how do we
capture this work and ensure that it is not missed? The answer is you
must have a communication procedure.
The way to address this is to clearly define how work requests must
be communicated with maintenance. Keep in mind that there are only
two types of work in maintenance ‘Emergency Work’ and ‘Planned
Work’. This procedure needs to define firstly how to progress an emer-
gency work request. Ultimately you want this work going through a sin-
gle point of contact in maintenance so that a determination can be
made as to whether the requested work is an emergency and requires
an immediate response.
If the work requires an immediate response then the procedure
must determine how this will be progressed in the quickest and most
effective way to reduce the impact of down time. If the nature of the
request is not of an emergency nature then the person making the
request must enter a work request. I will assume that your company has
a robust Computerised Maintenance Management System (CMMS).
Should this not be the case a paper based request system can be func-
tional enough however a well-implemented CMMS is almost critical for
progressing your maintenance department.
So this procedure must have people ringing a number (I use a mobile
phone that a maintenance person carries). The maintenance person at
the end of the phone is the single point of contact and they are able
to get an immediate response to issues if the issue is of an emergency
nature.
If the CMMS is robust enough it is extremely important to have
the requestor create the emergency work order in the CMMS. The
requester must hand the emergency work order to the Tradesman
(Craft) when they arrive to speak to the requestor before attending
the breakdown. The advantage of this is a clear instruction has been
given to the Tradesman and the paper work is ready should parts need
to be charged to the job.
If the nature of the requested work is not an emergency then a work
request must be entered into the CMMS. The main reason for this is
from the CMMS any required work can be planned and then sched-
uled effectively. Because all CMMS’s assign a number to all requests
there is a verifiable system for following up and reporting the progress
on all requested work. The main important question for any complaints
concerning maintenance is “What is the maintenance request number”
from this number all work that has been entered can be reported on.
Workflow process procedure

Once the work requests are in the system there must be a pre-
scribed process to progress the work effectively. This procedure will
also determine the process for progressing the maintenance checks
generated from the CMMS along with the follow up work required
from these checks. This procedure will also need to capture the plan-
ning and scheduling process and determine how and when the weekly
scheduling meeting will take place.
It is also good to include in this procedure a flow chart showing every

step in the process as this will assist with understanding and make it
easier to explain during the training process. It is important to include
in the procedure the responsibilities of each role in the process. Ensure
that the procedure refers to the title of the role not the name of the
person in the role and ensure that the tasks required of each role are
in line with the requirements of the position description for the role.
Work priority procedure

Now you must determine how the priority for each job will be deter-
mined. If every job is of high priority then how do you know which one
to do first? This procedure is an important step in setting these prior-
ities and progressing work in the right order. For this procedure there
must be a Priority Matrix to assist with this process. This is not a prob-
lem however it is very desirable to have the same format for each area
in the business that requires the identifying of priorities.
In most businesses you will need a matrix for maintenance and work-
place health and safety. If a food processing company then one for
food safety is also required. If you are in the food industry there is a
good chance that there will already be one in the quality department
a part of the HACCP plan. It is very desirable to have these aligned as
far as the numbering system is concerned; it is also desirable not to
complicate it too much.
These three procedures are the minimum required to ensure that
there is a level of order in the maintenance department. These are suf-
ficient to allow traceability on the progress of individual maintenance
jobs. From here there are a number of procedures that are desirable
for instance; Contractor work order procedure, purchase order proce-
dure, overtime procedure, etc. however it is important that these three
are focused on first to establish the foundation of the processes and
systems for the maintenance department.
“To manage one must lead. To lead,
one must understand the work that he
and his people are responsible for”
W. Edwards Deming
 “Out of the Crisis” 1982

”Maintenance Planning” and

“Maintenance Scheduling”
T
he process of planning and scheduling within maintenance
is often the most misunderstood part of maintenance. This
misunderstanding begins from the phrase “Planning and
Scheduling”.
Planning and Scheduling are separate functions that require differ-
ent skill sets to perform well. We will explore the differences in detail
and outline the different skill sets required to be effective.
For planners to be effective, they require a technical background.
Typically we expect time served as a maintenance person to provide
the most effective planners. Scheduling does not require the same
depth of technical knowledge, but experience in supervision of techni-
cal teams and communication ability with non-technical staff will make
maintenance supervisors ideal for this role.
For any maintenance department to be efficient and effective, mas-
tering planning and scheduling is critical. Maintenance work that is
completed from well-planned and scheduled work is up to four times
more labour efficient than completing work reactively.
The processes of planning and scheduling are about ensuring that
trained and competent Tradesmen in maintenance are given a written
instruction, a box full of the parts that may be required, and for the
74
”Maintenance Planning” and “Maintenance Scheduling” | 75
equipment that is not running to be ready to isolate before the work

is begun.
Planning and scheduling in maintenance has parallels with planning
and scheduling in operations. So let’s consider what happens in opera-
tions within a manufacturing facility. There is some form of production
plan, the ingredients or components have been ordered in advance
and are delivered to the factory ready for production to commence.
There will be a supervisor who will know how many people are needed
to complete the production run.
If all these elements come together the production run can be com-
pleted on time, in full, and to specification. If these elements fail to
come together then production is a disaster and if this happens often
enough, the company will go bankrupt.
Maintenance planning and scheduling is similar in its application.
There is a maintenance planner doing the same role as the production
planner, however the bill of material for maintenance jobs is often com-
plex and unique for the specific tasks, requiring a very knowledgeable
person or at least a person who is comfortable diving into manuals on
a regular basis.
The scheduler, much like the production supervisor needs to match
the planned work to the available maintenance labour, ensuring that
he has cover for unplanned work that may arise and trusting that the
planner has planned sufficiently for the work to go smoothly.
Understanding Maintenance Planning
The easiest way to think about maintenance planning is to think of
the processes in planning as similar to quoting work if you were a con-
tractor, with the notable difference that we do not need to make a
profit from the work. This means building a list of required parts to
complete the job, estimating the required labour hours and the number
of maintenance people required.
From this maintenance plan a cost to complete the work will now be
available and in some cases where this is above the planners approval
there will be a process of approval to continue. This approval will often

come through a computer managed maintenance system when the
parts and special tools are requisitioned. The parts that are outside
the approval of the planner will go to the next person up for approval.
When planning maintenance work, the planner may choose to supply
some technical information to make the tasks easier (e.g., bearing clear-
ance tables, parts diagrams, installation procedures etc.), the intention
is to enable the maintenance people to ‘hit the ground running’. It is not
the planner’s job to instruct the maintenance people on the job nor to
supervise them doing the job.
Maintenance planning is:

● Generating a written instruction of what the tradesman is to
achieve.
● Supply of parts, components and consumables that might reason-
ably be expected to be needed.
● Supply of special tools that might reasonably be expected to be
needed.
● Identification of skill sets (trades disciplines) that might reason-
ably be expected to be needed.
● Labour (man-hours) for each trade that might reasonably be
expected to be needed.
● Scheduled plant downtime that might reasonably be expected to
be needed to complete the job.
Confirmation of spare parts arrival (where there is not a dedicated

stores person)
Maintenance Planning DOES NOT DO:
● Hazard analysis.
● Training.
● CMMS administration/database management.

● Clerical work.
● Supervision or Management.
● Scheduling.
Although elements of these may be present in the planning process,

this is not the intention of the role.
Understanding Maintenance Scheduling

Essentially, scheduling manifests itself as a meeting where stake-
holders (production planners, our partners from production, mainte-
nance planners, etc.) from different areas of the business agree on, and
commit resources to the planned and “ready for scheduling” mainte-
nance tasks to be completed in the upcoming defined period (typically
next week). These tasks are all from the planned & ready for scheduling
backlog.
In the scheduling meeting nothing can go onto the schedule unless
it is planned and ready for scheduling, and in many companies until
the parts are in a bag ready for the job to start. Poor reliability in parts
supply by schedule dates is a significant issue for maintenance depart-
ments. It is only when you have suppliers with proven ability to deliver
on time and in full more than 95% of the time that you can risk sched-
uling work where the parts are not on your shelves in bag ready to go.
Maintenance Scheduling is:
● A formal meeting between maintenance and production staff

and any other stakeholders.
● A method for production staff to understand and prioritise
maintenance effort.
● Negotiation with non-technical, production and management –
lobbying session to get your jobs on the schedule.
● Committing to provision of available labour resources.

● Committing to provision of plant availability from the produc-
tion schedulers.
● Resource levelling of available tradesmen labour with the list of
tasks.
Maintenance Scheduling is NOT:

● Technical review of the planned jobs.
● A venue to make new work requests.
● A time to debate reliability
● A root cause analysis session
● A meeting to cut costs
● An opportunity to blame each other for last week’s breakdowns.
Although we may mention many of these items as we justify priori-

ties while reaching a consensus it is important the scheduling meetings
stay on task. The required outcome of this meeting is a quality mainte-
nance schedule that available Tradesmen can attain.
The Weekly Scheduling Meeting

It is important that we understand why we need to build a sched-
ule. The schedule is about matching the work requirements against the
available labour and ensures that all work going onto the schedule has
been planned. This process is intended to allow the stakeholder to the
process to understand the reasons behind the priorities given to dif-
ferent work.
It is important that maintenance schedules are not built in isola-
tion by the maintenance department. There are limited resources
in maintenance from both labour and maintenance money to pur-
chase parts. Therefore the work that goes on the schedule must
deliver the maximum benefit to the company. The best way to
assess the priorities is to have all shareholders in the room while
the required work is selected to fill the available hours of the main-
tenance labour.
The departments that have clear priorities for the work they want
completed are more likely to get their work on the schedule when
they are attending the scheduling meeting It is vitally important
that the production, and other stakeholder representatives, attend
the meeting. If departmental stakeholders are absent, it is inevita-
ble that errors and omissions of important maintenance work will
be made.
Let’s understand why this level of participation is so critical. Let
me demonstrate a situation common in manufacturing and mining
companies.
The production manager at a production meeting asks a mainte-
nance manager “Why haven’t you done the job I requested on the con-
veyor belt” The standard answer that the maintenance manager needs
to ask is “What was the work request number”.
This is the individual number assigned to all work by a CMMS. In
recent years with CMMS’s going web based, maintenance managers
can have a laptop with them at these meetings and can look up the job
on the spot. From the CMMS the maintenance manager can relay the
status of the request. e.g. “That job is waiting on parts, the system says
that the parts are expected late next week”
This allows the maintenance manager to put facts around the ques-
tion, removing emotion and politics. Here is the one thing that sends a
strong message to production managers who choose not to attend the
scheduling (or who send someone junior to the meeting). The mainte-
nance manager looks up the job and says “The job is ready for sched-
uling – you just need to come to the meeting and get your job on the
schedule”.
Clearly when you are setting up a schedule preference, priority for
the work to be done goes to the managers who attend the meeting.
Let’s now work through how this complete process should work.
Before the scheduling meeting

A complete list of all the work that has been planned and is ready
for scheduling will be emailed to the stakeholder one or two days
before the scheduling meeting. In modern CMMS’s this can be auto-
mated, meaning the report automatically generates and emails itself
to the stakeholder in production. It is important that the stakeholders
prioritise the work from this list and are ready to present this at the
meeting.
Only work from the ‘planned and ready for scheduling’ list can go
onto the schedule. Any other work that is not planned or where the
parts have not arrived would be unattainable. There is no point in set-
ting yourself up for failure at the planning stage.
Maintenance schedule construction

The maintenance schedule is constructed from three types of work.
These are:
● Stakeholder requested and planned work

● Routine maintenance activities (such as regulative requirements
or reliability based scheduled maintenance checks)
● Critical reliability follow-up work from predictive or preventa-
tive maintenance inspections.
At the scheduling meeting the routine maintenance activities and the

critical reliability follow up work will already appear on the schedule and
the maintenance supervisor for the area will have a remaining labour
hours count to allow for tasks that are ready for scheduling. These are
the jobs that have been prioritised by the production stakeholders.
Schedule lock down

Following the scheduling meeting the schedule is ‘locked down’.
This means that the schedule is closed to any further changes or new
work. It is from here that variations to the schedule are measured.

Further work can be added to the schedule, however only if the work
is planned, and this is recorded as ‘Add-in’ work
Covered by procedures
The specifics of the planning and scheduling process need to be
covered by the communications and workflow process procedures for
your company.
Schedule attainment
This measure is the percentage of the planned and scheduled work
tasks that were agreed on the maintenance schedule and were com-
pleted on the day or days they were scheduled. The usual measure for
maintenance is attained hours against the schedule and is measured
weekly; be aware however this is difficult to measure accurately and is
easy to manipulate.
The Synergistic attainment measure measures task completion and
is measured daily. The average of the daily is taken and presented as
the attainment for the week. This measure is presented as a percent-
age out of the possible total of work orders. The target for attainment
is over 90% attainment, with resource levelling of maintenance labour
of over 80%.
The formula for this is simple:
# of completed work orders from the schedule

× 100 = % of attainment
# of work orders on the schedule
Risks to schedule attainment

It is crucial that all reasons for non-attainment are captured and
presented.
Examples of reasons for non-attainment could be:
● Planning
❍ This indicates that there was a problem with the mainte-
nance planning on this job, this could be the scaffolding was
on the wrong piece of equipment, or the parts ordered were
not correct.
● Scheduling
❍ This indicates a problem with the scheduling of the job. This
could often be the hours estimated for the job were not
enough or labour was not available to complete this work.
Perhaps someone called in sick.
● Production availability
❍ This would normally indicate the item of equipment that was
planned to be available to maintenance work was not avail-
able on the day it was scheduled to have maintenance work
carried out.
● Resources issues
❍ This would indicate the resources required to complete the
work were unavailable; this could be a specialist contractor
that did not turn up.
● Progressing
❍ This is where a job is started on the correct day but was
not completed on the day so it progressed into the next
day. This is shown as unattained, however it will show as an
add-in on the day it is completed.
● Too many breakdowns
❍ This is where unplanned work (breakdowns) consumed the
available labour and did not allow for the scheduled jobs to
get done.
● Parts
❍ This is where the parts supplied for the job were defective
or the supplier sent the wrong items.
Resource levelling
It is not always easy to resource level all the people in the mainte-
nance department. In many plants and on mine sites there are often
resources reserved for breakdown work and these are often excluded
from the schedule. However we believe you need to start by resource
levelling at least 80% of your available labour resources. It is easy to
summarise it like this:
● You build a schedule with estimated hours for each WO

● You resource level the work to your maintenance labour
resources
● You issue the schedule
● At the end of the week you measure attainment (which needs to
be above 90%)
Estimated labour hours

There is always a lot of discussion about the estimated labour hours.
Some jobs are easier than others to estimate and there may be several
ways to complete a job. What happens if something goes wrong during
the job? I have heard all the reasons why estimated labour hours are
a problem. But it has to be done if you are going to resource level a
schedule. Some jobs will go over and some will come under.
So why bother estimating, some will ask?
Here is why – you build a report that looks at variances in estimated
vs. actual hours booked (I’m a big fan of a top Ten list). Every week you
bring in the Tradesmen in the top three spots and ask the question
“We estimated this was a 6 hour job but it actually took 9 hours – why
was that?”
It is important to note that the training before this taught the
Tradesmen that “why” doesn’t mean, “You are useless and should be
sacked”. It just means “why”.
In the Australian mining industry we saw servicing on a certain model
of mining truck estimated at 12 man-hours, however history showed
it consistently took 18 man-hours to complete the work. This was

amended in the system, making resource levelling more accurate. The
Tradesmen will know that if they drag their feet they will have to answer
to it. They also know that if there is a big issue with the work there is a
forum to discuss it, giving them a voice.
My point – if you have the data, use it to improve.
My favourite answer to “why” was “I had like the worst hangover that
day!” Only in Australia!
It is critical at this point that managers don’t make mistake
number one
“Two hours? How did it take you two hours to do that?!”
That is not really a question, it is almost a statement. This type of
aggressive questioning is what causes “Chaos Fatigue” that will quickly
make adults act like 13 year olds - they push back at every new idea
and make excuses for failure before they fail. To be in a position to ask
the question you need to have rehabilitated Chaos Fatigue and have
gotten your Tradesmen back to high functioning humans.
So when you ask:
“We estimated this job would take 6 man hours and it took 9, why
was that?”
A high functioning human in a maintenance role would answer some-
thing like:
“We had two broken studs in the outer housing that we had to
extract”
This tells us that we don’t need to amend the estimated times on the
procedures for this job. However you will often get a situation where
the tradesman says:
“It really does take 9 hours to do that job” and you amend the esti-
mated time on the procedure.
A job time starts from when you pick up the WO to when you have
cleaned your tools and put them away - if the estimated time does not
allow for this the estimated time is wrong and needs to be changed.
It is important to note that we put all Tradesmen through a clear

training process that explains why the information is so important and
how the information will be used to make their life at work easier – we
are at pains to point out that by getting labour allocation correct their
job is made easier (along with correct work packs, adequate tools and
plant availability etc.)
If you dump these questions on Chaos Fatigued Tradesmen you will
get push back, however you only have Chaos Fatigue when the mainte-
nance department is not functional.
I have made this point a few times, you don’t have a functional main-
tenance department when you have a CMMS with everything loaded
into it - you have a functional maintenance department when you have
professionally mature Tradesmen who use that system and take pride
in their attainment to planned and scheduled work (and not their
breakdown conquests).
“If you can’t describe what you are doing as
a process, you don’t know what you’re doing”.
W. Edwards Deming

Leadership is Everything
M
ore than twenty years ago, I sat in my first management-train-
ing course. I had worked at sea as an officer for more than
ten years so I wasn’t new to leadership. I had been involved in
change management on vessels, taking unreliable vessels and building
systems and processes, utilizing the existing people to make the ves-
sels reliable again.
But this was my first shore based change management role. It was a
large fish processing company and the company was losing money. The
very first words that came out of the trainer’s mouth were ...
“Teamwork comes from positive relationships toward each other”
My out-loud response - “Nonsense” ... I had everyone’s attention!
I went on ... “Team work can only come from strong leadership and
clear direction – “Friendship” is what comes from positive relationships
toward each other” ... from there on it was an interesting two days, as
you can imagine.
Twenty years later I’m here to put some theory around these
comments.
Lack of “strong leadership and clear direction” leads to Chaos
Fatigue - this is adults acting like 13 year olds – what I call “low profes-
sional maturity” - what industry calls “militancy”
This is caused in part by pack mentality, where unhealthy packs form
around their perceived leader – if the appointed leader is not a strong
87
leader in this circumstance then the pack may pick the union delegate
or the even the physically strongest person in the pack.
If you fix this problem by showing strong leadership (“Strong
Leadership” is not “hitting them over the head” strong, but – “This way,
Follow me” strong) and giving the chaos-fatigued people clear direc-
tion. A core component of this is functional systems and processes –
that have been correctly and professionally implemented! This allows
every person to understand what their role is in the organisation and
how they are expected to deliver the required results.
When this is successfully completed – Teamwork starts from here.
I understand that in a perfect world everyone works in a clean office
and they go about their jobs, breaking for coffee together to chat
about their day. You could perceive that teamwork is driven by these
relationships,
At the coal face, however, the world is a different place – production
output is king – cost saving is at the top of the KPI’s and when things fail
there needs to be someone to blame. Pressure is on and the “blame
game” quickly gets out of control.
Only “strong leadership and clear direction” can build teamwork in
this environment.
In LEAN based environments - “Self managing teams” have grown in
fashion.
This is perceived to be a group of people tasked to work out what
they are going to do.
I call these leaderless teams.
Don’t get me wrong, they can work, but only after the team has clear
processes and systems they follow (set plays), and clear guidelines as
to the outcomes required.
These guidelines stem from “strong leadership and clear direction”!
In my career I have worked for two people for whom I had the utmost
respect as leaders. I had to reflect on what it was about them that made
them such good leaders. At first I thought is was just their experience
Leadership is Everything | 89
and technical competency; however there were other people with

equal experience and often better technical competence for whom
I did not share the same respect. What made these two different?
After some time it became apparent that these two people both
displayed the same traits.
● Firstly if you asked a question of them you were assured of an

absolutely honest answer. If for some reason they could not
answer the question they would tell you so, and why.
● Secondly they treated every person in the team equally in every
respect, addressing real issues of performance using validated
data or events.
● Thirdly they never ran the company down (in front of their staff).
In a worse case they could say, “I don’t necessarily agree with this,
however it is a requirement of the company and we will see that it is
completed professionally”.
From this and from 20 years of experience I conclude that a good
leader:
➢ Allows their people to be who they are

➢ Identifies the strengths of an individual and gets them to work to
their strengths
➢ Puts the right people into the right roles
➢ Is absolutely consistent with every direct report regardless of
whether they like the person or not.
➢ Is absolutely honest with their direct reports (as mentioned,
absolute honesty may mean telling the direct report that they
can not share some sensitive information with them).
➢ Addresses issues with individuals in private.
➢ Insists on objective criteria when addressing issues, not emotion
or rumour.
To run an effective maintenance department, they must act as a

team. We have established that “Teamwork comes from strong leader-
ship and clear direction”. Strong leadership is a term that I often have
to explain, as it is not the traditional ‘beat them around until they com-
ply’ but I believe, a clear process of establishing rules and procedures,
making your instructions clear, and clearly communicating the conse-
quences of non compliance.
Most of the consequences of intentional non-conformance will be
covered in the company’s disciplinary procedures along with (hope-
fully) the company ‘codes of conduct’ (the rules). So what is inten-
tional non-conformance? This is when an employee has been given a
clear instruction, but they choose not to comply, although it is clear
that they are competent, capable and responsible for carrying out the
instruction.
So what is clear direction? I can tell you what is not...
● It is not micro managing every decision in the department.

● It is not expecting your staff to comply as mindless automatons,
● It is not yelling at people to get things done
● And it is not stepping in to do the job when someone has a
failure.
So how do I believe that clear leadership can be given?

Have a change plan to move the department forward. Explain the
options and solutions to your staff, and include their ideas if you believe
that they will add value to the plan. Give credit to the people whose
ideas are used. Should you choose not to follow someone’s idea explain
why to them in private, but don’t argue with them over it.
Once the plan is set - move forward with it, use the plan to give
direction outlining the next outcome that is expected and planned
timeframes for that outcome. Display the measures showing the results,
good or bad. Give support to staff who are struggling to achieve and
Leadership is Everything | 91
those who are not keen to get on-board with any changes. Delegate
important, but achievable, tasks to your direct reports and ensure that
they get the resources required to achieve. Remember that your staff’s
successes are ultimately your successes.
Don’t insist on more commitment than is required. Some of your
direct reports and change targets will live and breathe the change,
adopting the jargon and driving for results, others may remain sceptical
and challenging. However all you really need is compliance. Any more
than that is a bonus.
What I am saying is, don’t get hung up on getting a total buy-in from
every last team member. My experience has demonstrated that after
twelve months of solid change using this programme there will emerge
very positive results. By this time you will have everyone on board.
Some of the hardened knockers and doubters will come on board.
Others will have left of their own accord, taking their misery and chaos
fatigue somewhere else!
Give and ask for feedback from staff regularly, don’t miss an oppor-
tunity to thank someone for some good achievements. Equally don’t
leave issues to get to breaking point. When you are not happy with
performance, address this as soon as possible, in private. Make sure
you listen to their side of the story and ensure there is an outcome of
the discussion with measurable deliverables.
In The Evolution of Maintenance™ programme we insist on pri-
vate weekly meetings with each of your direct reports (Maintenance
Managers, Site Services Managers and Stores Managers etc.). This
meeting is for them to present their task list and discuss their job prior-
ities. At this meeting you need to invite their feedback on the direction
you are taking.
And at the end of every meeting I ask bluntly “Are you Happy”. I have
found honest answers to this question very valuable. Often there are
little things that make your staff unhappy. You will not keep your valu-
able staff, regardless of how much you pay them, if they are unhappy.

The Five Types of Managers
I
speak to so many seasoned managers, with grey hair, who say “I don’t
know why I am in management it is such a frustrating job”. The years
of dealing with drama’s, and often the same dramas time and time
again, has shown on them.
I remember back when I was a group-engineering manager and I was
trying to convince a site services supervisor to take on a maintenance
management role. He was unusually intelligent and constantly identi-
fied the problems that were holding the maintenance department back.
However he continually refused to take on the maintenance manager’s
role. It was time for me to sit him down and understand the problem.
This was an interesting process that left me questioning myself more
than challenging him. His logic was simple, he presented his reasons in
almost a bullet point form, clearly the best way I would receive it. This
is what he presented to me:
“I have worked in the company for 7 years now and I like it here, con-
sidering you burn out maintenance managers every 18 months –
well I don’t want to leave in 18 months.”
“I get paid as much as the maintenance manager with the over-

time I do and I don’t have to take phone calls at nights and on
weekends”
92
The Five Types of Managers | 93
“I don’t get blamed for the budget overspend even though I am the
one overspending and I get to say mildly inappropriate things to
people without consequence.”
“ So as I see it - all you are offering me is a company car and a heart

attack at 45 – assuming I last more than 18 months in the role.”
When I stopped and thought about this – he had a point. This led me
to review why I was in a management role? Why did I want to take on all
the responsibility, stress and politics? My conclusion was very simple –
I just wanted to make a difference.
When I was a supervisor I saw managers in the role and believed that
I could do a better job of fixing the issues that affected me. When I got
into management I found that the role was significantly more complex
than I had realised.
This meant only one thing – if I was to remain in a management role,
I had to deliver results, or simply it was not worth doing it.
When you are young and new to management it is all very simple
there are two types of managers:
1. The young ones with all the new ideas and enthusiasm,
and:
2. The dinosaurs that get in your way and make disparaging remarks
when some of your great ideas don’t quite work out.
It is funny how a couple of decades can change your thoughts on

this!
I have been in change management for more than seventeen years
now. In this role I get to deal with managers, senior managers and exec-
utives in companies all around the world. Now I see a different pattern
to how people in management roles and executive roles work. It is not
that complex but I believe it to be more balanced than the two-man-
ager perception from twenty years ago.
This is presented a bit “tongue in cheek” so some of you with need

to choose to not be offended. I ask you to take this in the vane in which
it is presented.
I believe there are 5 different behaviours that drive the actions of
people in management positions. These can clearly change over time
and when people are in different working environments. However
being aware of this will allow you to identify who you currently are, and
what you really want to be as a manager.
1. The Terminally Complacent

These are managers who will not make decisions until the situation is
clearly terminal. I believe this is often a defense mechanism to compa-
nies where you are “only as good as your last decision”. You will also see
this in companies where any action or change requires a super human
level of required consultation, conciliation, and collaboration that it is
just too hard.
I often see these managers wait until they see enough urgency to
act on an issue – often stating, “Under the circumstances I was forced
to make the decision to … (Insert appropriate looming disaster here)”.
This is the ultimate form of management reactivity and sets up a really
frustrating environment for the people working below them.
You will often see talented individuals under this sort of manage-
ment move on through share frustration and exhaustion from react-
ing to things just a little too late. Terminally Complacent managers
can hang on to their positions for years, always having an excuse
for the poor company performance, the droughts, the fires, the eco-
nomic downturn…. (Insert another somewhat appropriate excuse
here).
2. The Industrial Psychopath

You are in a company and it is clearly time for change, perhaps the
company, or your branch of it, is not delivering against expectations.
This is the realm of the Industrial Psychopath. “It is time to kick this
company into shape”.
Under this persons management you just know that when you
enter their office you are already in trouble for not completing the
tasks that they are about to give you. Unless you have taken the
initiative and completed something that needed to be done and you
will get “I didn’t tell you to do that – why can’t you just do what I tell
you to do!”
This is industry’s answer to change management. If a person is
a habitual “terminal complacent” at work they will get to meet an
Industrial Psychopath a number of time throughout their career! You
hear statements like “if you can’t get this done – I will have to find some-
one who can”.
Normally after eighteen months of cost slashing, people sacking and
staff barraging’s there will be some sort of financial gain. You will hear
“My work here is done” and the Industrial Psychopath heads off to kick
another company into shape!
Once again you will see the companies talented individuals leave,
the remaining people who were possibly chaos fatigued to start with
are left practically catatonic following the departure of the Industrial
Psychopath. With this the productivity gains made using the shock tac-
tics wash away and the performance falls back to just below that previ-
ous norm of mediocrity.
Years ago I was employed by a large food company to step their main-
tenance department through a rehabilitation process when I was told
that one of the maintenance leaders was in his office crying – clearly he
was having a nervous breakdown. He was a twenty-year veteran with
the company.
In subsequent discussions he recounted, in detail, the mauling’s
he had received from no less than four previous “change managers” –
Industrial Psychopaths. Assuming I would do the same he proceeded to
tell me he did not have the energy to go through it again.
3. The Enthusiastic Superhero

You see this manager most often when they have come from a site
role into their first central group role. These people are going to change
to world single-handed. You will see these people flying around end-
lessly (with their undies on the outside) promising everything to every-
one until they burn out and leave.
Normally they achieve very little in the way of sustainable results. This
process normally takes around eighteen months and the Enthusiastic
Superhero has gone leaving the remaining staff bewildered and with a
lack of direction.
The major factor for the Enthusiastic Superhero is their unwilling-
ness to allow anyone to help them, you will hear them say, “You don’t
need to do that - that is my job” and in the next breath “I am just too
busy to do everything!”
These people fall further and further behind against their plan
until chaos fatigue gets them and they move on to the next role.
Hopefully having learnt a little from what they see as a turbulent and
busy role.
A maintenance supervisor once explained it to me like this: “These
guys are like leaves in a river and we are the bridge – the leaves flow
under the bridge and always just wash away - sometimes there will be a
storm and lots of leaves will come under the bridge, but most often the
bridge will remain and the leaves will be gone”.
Sadly when it comes to the Enthusiastic Superhero he was right!
Sadly this was his reason for not taking on change “I only have to wait
them out”.
4. The Sexual Predator

All joking aside – this one should have died out in the seventies!
These are managers who habitually pray on their staff. Although I have
seen this with both genders I have to admit it is slued significantly

toward men.
I have to admire New Zealand companies that have virtually stamped
this behaviour out, many of them refusing to even have married cou-
ples working for the same company.
I believe that it is not often tolerated in the UK and in US companies,
however I have seen this too many times in Australian companies. We
have even seen issues of this played out in the media. I’m not suggest-
ing it is rampant, however in my opinion it is tolerated more than it
should be.
Ultimately this leads to managers that have little respect from the
staff that know about them, and their behaviour. This does cause trauma
for unsuspecting victims and always ends in tears. Overall though it
feeds the insatiable rumour mill and seems to deliver drama to the
workers that is better than they see on television!?!
5. The Experienced Competent

These people stand out for a number of reasons. They do something
that most managers have not yet mastered - they listen. They interrupt
only to clarify a point that you are trying to make. They take notes and
when you have finished that tell you what they have understood. From
here this manager will consider what you have said and come back to
you with an answer. The answer will be “Yes” or “No, because….“ Giving
the reason why it is “No”.
The Experienced Competent identify the skills of the people work-
ing for them, they ask them to commit to date for the completion of
tasks they are capable of completing. These will be tasks that are
required to move the business forward.
They follow up on the commitments to see that their people have
completed them. These managers always ask why instead of making
statements. You will hear these managers asking, “so when will you
have this done by?”.
These managers are often experienced and often (but not always)
have evolved from being enthusiastic superheros or industrial psycho-
path’s. They have learnt that life at work is easier if they get people to
complete tasks for them, travel for them and deliver result for them.
The problem with this type of manager is they often get promoted
quickly and to a level where their skills have to work too far down in the
organisation that they struggle to enact the results on the ground floor
of an organisation. Between them and the results are layers of termi-
nally complacent manager and enthusiastic superhero managers most
of whom are looking busy with few delivering actual results.
Conclusion
I believe that if we are all very honest with ourselves we will see that
we all started our management career as one of the first four areas
above. If I am honest I am a recovering Industrial Psychopath and con-
tinue to fight the urge to act like one. The drive we should all have to be
a better person should align with a drive to be a better manager.
I do believe that the first four manager types are driven by ego. It
is this ego that limits a manager’s ability to continue on the journey
into senior or executive management in larger organisations. These
days I have the opportunity to work with executive and manager from
a broad range of companies and from this I have noticed something
about the really successful ones.
Firstly lets define “successful” by this I mean executives that deliver
sustainable bottom line results for their company. Successful doesn’t
mean you now have a great new job title and a flash new European car.
Senior managers and executives are like performance athletes; the
ones who deliver results get the best teams and the big money. The key
to this is bottom line results!
The successful executives and senior manager who get results do
something that the rest of us don’t. They listen, and I mean really listen
– they follow up with questions, often the hard questions. Because

these people have listened they are able to understand more.
These people give a date by which they will have a decision and
deliver a decision on that date. These people always respond to emails
and if they are not able to answer their phone they will respond to
every phone message.
These managers are comfortable talking with people at all levels of
the organisation, but more importantly the people they talk with say
that they felt valued – because this person listened to them.
The real difference is that these executives are over their egos,
driven by a need to make a difference using the people around them
in a sustainable way, a way that delivers balance, a way that delivers
results.
There are of course businesses that are driven hard by people that
live for their ego and fail to respect the people that they require results
from. These businesses deliver profits – in varying amounts and in rip
sawing cycles. These companies have high turnover of their senior man-
agers and executives and they are not pleasant companies to work for.
As I see it you have a choice – be driven by ego and follow a path
that will limit your satisfaction for work – make you attractive to the
ego driven companies and continually burn you out. Your other option
is to stop and listen – really listen and make good decision, follow up
on everything – remember you can delegate. Doing this could be a first
step into a satisfying executive future. The choice is yours. I am sure
that there will be more to being a sensational executive however in the
real management performers what I have described really stands out.
“The best executive is the one who has
sense enough to pick good men to do
what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep
from meddling with them while they do it”.
Theodore Roosevelt
President of the United States 1901–1909

Organisational Management
Explained
O
utside of “The Evolution of Maintenance™” programme, I have
identified another problem in organisations ... a lack of organ-
isational management. This is yet another factor that leads to
Chaos fatigue. Let me explain:
We all refer to the companies we work for as organisations. So I want
you to ask yourself “If I work for an organization, is it organized?” If your
answer is No, then you need to keep reading. The most common cause
of organisational failure is simple - they are not organized.
Simply put, let’s say you and I were going to start our own football
team. We go and pick the best players we can afford and we put them
on the field on match day. “OK - go and play football” we say. What is
going to happen?
These talented players run around yelling to each other, wearing
themselves out but just not connecting any of the plays together.
They will be sending the ball to open space and getting more and
more aggravated with each other. Does this sound familiar in a work-
place setting?
If we simply teach them set plays and make them practice, their
game will dramatically improve. With set plays we standardise the lan-
guage, using terms only our team knows. We help them learn about
101
the strengths of other team members. Every player is different and has
areas of strength and weakness. We need to have them utilising each
other’s strengths, and covering for weaknesses.
Now we have a team with a chance of winning a championship!
Let’s look at business organisations. We take a collection of talented
managers and put them in an office building. They may not actually run
around yelling at each other, but are they really a team? Do they have
a common language? Do they know their personal strengths and cover
for each other’s weaknesses?
Let’s say we give these managers a simple communication process
that allows them to capture every task. Now we show them how to
prioritise these tasks so they can deliver on time every time. We show
all these managers how to set up a filing cabinet the same way so they
can keep their desks clear and find files in the filing cabinets. This also
makes succession easier with the new person inheriting the operational
filing cabinet.
Here is the big one ... Imagine if there was a process that allowed
managers to look at each other’s core strengths three dimensionally.
Well there is, it is not the same as the two dimensional, fluffy processes
of the past. Please read on...
These managers could use this process to understand their employ-
ees, allowing the employees to work to their strengths too. Now we can
establish set plays for dealing with these employees.
Does this sound too good to be true? It’s not, we call it “Organisational
Management” and it is the secret to sustainable performance improve-
ment, one of the major fixes for Chaos Fatigue and the only way to
ensure employee retention. Together we built our hypothetical com-
petitive sports team. Now we can build a competitive and sustainable
organisation.
So let’s look at the three parts of our success triangle and under-
stand why each part is important, and how the three parts are needed
to sustain success.
Organisational Management Explained | 103
These areas are:

➢ Communication
➢ Leadership
➢ Systems and processes
My experience has shown that attention to any one of the three parts
will show some level of result in a business, however often not a sus-
tainable result that puts money on a company’s bottom line. Attention
to all three parts gets quick and sustainable results every time.
Communication
Communication is about an individual being able to receive infor-
mation and process it appropriately by storing it, prioritising it, and
actioning tasks. There are good training companies that deal with com-
munication in isolation; however this needs to be implemented in syn-
ergy with the other two areas to get sustainable results.
Leadership
Leadership is the key ingredient in any successful organisation; how-
ever there are significant gaps in the ability of our managers to lead
other people successfully. Addressing these gaps by training people
in leadership roles brings specific changes in the way leaders talk in
troublesome situations. Some simple tools help identify what action
is appropriate when subordinates are apparently noncompliant; and
implementation of these simple processes brings dramatic change in
company culture and productivity.
There are many companies delivering training in management at

varying levels of effectiveness, however once again this training is in
isolation and not designed to work in synergy with other training in
parts such as communication as shown in the diagram above.
I have specifically designed a process to close the gaps in leadership
that compromise effectiveness of leaders, while not compromising who
the people are. This training is based around mainstream teachings of
contemporary business thinkers, and it is in the application of these
leadership learning’s that results in growing people in leadership roles
into fair and consistent leaders whom people want to work with.
Process and procedure

There are many consulting companies that focus their effort in this
area with varying results. It is critically important for every company to
have procedures that accurately reflect the required tasks for people
within the company covering areas of safety, quality, operations, work-
flow, etc. There is little point in having world-class procedures if the
people in the leadership roles are unable to ensure that the people
they lead comply with these procedures.
The important thing to note is that The Evolution of Maintenance™
implements these processes and procedures. However without the
ability to communicate effectively and without the strong leadership
to follow up on required tasks, even this change process will fail to get
sustainable results.

Stayner’s Pack Mentality
H
umans are pack animals, and as such, humans form packs as a
natural process. The pack defines where each human fits within
their pack. The more unhealthy the pack, the more they com-
pete. This competition happens both within the pack and between
packs.
In every pack there is a human at the top and a human at the bottom.
The more unhealthy the pack the more evident this is. Naturally no one
wants to be at the bottom. There will be pressure on the pack to iden-
tify the person at the bottom and to ensure that this human remains in
this position as a scapegoat.
All humans in an unhealthy pack realise that if the person at the
bottom leaves then there is a likelihood they could find themselves in
this position. Consequently an unhealthy pack will work hard to ensure
that the human at the bottom is clearly identified and repressed – until
they inevitably leave. In an unhealthy pack you often hear people in
leadership roles saying “If we could only get rid of Colin we would be
able to function better as a team”. Often significant effort is put into
removing Colin and the pack then selects another person to replace
Colin as scapegoat.
In an unhealthy pack the treatment of the person at the top com-
pared to the person at the bottom is vastly different. The top of the
pack may not necessarily be the best performer, but may possibly be
105
the human who has forged the strongest relationship with the super-
visor. The human at the top of an unhealthy pack has every interest
in ensuring that they stay there. When the person at the top leaves,
someone will always step up and take this position.
You will often hear a production leader or manager say “If Jim leaves
we will be in trouble, as he is our best worker”. However when Jim
leaves, supervisors are often surprised that in a short time another
member as valuable or more valuable than Jim emerges!
One major mistake supervisors and managers make is getting drawn
into this unhealthy pack mentality. When this happens the supervisor
may join with the pack to vilify and repress an individual until they
leave. When supervisors do this they will find themselves driven by the
pack to repeat a cycle of repression of the perceived weakest human.
This is where chaos fatigue and the resulting low professional matu-
rity come into play; the pack descends into petty bickering and backbit-
ing. You will see adults act like immature thirteen year olds; “Workplace
bullying” is one term used to describe the problem.
This is tipping point where today’s “HR Culture” demands that com-
panies advertise for an HR professional to come in and “fix the bullying”.
Here is where the “360deg evaluations” start, posters go on the
wall and selected people get sent to bullying and harassment classes.
People may modify their behaviour in fear of discipline, but the root
cause has not been addressed.
This may sound like blasphemy in today’s over-bureaucratised, polit-
ically correct world, but I’ll trumpet it loud and clear –
“Teamwork comes from strong

leadership and clear communication”
The solution starts in a very different place.

An experienced supervisor can influence the pack. If a supervi-
sor is fair, consistent with all their employees, and makes a point of
Stayner’s Pack Mentality | 107
developing or offering a hand up to the person at the bottom of the

pack, this sends a number of very positive messages to the rest of the
pack. Further to this, the pack’s work output will rise above that of the
weakest human. Improve the performance of the human at the bottom
and the bar is raised for the whole pack.
The supervisor gives public praise to the person (in some cultures
it is important that you don’t praise the person – praise the work –
this is in cultures where “tall poppy syndrome” is an issue) with the
best results, and gives support (in a private setting) to the person at
the bottom. Under this regime, individuals will strive to increase their
personal results.
Where this is applied effectively it is often hard to tell who is at the
bottom of the pack. Further to this, individuals will start to work as a
team to improve each individual’s results. All team members will work
to achieve the recognition of the leader of the pack. Because this is
based in genuine achievement who is perceived to be at the top can
change from day to day.
Regardless of the level of health of a pack they seem compelled
to compete at some level. Let’s take two packs of shift workers.
If one of these packs is unhealthy then this pack will have all the
problems within, as discussed earlier. Further to this they will see
the need to blame the other shift for everything they perceive
going wrong.
I’ve experienced “worst case packs” where an outgoing shift will
change the settings of production machines at the end of their shift
to degrade results for the incoming pack. This can start a cycle where
at the start of each shift there is an hour of lost production while the
correct settings are found again.
In a pack that has good leadership and accurate measures to work
to, the supervisor can focus a pack on positive results. This can be done
while still using inter-pack competition to focus the pack on working as
a team to achieve greater results.
With two healthy packs, competition can be an issue of pride, with

both packs striving to achieve a team’s “best results” while working col-
lectively to get an overall improved result for the company.
If nothing else, take away from this Chapter...
Your new Platinum Rule! Praise should be public.

Criticism or debate must always be private!
Never, ever criticise in public or that person goes straight to the
bottom of the pack.

The Need for Change
D
o you need to change? The first step to take in making change
is identifying the need for change. The second step to mak-
ing change is understanding what results you want from the
change. The third step is building a plan that will get the results. The
fourth step of this process is reviewing the change you have made to
measure if you have achieved the result and where further change
is required.
I have been regularly heard to say that there is never a point when
you can stop changing. The Japanese term Kaizen I believe loosely
means “continuous improvement.” Therefore I believe that the first step
is a given: there is always a need for change.
This makes the second step very important, as you do not want to
be making change for the sake of making change. By first understanding
the result you want you can then prioritise the changes you want to
make based on the value they add to the company.
The next step is the planning stage. This is very important:
Years ago I was sitting next to a well respected maintenance con-
sultant at a large maintenance conference, we were listening to a
speaker who was talking about the change plan that they had rolled
out in his plant. The plan was very detailed and successful along with
all deliverables.
109
My esteemed colleague leaned across and said, “It is amazing how

many plans are written in hindsight”. Fair comment, I thought!
You are building a plan to measure your successes and challenges. It
is from this plan that you will get your learning’s.
So by reviewing your successes and challenges you can identify fur-
ther need for change and measure the results from the change. If you
do not achieve the result that you expected from the change then iden-
tify the reasons and go through the process again.
Ensuring that the changes stick is very important. These changes
need to be locked down by the use of written procedures, ongoing
training and training refresher courses (certainly for the new guys).
I understand how hard and time consuming this is, however with-
out this you will need to repeat the change process every three to
four years.
Recently I had an argument with a Production Manager regard-
ing operational training for some of his staff. We were experiencing
major reliability issues with equipment in his area - issues for which
Maintenance was automatically blamed.
The Production Manager was adamant that his employees were
trained and it was a maintenance issue. A review of the training
undertaken in this area showed that there was a comprehensive train-
ing programme undertaken by the machinery supplier and all the staff
operating these machines were signed off at the time of the train-
ing. But ... the training had been undertaken nearly three years pre-
vious. And now all these staff had left or been promoted into other
departments.
Clearly he had identified the need to undertake training, he knew
that the result of good training was less operator related machin-
ery failures, so a training plan was built and implemented. However
no processes were put in place to lock down the successes of the
training in the long term. This means that you will continually repeat
The Need for Change | 111
the same issues and suffer the same issue over time if this is not
addressed.
Now I want you to imagine having a process where all the chal-
lenges have been identifies and all of the processes and procedures
have been refined around successes of the past. This would mean that
a company doesn’t need to start from scratch and learn this all over
again. The Evolution of Maintenance™ is exactly that – step two to four
of this process. This means that a company needs to realise step one –
“identify the need for change”.
“It is not necessary to change.
Survival is not mandatory”.
W. Edwards Deming

The Maintenance Problem

Everyone Misses
L
et’s not forget the reason that maintenance improvement pro-
grammes are instigated. Firstly the cost of maintenance is often
in the top three major costs for the manufacture or production of
goods. For senior management to see a reduction in this cost it will be
quickly represented on the bottom line of the company. Secondly if a
maintenance department is stuck in a breakdown mentality the cost of
downtime is added to this.
For the maintenance manager stuck in a breakdown mentality, the
only foreseeable way out is to employ more maintenance personal to
fix the breakdowns faster, thus increasing the cost of maintenance.
For senior management it is often easier to just slash the maintenance
budget and tell the maintenance manager to just make do with the
money he has.
Now maintenance costs come down but downtime goes up, worse
than this is maintenance around the site gets deferred in favour of
reacting to breakdowns. The deferred maintenance is work such as;
building painting, plant room maintenance and maintenance in areas
that are often unseen.
However the maintenance budget slashing shows instant results on
the plants bottom line. This type of cost reduction often makes site
113
managers famous but the cost reduction from deferring maintenance

can only last a maximum of three years as the lack of real mainte-
nance in the unseen areas of the plant will inevitably start to have a
profound effect on plant reliability. From here the maintenance cost
has to increase in an attempt to reduce the plant downtime, a mainte-
nance manager will be vilified for overspending his budget and so the
cycle repeats.
Then one day along comes a consultant reminiscent of an evange-
list preaching the benefits of an amazing fad that has seen stunning
successes overseas. If the sales job is successful the company chooses
to sign up and go through this amazing programme that will halve its
maintenance budget as well as reduce its downtime to next to nothing.
Two years down the track, after extensive spending (on the consul-
tants and the requirements of the programme) the consultant claims
to have made gains quoting audit results and staff buy in to the pro-
gramme. With the lack of tangible financial gains and mounting cost
the senior managers withdraw the funding for the programme and
declare it a waste of time and money. Subsequently the company
goes back to maintenance cost cuts and the three-year cycles start
all over again.
This is a bit harsh on the consultant, as another two years of com-
mitment to the programme will see some tangible benefits for the com-
pany. With company executive tenures averaging less than three years
in most companies it seems difficult to get a commitment that extends
for this amount of time. This does strengthen the argument for strate-
gic planning that includes this level of performance improvement pro-
gramme. I have found this to be rare.
I worked in a large company that had seen three lean based pro-
grammes fail in this fashion in the previous fifteen years. All these pro-
grammes had failed for the same reason each time defaulting back to
the same maintenance slashing mentality with the subsequent three-
year cycles.
The Maintenance Problem Everyone Misses | 115
These programmes failed for a number of reasons. However it would

seem that the one key deliverable must be met for any programme
to succeed. This is measurable financial gain in both maintenance cost
and downtime reduction within the first eighteen months. For this to
occur, the change process must be both swift and focused. This leaves
no time for lengthy consultative processes with staff to get buy in to
the programme and requires that the change process be structured to
achieve these results early.
I have been constantly surprised to see large consulting firms sell-
ing the success of their programmes where the success has been
in third world countries. These less developed countries have their
challenges however they are very different challenges to those of
developed countries. It would seem that along with the development
of living standard comes a reluctance to change, and this sees the
growth of strong workers unions with which one can easily entrench
the status quo.
Here is the major disadvantage of the first world when it comes to
change in maintenance behaviours. We train people to be maintenance
professional; this is fantastic. In the commonwealth countries the exis-
tence of government run apprenticeship programmes helps to identify
those who are committed to the path of hands on maintenance work,
however trade certification in trades such as fitting and turning, boil-
ermaker, electricians, etc. All these trades teach people how to make
things, very few teach tradesmen how to maintain things.
Clearly this does not mean that they are instantly good maintenance
people. You must train your maintenance people – to do maintenance -
regardless of their current qualifications and experience.
In plant maintenance roles we see two trades predominantly: ‘Fitter
and Turner’ and ‘Boilermaker’. Absent is a maintenance trade, so why
would this be a problem? These trades both have the same focus, in
crude terms making stuff and fitting it. These trades do not focus on
maintaining existing equipment.
You can totally discount training in decision making on plant reliabil-

ity. For Fitters, once their trade is complete there are options to pursue
diplomas in maintenance management, however for those dedicated
to the core business of maintenance (the “hands on” bit) there are few
options for further development
I was recently talking with a young tradesman who like many others
had moved from New Zealand to South East Queensland in Australia.
He has a new trade called ‘Fabricator – Heavy Construction’ and works
in a large fabrication workshop fabricating large steel components for
bridges and buildings.
His Australian counterpart’s trades are called ‘Boilermaker ‘and
‘Blacksmith’. Interestingly no one in the workshop has ever built a boiler
and none of them had shoed a horse! Now if we consider the trades
that we use for maintenance in the commonwealth countries we see a
similar picture. We use Fitter and Turners, or boilermakers to maintain
plants we find they are all trained to make things not maintain things.
We now take these tradesmen and we condition them over many
years that they are there to fix breakdowns. This conditioning is very
powerful, the problem with this is when under pressure these people
want to default back to responding to breakdowns. So we introduce a
new thing – a CMMS. This will make everything better and have these
tradesmen working proactively?
Truth is it won’t, this process of conditioning needs to be corrected
and these people need to receive training in what maintenance is
meant to be, in a way that allows them to understand how they fit into
this new process. This takes time and a process that has been tried
and tested. However if it is your intention to have a 100% buy in from
maintenance people before a programme of change is started – you are
going to be waiting a while.
This process of conditioning needs to take place throughout the
change process. Many tradesmen will need to see the change demon-
strated before they will fully buy in to the change. It is at the point where
The Maintenance Problem Everyone Misses | 117
the benefits to the tradesmen are evident that the real engagement
begins. My experience is it takes time. However some people are quick
to take on change the hardened person in maintenance – and there is
always one - I always have this one person on board at 12 months.
It is of no doubt that the success of any maintenance programme
is to be to the benefit of both worker and the company; however
the process of convincing the entrenched maintenance people of this
is often a time consuming process of talk-fests showing little mea-
surable progress that would show on the senior management radar.
Don’t get me wrong buy-in to a programme is beneficial and ideo-
logically correct however you will get buy-in to this The Evolution of
Maintenance™ before the end of twelve month by your maintenance
people, while still appeasing the needs of senior management with
bottom line results.
Training is important, however I have always stressed that is no sub-
stitute for experience. This is why your existing maintenance people
are often well worth the effort. So don’t get to hung up on academic
qualification your maintenance people need to be both capable and
able, more doers than hard-core thinkers. Some of the best mainte-
nance people I have employed were academic underachievers how-
ever in their field on maintenance and engineering, an area they are
clearly interested in, they excel.
Sir Winston Churchill a clear academic underachiever was told by
his by his school master “Winston Churchill you will never amount to
anything”. He went on to win The Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953. In
the commonwealth countries he was recognised as the “Man of the
century” for his achievements during the Second World War. You need
people who can achieve and deliver.
I am amused to see some consulting companies persisting in rebadg-
ing highly successful Japanese programmes for implementation in the
developed western countries. (These being TPS, TQM, TPM, etc.) There
is no doubt that these programmes have been stunningly successful in
promoting Japanese companies to industrial leaders, but we seem to

overlook the obvious cultural differences.
If you are to generalise you could conclude that Japanese are cul-
turally more commercially focused, and willing to commit themselves
to the betterment of the company. Whereas countries such as the US,
Australia, the UK and New Zealand have a proud history of workers ris-
ing up to see the financial interests of the worker met at the determent
of the company.
Rather than propose that a system is required to change the cul-
ture of these developed countries. I am adamant that any change
programme needs to be developed to fit with the differing cultural
requirements of the workers that have been brought up in this very
different western environment.
It is a fact that out of all the companies that attempt to get to world
class in maintenance, only 3% succeed. Remember this is only from the
company’s that attempt to get there. This would lead you to question
the reasons why and also consider the amount of lost potential in the
remaining companies that do not even attempt to make change.
The Evolution of Maintenance™ is designed to be successful by cor-
recting the conditioning of the people in these organisations. It has also
gained success in companies that have seen rapid growth to the point
that the rapid growth has caused significant reliability and professional
maturity issues. This programme has also found success in militant
unionised environments where the thought of change is discounted
until it is finally a necessity for the company to survive.

Corporate Maintenance Strategy
W
hen there is a multi site company there will be sites that
have what the company considers acceptable performance,
some that underperform and almost always there is the
“worst performing site”. Any site suffering from Chaos Fatigue will be
turning over maintenance managers and not realising the potential of
its profitability. Now consider a company with 6 sites, all with mainte-
nance managers at the different sites doing their own thing in mainte-
nance. These maintenance managers left to their own devices will all
deliver different results.
If a sub-functional site is turning over maintenance managers and
is caught in the Chaos Fatigue cycle there is often no way out without
implementing a corporate strategy on how maintenance is performed.
This strategy will need to start with standards for how maintenance
processes are run on all sites. There needs to be a way to measure the
progress of the development of maintenance on the individual sites.
This process needs to be able to be validated and must be representa-
tive of the real position of maintenance on each site
I often see problems, in many large companies with corporate based
group maintenance managers that are commissioned with standard-
ising maintenance across multiple sites. In a concerning number of
cases the strategy is too high a level or too complicated for the site
based maintenance managers to implement. In the other extreme the
119
corporate maintenance manager fly’s around the different site telling

people what to do without a clear plan or support for the site based
maintenance managers. Companies can add insult to injury by instigat-
ing a “pair review” process where site maintenance managers get to go
to other sites and criticise what they are doing.
A maintenance manager in a sub-functional maintenance depart-
ment is not going to have time to do anything other than firefight within
the pursuing chaos. The perceived criticism and opinions from the site
maintenance mangers pairs will add to his dissatisfaction with the com-
pany. The corporate maintenance strategy now effectively adds to the
workload and the level of Chaos Fatigue of the site maintenance man-
ager accelerating the path to burn out.
This is where having a standardised approach that implements pro-
cesses in the correct order so that sites can be rehabilitated one at a
time. Further to this is the need to support the maintenance managers
with experienced change practitioners. Failure to do this will see a cor-
porate maintenance strategy adding to the Chaos Fatigue suffered by
the site maintenance managers on the varying sites. Consequently a
poorly implemented or incorrectly resourced corporate maintenance
strategy can in fact make the situation worse not better.
“However beautiful the strategy, you
should occasionally look at the results”.
Winston Churchill

Continuous Improvement
Programmes
P
rocess reliability is where the big gains can be made in most plants.
Once a plants maintenance department is functional the plant
reliability will be stable, this allows for small changes to be made
in a number of production areas. I have argued for years that attempt-
ing any LEAN (or improvement activity – what ever it is called) before
maintenance is “functional” is like icing a cake before it has been baked!
Toyota had a functional business before they developed TPS. Once
a business is functional 5S needs to be applied to the area of the busi-
ness where it will return on the bottom line. Starting by putting brooms
on the wall or marking where rubbish bin go, (trash cans to some of you)
fails to meet this requirement.
I am working with a business now where we have identified five areas
where 5S will get a bottom line result – we have spent the last 9 months
getting them to functional in maintenance, production planning and
production, now it is improvement process time. On three of their pro-
duction lines they apply straw to the side of drink containers (Aseptic
paper style packs) this leads to a small amount of glue carry over, this
needs to be cleaned off when issue with packs don’t transition from the
applicator smoothly, due to glue build up. They need a scraper, scotch
brite and a spray can of cleaner.
122
Continuous Improvement Programmes | 123
Despite having an accumulator to allow for this cleaning over a week

an average of 144 minutes was lost on three lines. This was caused by
operator having to go looking for cleaning items when cleaning was
required! We built custom stainless steel holders for each station
where items were required, numbered them and setup an audit sheet
for the quality people to do one a day on one shift (there are three 8
hour shifts)
On average 144 minutes of downtime has been saved across the
three lines per day! If 5S activities doesn’t give a bottom line result to
the company, put it at the bottom of the list. From this complete pro-
gramme this company just made AUD$24M dollars more profit from
this plant.
Conclusion – you need to have a business that is “Functional” first,
everyone misses this!! LLS, LEAN, CI, OE, or 5S needs to be strategic,
planned and executed by specialist’s not enthusiastic interns! A brutal
focus on “Return on investment” or delivering a “bottom line result”
from every activity is required. Failure to do these will result in your
improvement programme becoming just another Fad!
I want to tell you about a plant that I was brought in to work with
the maintenance department, they had been running a Lean based
programme for almost two years and due to a lack of results the main-
tenance department was blamed – correctly to some extent as the
maintenance department was not functional.
Despite this the Lean based programme had focused on 5S, and
lots of focused improvement meetings they had spread sheets for the
required tasks from the focus group meetings and they had monthly
meeting where they presented the excuses for not completing any of
the required tasks.
The only good news was they had installed motion sensors on the
urinals and were turning out lights in rooms when they weren’t in
them. There were millions of dollars of missed opportunity waiting to
be identified. Some of it unattainable due to a lack of functionality in
maintenance some because of a lack of strategic approach from the

Lean based programme.
This was a very large dairy site, said to have the largest milk powder
dryer in the world (8 million litres [2,113,376 US gallons] a day capacity,
making milk powder, Butter and Anhydrous Milk Fat etc.). I was brought
in to complete a restructure of what turned out to be a very Chaos
Fatigued maintenance department. After 12 months of running The
Evolution of Maintenance™ programme, equipment reliability issues,
caused by the lack of function in maintenance were corrected by get-
ting the department to functional. The maintenance department was
functional according to our gap analysis.
With a “functional” maintenance department it was time to look at
process reliability issues and I found a really good one. Every six weeks
the main milk powder dryer needed to be shut down and cleaned,
this process is called CIP (clean in place). Historically this took twen-
ty-seven hours to complete, which is fine however this was a perfect
opportunity to complete maintenance. During this twenty-seven hour
CIP different areas of the plant are available to maintenance at differ-
ent times, however at certain times in the process, areas of plant were
dangerous due to heat or the risk of getting splashed with caustic.
For maintenance and production to work together there needed to
be a list of tasks required for the CIP that could be formed into a Gantt
chart. This would give exact times where areas could be accessed for
maintenance. To my surprise there was no list of tasks for this CIP, it
was just up to a number of people who “knew what to do”. As horrifying
as this seems it is common in many plants.
The plants production manager begrudgingly gave me a person who
“knew what to do” to help assemble the tasks and put together the
Gantt chart. He turned out to be a star - his name was Rob. Rob started
with the list of tasks as the process had been completed historically
– in one straight-line exercise taking twenty-seven hours to complete.
Within this process were clearly defined maintenance opportunities,
in different areas of the plant. Identifying these maintenance windows

was the objective of this exercise.
On looking at the completed task list I asked the question “can this
be broken into several simultaneous work processes?” The answer was
“yes” but this was quickly followed by “we don’t have enough people on
the shift to do it that way” - “OK then if we were to assume that peo-
ple were not a problem and we could get everyone we needed – what
would the task list look like?”
Rob set to work breaking the straight-line task list into different
streams while ensuring that he linked the tasks that were dependant
on other tasks. The out come was we could complete the CIP using
three teams of three people in operations and a team of maintenance
people working around the equipment availability. Rob reminded me
that there weren’t enough people to complete the tasks on shift. My
question was simple “why can we not ask people for the shift that is off
to come in?”
In this plant the operator worked four days on then four days off.
Working twelve-hour shifts while they were on. The only issue with get-
ting people in while they were off was we would need to pay over time.
So I sat down with Rob and worked out some numbers, it turned out
that we would only need to go back onto product thirty-two minutes
earlier to pay for the extra overtime labour.
So I asked Rob how much time the Gantt chart would save us, on
paper, if we completed the CIP using the four streams of people, Rob
looked a bit unsure as he answered my question “well according to
the Gantt chart we could complete the CIP in twelve hours and fif-
teen minutes – that means that we would be on product fourteen hours
and forty five minutes earlier”. If this were correct the pay back on the
improvement would be extraordinarily large!
It was time to present this as an improvement opportunity. Needless
to say my programme sponsor – the area manager – was very keen to
see this gain, however he voiced his scepticism at the concept of more
than halving the existing CIP time. “For many years now it has taken
twenty seven hours and in other plants it takes twenty seven hours –
are you sure it is possible?” “ I suppose we will see” I replied. “I’ll tell
you what” the area manager said to me “you bring this plant back on
product in, or under, twelve hours and fifteen minutes and everyone
goes out for dinner and drinks on me”. We had a deal.
I don’t want you to think it was that easy, the reason most people
don’t want to engage in this scale of improvement is the planning and
coordination required. There was quite a bit of planning involved to
make this happen. The people who would be running each stream in
operations need to have a run through of their task – the tools required
needed to be identified and more had to be procured so that all three
operations streams had what they needed.
The planning for maintenance needed to be meticulous, as the main-
tenance windows were short and any mistakes would disrupt the time
line. This now highlights the importance of maintenance functionality –
with a Chaos fatigued maintenance department or even a maintenance
department that was not functional the planning and execution of this
improvement process would be almost impossible. However on with
the story.
I was the project manager on the day; I set milestones every four
hours and had a schedule for rolling breaks for the operations teams.
The project started at 6am and the first milestone was at 10:00am.
This was interesting as the maintenance supervisors and one of the
operations team leaders didn’t turn up to the meeting in the control
room. Rather than call them on the radio I sent Rob to go and get
them – we knew where they were as we had their location on the
Gantt chart.
Both gentlemen professed that they were too busy to go to a meet-
ing! This made one thing clear for me – these people had never been
managed in a planned team based environment before. They were
escorted to the control room where I brought them back to the Gantt
chart and pointed out the dependencies of each job on the others.
I pointed out that starting a job early was as bad as starting it late as this
can impact on the other teams.
As it turned out the maintenance guys were 45 minutes ahead and
ended up taking a forty-five minute coffee break waiting for the next
piece of equipment to come available. These guys were so used to
holding things up with maintenance activities that they were clearly
uncomfortable sitting and drinking coffee during a plant shutdown.
I see this regularly, as you rehabilitate seriously Chaos Fatigued people
they often have trouble accepting the calmness of a planned and con-
trolled environment.
Four hours later at the next mile stone meeting all teams attended
the meeting and all teams were on track. I could smell success! When
we got to the last hour of the shut Rob started hopping from foot to
foot nervously. It was time to bring the plant back onto product. This
plant had a sound proof control room where there were people seated
at computers controlling not only this dryer but three other smaller
dryers on the same site. There were three HMI stations for this dryer.
(Human Machine Interface stations – these are a computer station with
three monitors per station – different parts of the process are con-
trolled from each station).
With the plant operators in place the start-up sequence began,
this is about a forty-five minute process. The separators came on line
with no issues the evaporators came up to temperature and down to
vacuum correctly and the sequence of start-up of the dryer had com-
menced – and then the fatal words from one of the plant operators
“Oooh… the HMI has locked up again”. As if in a choreographed move
all the operators in the room wheeled their chairs back from the desks
and put their hands in the air in frustration.
Fortunately one of our operators jumped on the phone to the auto-
mation engineer. From the maintenance workshop to the powder plant
was just on a kilometre (I said it was a big plant). The time it took for the
automation engineer to get to the control room felt like a lifetime. The
server room was next door to the control room. I met the automation
engineer there, my first question the obvious one “why have the HMI’s
frozen” I asked somewhat agitated. “The server for the HMI’s does this
occasionally you just need to reboot them”
I left him alone to fix the problem before I lost my cool. I documented
the failure on the project snag list. Within twenty minutes the HMI con-
trol was back. The plant which was PLC controlled had continued run-
ning at its last command. The operator resumed the start-up sequence
and the plant came back on product. But we were thirty minute late
based on the Gantt chart. The CIP process had taken twelve hours and
forty-five minutes to complete. We have come on product fourteen
hour and fifteen minutes earlier making it a sensational success, but we
were thirty minute late on the Gantt chart making it a failure also. The
mood in the control room was positive but subdued.
The next day we had scheduled a CIP project review meeting, the
production manager was there, along with Rob, the maintenance man-
ager, the area manager and myself. The area manager congratulated
everyone for the gains and apologised for not delivering the free din-
ner and drinks, because we had not met the requirements of the proj-
ect outcome yet.
The production manager had not been an advocate of the project
and although he didn’t oppose the project to reduce the CIP time he
genuinely did not believe it was possible. Now that it had happened he
had egg on his face, remembering he had been in charge of the people
who had been taking twenty-seven hours to CIP. Under his leadership
this had been happening for five years. I suspect the next comment
from him was in defence of his position on the CIP project.
The production manager surprised me with this comment “You are
an experienced project manager so how do you now expect my people
to continue to complete the CIP in less than thirteen hours”. This was
to much of a challenge to miss “in six week we will do this again except
Rob will project manager the CIP and I will not go near it” I declared
with absolute confidence, Rob went pale.
The six weeks rolled around in no time. Rob had been following the
process from last time along with addressing the issue on the snag list
from the last CIP. A Synergistic Cause Analysis process was carried out
on the failure of the HMI and a resolution was implemented. Rob was
set up for success.
On the day of the next CIP I honoured my commitment and stayed
away from the control room. The plant stopped at six in the morning
and was scheduled to come back on product at six-fifteen that evening.
I met up with the area manager just before six and we headed into
the control room to see the plant come back on product. We entered
the control room and there are the four teams with big smiles on their
faces. The plant was on product and had been for fifteen minutes.
Rob and the four teams had brought the plant onto product in
eleven hours and forty-five minutes, an unimaginable outcome only
eighteen week earlier. From here on they were able to project man-
age every cleaning process because as the CIP’s were done every six
weeks the gains were not just a one off gain these gains were enor-
mous. The financial impact of these changes was in the millions of dol-
lars of increased profit.
Most important was we got our free dinner and drinks, compliments
of the area manager. You will never see a team of people more united
and enthusiastic. Delivering this level of success promoted a euphoric
feeling throughout the whole plant and drove a keenness to work on
other projects to move the plant forward.
The interesting thing is the man who ended up leading this transfor-
mation – Rob - in only eighteen weeks was now a star. Having completed
a short training course in Synergistic Project Manager, and having
been given some guidance was able to put together a plan, manage
teams of people and put a sustained seven-figure sum on a company’s
bottom line.
Here is the concerning part. For eighteen months before this CIP
project Rob was dedicated to a 5S project. Moving around the plant
“implementing 5S” with different work groups as a part of the sites Lean
based improvement process. The areas that had been completed did
look tidier, however these areas did not look like the photos on the wall
after only a few weeks. This shows a failure in the fifth S – Sustain. From
this I concluded that the process, although initially successful, failed to
get a buy-in from the change targets in the different areas.
The point is that one person’s effort for eighteen months added no
value to the bottom line of the company. However when focused on a
process that was within the value stream the same person was able to
put effort into a process that put millions on the company’s bottom line
– in only eighteen weeks!
I could at this point launch into the advantages of two other
Synergistic processes “Synergistic Operator Ownership” and “Strategic
LSS™”, but this book is about Chaos Fatigue and “The Evolution of
Maintenance™” as the initial cure for this. However from this chapter
I want you to take away the need for improvements opportunities to
be evaluated on the value they add to the company, not simply the
random application of continuous improvement tools.
“To improve is to change; to be
perfect is to change often”.
Winston Churchill

Centralise-Decentralise
the Progress Killer
I
f you work in big corporate companies, and have worked there for
more than four years then you will possibly be very familiar with this
problem. I will attempt to make some sweeping generalisations in an
attempt to explain this to those who have not been fortunate enough
to have suffered this.
Firstly let me tell you about the challenges of Senior Management,
the average tenure of a Senior Manager in a large company is less than
three years. Most Senior Managers head off to find other challenges
after leaving their mark on the company they have only recently joined.
The newly appointed Senior Manager is understandably keen to stamp
his mark in the company and brings in sweeping changes that will bring
about significant cost reductions and improved productivity.
The company direction is set for the tenure of this new Senior
Manager and the new change process starts. Three years down the
track, with some of the promised deliverables met, this Senior Manager
will move onto another challenge and the new incoming Senior Manager
begins to lay out a plan for sweeping changes that promise to bring
about significant cost reductions and improved productivity.
In the larger companies these changes are often in the fundamental
structure of the company. It is important to note that there is no such
132
Centralise-Decentralise the Progress Killer | 133
thing as a perfect structure as all company structures are based around

compromise. However these fundamental structure types are referred
to as ‘Functional Structure’ and ‘Divisional Structure’
When businesses start out they have a ‘Functional Structure’ this
has a single line of reporting, for example from employees to the
Supervisor to the Manager, to the General Manager, etc. As a busi-
ness gets bigger so does the management structure, like a pyramid the
requirements of middle management get mixed and the flow of com-
munication becomes watered down and bureaucratic.
Ultimately the cost of having so many people in the middle man-
agement roles becomes expensive and the ability for good ideas to
be actioned and advantages of autonomous decision making on each
production site becomes so hard that people just give up and “do
their jobs”.
The need for sweeping change is identified and the company moves
to a ‘Divisional Structure’ this now allows each individual site the ability
to make decisions quickly that will move the productivity of the plant
forward by giving it independent functions of each department i.e. HR,
maintenance, finance, quality, etc.
These sites report through a flat structure to some form of Senior
Manager who is responsible for the development of continued perfor-
mance improvement. This sound very idealistic and it can work very
well if a company has procedures, operating standards and verifiable
common measures so the different sites can be benchmarked to ensure
that they are performing to their potential and conforming to the stan-
dards of the company.
When this works well different sites develop a healthy competitive-
ness with each other. This requires them to work within clearly defined
operating standards to improve their reliability and plant output to
achieve results using the company’s measures that can be benchmarked
and that are verifiable. Subsequently sites that have made good prog-
ress in specific areas share their knowledge with the other sites.
Doesn’t this sound wonderful, however it seldom happens. Many

companies do not have operating standards or worse have them but
fail to implement or enforce them. Worse than this is the measuring
systems, I have worked in a number of companies where the measuring
systems between sites were not aligned and worse again were not val-
idated or accurate.
The consequences of not having accurate and verifiable measures
is serious, this allows site managers to make short term decisions
that return short term financial benefits raising their profile and often
sling-shooting them into Senior Management roles. Their poor succes-
sor is now left to deal with significant deferred maintenance, poor staff
moral, and the performance issues that a lack of required expenditure
will inevitably cause.
Consequently the new Site Manager will be blamed and the Senior
Management will deem it necessary to make a sweeping change that
will have a more hands on control from Senior Management. So the
companies move from a divisional structure back to a form of func-
tional structure, a structure that will require more middle management,
through which the flow of communication becomes watered down and
bureaucratic. So the cycle gets repeated.
Just as it looks like I have finally assigned the blame for plant fail-
ure squarely in the lap of Senior Management it is probably a good
time to point out that maintenance departments do the exact same
thing. I have been to a number of maintenance conferences where one
presentation has been on how it is important to centralise your main-
tenance department and the next presentation is on area basing your
maintenance department and how this is the secret to productivity.
Maintenance departments need to settle into a program that does not
involve continued fundamental structure change.
In many cases following divisionalization, it is at this point that the
popular thinking of lean manufacturing says you must move quickly to
‘Self Managing Teams’. This I believe is a possibility but not until you
Centralise-Decentralise the Progress Killer | 135
have passed the predictive phase. Attempts I have seen where mainte-
nance has been forced to form ‘Self Managing Teams’ before they are
ready just become leaderless teams that flounder without direction.
Now without a functional structure to monitor maintenance activities
the maintenance department will often start responding only to the
immediate needs of production and become reactive.
My preference in the past few production plants has seemed to be
functional structures with equipment champions. Your maintenance
people will naturally take a preference to certain pieces of equipment.
Just make them the champion of that equipment and involve them
in any issues with that equipment. However with maintenance teams
over 80 people divisionalised maintenance departments are almost
inevitable.
I have found it important to identify the companies that are chasing
the latest fad in management practices and those who are pursuing a
path to greater efficiencies and profits. It is easy to tell the difference,
the serious ones have a strategic plan that runs beyond five years, they
communicate it, and they stick to it. The others chop and change struc-
tures and processes every three to five years.

Insanity at Work
I
want to demonstrate that Insanity is clearly common in production
facilities. What is insanity? It is “Repeating the same thing over and
over and expecting a different results” this is a saying attributed to
Albert Einstein. An example in industry is simple; after a failure some-
one decrees “We clearly need to put a procedure in place to fix that”
and someone sends out an email or no one does anything! Later on the
problem reoccurs sometimes someone is blamed but the same state-
ment is made and still nothing effective happens.
Another one of my favourites; I had only been at this plant for one
month and I was starting the process of questioning every breakdown.
This was in an FMCG food plant with an old packing machine on one
line that had been in the factory for about fifteen years; a small DC
electric motor failed and cost us three hours downtime. Naturally
I asked, “Why did this fail” to get the following reply; “that’s normal
those motors fail every six weeks we just keep a spare and replace it”.
The sad thing is this had been going on for fifteen years! By replac-
ing this with a small AC motor and variable speed drive the problem
went away forever. This is accepting insanity as the norm and not
questioning it.
Another form of insanity is “The blame game” I like this one, when
there is a breakdown in the plant, maintenance blames production E.g.
“The guys on night shift are speeding up the machines to get more
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Insanity at Work | 137
production output, the production manager needs to sort that out”

and production blame maintenance E.g. “It clearly a maintenance
issue, it will be the first stage unit because that is what caused this
problem last time”
The great part of this is each party can blame the other then neither
are at fault in their own minds, therefore no one does anything because
it’s not their problem - so the problem repeats itself. You need to be on
the look out for all forms of insanity in your workplace.
There is an easy solution to the problem; employ a Reliability Engineer.
This one is sure to make dollar signs pop up in Senior Managers eyes;
however there is an easy way around it. By employing a university grad-
uate (intern) you can get a number of advantages; firstly in most states,
in fact most developed countries you can get government grants to
take on graduates.
The great thing about graduates is that because they do not have
extensive experience in manufacturing then they cannot jump to con-
clusions or make assumptions. The only option is to seek out the facts.
Training is available for these graduates, specialist reliability firms often
do this training and it will be called ‘Root Cause Analysis’ or RCA train-
ing. We train a process called Synergistic Cause Analysis
It is important to pick the right person for the job and deliver the
correct training. Further to this are the procedures that they need to
follow. By training your graduate in RCA they will be able to conduct
impartial investigation into problems that plague your plant. Done
properly using the people involved in the failure or incident the RCA
process will permanently remove these issues.
The upshot of it is simple, the outcome of every RCA are actions
that remove permanently the actions and conditions that lead to the
failure, throughout this process there is no opportunity for blame and
recrimination. So the ‘Blame Game’ ends.
“Blame is just a lazy person’s way
of making sense of chaos”.
Douglas Coupland
A Canadian writer who popularized terms
such as McJob and Generation X.

Unions and Militant Workforces
W
hen Workers Unions are mature and effective, and the com-
pany takes the same approach toward the Workers Union,
it is then that the Workers Union can become a great asset
to both the company and your staff (the people they represent). How
is this possible you might ask? I have seen many occasions where poor
relationships between Companies and Workers Unions have left both
parties at an uneasy standoff firing infrequent cheep shots at each
other but not engaging until things are at a boiling point (normally over
pay rises).
Then it becomes a battle of wills or egos with both parties taking a
position and not backing down for fear of appearing weak to the peo-
ple they represent. All of this time smaller issues that are relevant,
that with very little discussion are addressable, go on unresolved.
Consequently both parties lose out, the company misses an oppor-
tunity to address the easy issues, the staff don’t get the small issues
addressed that may improve their working conditions or productiv-
ity and the representatives from the Workers Union put in a huge
amount of effort for little result. In the worst cast there is a strike and
everyone loses.
Therefore I say that “The Workers Union is your friend” when I say
that most executives look at me as if I am drunk. However it is our
unwillingness to identify this that creates our problem. To justify this we
139
must first understand why we perceive the problems with the Workers
Union and we must understand how to fix it.
So what is the job of the Workers Union? The Workers Union is there
to represent your staff when it comes to ‘Pay and conditions’, high-
light unresolved health and safety issues regarding their member, and
to represent your staff when they are being investigated concerning
issues of misconduct. Workers Unions are not there to dictate ‘process
and procedure’, as a company you develop the required process and
procedure and your staff are required to comply assuming the proce-
dures are fair, legal, and reasonable.
Think of it this way; we agree through negotiation the amount of
pay and we agree on the conditions e.g. Holidays, superannuation,
numbers of hours in a working week etc. Therefore they are now
being payed under these conditions to do the job assigned to them.
So if you write a procedure that says that they must carry a two way
radio at all times, and answer when they are called, and you have
issued the procedure, and communicated this to them effectively,
they must comply.
Failure to comply should be cover in your company’s policy under
misconduct and normally goes something like “failing to comply with a
legal and reasonable request”. This is the only way to break down the
militancy that sometimes exists in companies; militant employees will
often hide behind the union in an attempt to resist change, this is not
within the scope of the unions control and should not be entertained.
How do we fix it?

Train your union representatives. Your employees have elected these
people to represent them; these same employees will go to these rep-
resentatives with every little thing that is upsetting them. How these
representatives deal with this is up to the individual. In some cases if
these people have natural leadership skills but have not been flagged
for promotion into a leadership roles yet.
Unions and Militant Workforces | 141
So you now have a choice to deal with these untrained people over
inappropriate issues where they have limited legal understanding of
the rights of the people they represent (incidentally your staff). This
normally turns out to be a waste of your time and theirs (and remember
you are paying them). Worst than this they go away embittered about
the trouncing they just received and report to your employees their
account of how inflexible you are.
Or you can arrange training for these people and this will all change.
They need to know about the legal requirements under which they are
required to work, have a clear understanding of the collective employ-
ment contract that has been signed, give them an understanding of
the company’s procedures and policies and lastly teach them how to
negotiate effectively.
Why do this? Because they will only engage with you when they have
facts and examples to support their argument and not just emotion,
they will hopefully now engage with you in a professional manner with
the intention of getting a negotiated outcome, and they will only come
to you with the real issues as they will understand what issues are not
supported in law, under company policy or by the contract.
From this you do not have to waste as much time on the unresolv-
able, emotional and erroneous issues, your employees will be less dis-
illusioned by the inability of the representative to deliver on promises
to the employees. Promises that would have historically been made
without any chance that they will be supported by the collective con-
tract or by local industrial law.
It is important to remember that militancy, (Low professional maturity
caused by Chaos Fatigue is what we call it) is caused by a breakdown
in the employee/management relationship to start with. This bourn out
of mistrust over issues, or through a growing level of mistrust, from
unresolved issues either real or perceived. It is always a good move to
understand the issues and attempt to resolve them or bring an end to
them in some way. This needs to happen if you want to move forward.
The process applied

I have had the good fortune of working in a number of militant sit-
uations involving engineering unions. One of these situations was in a
large multinational where a decision was made in a fit of restructuring,
and cost cutting, to bulldoze the maintenance workshop so that a new
power station could be built on the site. It is important to note that the
site was in a time of growth and new factories were being built on the
site hence the need for a bigger power station.
At the same time the maintenance department was downsized, in
terms of people, so they could be fitted in one end of the maintenance
store. Spares were sold off or sent off for scrap to make room for this
new but inadequate facility. So dedicated and incensed were the mem-
bers of this maintenance team that some of them brought the spare
parts off the scrap dealer and hid them on site so that their job would
be easier.
The smaller workshop facility was now not big enough for all the
tradesmen to work in during maintenance shuts, the biggest shut hap-
pened every year in the middle of winter. The only option was for some
of them to work out in the weather – the original workshop that was bull-
dozed was big enough and had heating. Finally to add insult to injury the
maintenance budget was not increased to allow for the extra factories
on site leaving the site with an unsustainably low maintenance spend.
Five years later, after a large two-company merger, it was decided
that all the sites would embark on a maintenance improvement pro-
gramme. There was significant criticism for the condition of the site
and the state of the maintenance facility at this site. Surprisingly all the
same maintenance people had remained on the site throughout this
tough period and they understandably did not take the criticism well at
all. Suffice to say they were not open to any more change. A consulta-
tive process had been undertaken with them, however they had used
the opportunity to display their anger and form an even more united
front against the change.
Unions and Militant Workforces | 143
The departing maintenance consultant informed me that the only

option was to lay them all off and put in contractors. This is something
I have done in the past, however I am of the strong opinion that this is
very much a last resort as it will destroy the moral of the entire com-
pany for a considerable amount of time.
By the time I took over these maintenance people they were as angry
as hell and I was not in a position to give them back what they had lost.
They wanted to push back over anything just to send a message to the
management. However it was a previous management that had done
the damage - that didn’t seem to matter to them.
It is impossible to fix things that have happened in the past. There
were some small issues that could be addressed and they were
addressed. From here you can only acknowledge the inappropriate-
ness of the events and move forward. Following that the only way from
here is to be firm but fair, work to the letter of the employment con-
tract and ensure that there are consequences of non-conformance to
process and procedure.
This will and did lead to a couple of very tough disciplinary outcomes
however a line was drawn in the sand, the employees quickly learnt
that it is a commercial business and it was not a game. From there pro-
fessional working relationships can be built and we have to work to a
level where we communicate with our employee on a human-to-human
level and never again with fists clenched.
The consequential outcome was very desirable with the retention
of very dedicated and capable maintenance people and although they
still remain mildly embittered to this day they had a significant contri-
bution to give to the very successful change process at that site.
My point is there is always a reason for low professional maturity
(militancy), understanding the reasons will give you a good picture of
the type of people you have and the value they will add if rehabilitated
as opposed to restructured out of the business.

Understanding Computer
Monitored Maintenance Systems
A
llow me to step you back in time, in maintenance, to a time
before there were computers to manage maintenance systems.
In these times “fixed time maintenance” was done from a card
system, “hours based maintenance” was done from hand drawn spread
sheets, and “predictive maintenance” was done using a screw driver as
a “stethoscope” with the handle held up to your ear.
Work requests were written in duplicate books and work orders
were hand written and handed to tradesmen. Purchase orders were
written out in purchase order books. A “library” was required to be
able to identify the part numbers required from machinery manufac-
turers. But, all of that was sufficient to put together a ‘functional’ main-
tenance department.
The problem in those days was that reliability information was hard
to extract. In fact any information required for analysis was slow and
time consuming to correlate. Fast-forward twenty years and there is
an impressive selection of extremely competent computer based
maintenance systems. But has this made the maintenance world a
different place?
We have completed gap analysis exercises of maintenance depart-
ments around the world and sadly less than 6% of maintenance
144
Understanding Computer Monitored Maintenance Systems | 145
departments have a computer managed maintenance systems that are

actually functional.
This means that they have world-class systems available to them but
are actually getting less functionality than they would have from a man-
ual system twenty years ago. You have to ask why anybody would run a
CMMS if there is no more functionality!
The most important part of having a CMMS is understanding what
output you want from it. If you don’t understand what you want, a
proper implementation of the system cannot be carried out.
Compare a CMMS to the old paper based system. Fundamentally
both are task management systems. They allow tasks to be requested,
planned, scheduled and completed. The strength of the CMMS is in
linking tasks back to the assets being worked on.
This allows us to capture information on these assets. This informa-
tion could be:
● ”What proactive and planned work has been done on the asset?”
● “From a maintenance perspective how much this asset is costing
to own?”
Here is the one that everyone gets wrong - a history of breakdowns

on each asset. With CMMS this can easily be tracked through emer-
gency work orders. However this is most often not done because peo-
ple don’t see the value in it. We will cover this in more depth later. Let
me first explain a typical scenario the failure of a CMMS to deliver
results for a company. This is the lack of implementation.
Having received funding approval to purchase a CMMS a mainte-
nance department starts the implementation process. The person cho-
sen to drive the process will often already be suffering from the normal
chaos and dysfunction of a maintenance department. In many cases
that person will not have set up a system before and will be doing so
based solely on advice they have been given.
This is where the “asset load” begins this is setting up the “asset
hierarchy”. There are two extremes of failure here. Either this person
sets up the asset hierarchy with everything, right down to the compo-
nents as an asset. Or they give up at too higher level. However most
of the people that get it right make the next fatal mistake. They allow
purchases to be made against assets at several levels of the hierar-
chy making meaningful cost analysis of individual assets difficult if not
impossible.
In almost every case this person setting up the system will load PM’s
onto the systems as they put in the assets. This is done in an attempt
to make it operate from day one. These self generating PM’s start to
over whelm the person setting up the system and they get buried in the
operation and fail to complete the set up of the assets.
This all happens well before the bill of materials is set up and before
any reporting from the system is established. This is only mistake num-
ber one. From here they continue until the system is not able to be
functional. So rather than spending time looking at all the reasons why
a CMMS can fail, let’s look at how it should be used.
As you read this you will see how the task management function of
the CMMS becomes so critical. This will explain why we put so much
effort into maintenance. First lets understand the difference between
the two departments:
● Maintenance is a task based department

● Production is a process based department
If you want to make reliability improvements you need to identify

the correct tasks and complete them. When production is running well
the production people are busy making product (as opposed to sitting
in the lunch room waiting for the plant to be fixed). When the plant
is running well the maintenance department is quieter allowing them
time to focus on reliability. This is the place we need to be.
However when a plant is not performing we apply the 30-30-30 rule

this says the 30% of the lost production is caused by maintenance,
30% is caused by production and 30% production planning - raw mate-
rial supply (there’s 10% left to blame whoever else you want).
If you try to fix production first, they will blame maintenance for all
the downtime. If you try to fix production planning they have an unreli-
able plant to blame. We call this “the Blame Game”.
If you fix maintenance by getting functionality using a CMMS you
gain a number of valuable things:
1. Plant reliability through a reduction in breakdowns

2. A correctly set up CMMS (task management system)
3. The ability to plan and schedule maintenance tasks making main-
tenance people more efficient (up to 50% more efficient)
4. An increasing amount of available maintenance labour to iden-
tify and complete tasks
5. A significant reduction in chaos fatigue across the whole site
(helping staff retention)
By now we have an emergency work order from production for

every breakdown. This is when the CMMS starts to deliver the most
important outputs. These are what I call “top ten lists”, the first two lists
below are automated reports from the CMMS – all CMMS’s can do this.
● A top ten list of assets that have consumed maintenance labour

for breakdowns.
● A top ten list of assets that have consumed maintenance dollars
for maintenance work.
● Now the third top ten list comes from production and has the
top ten production failures that do not appear on the mainte-
nance list (they didn’t require a maintenance response – there-
fore no emergency work order was raised)
Every week you use root cause analysis (or Synergistic Cause
Analysis in our world) on at least one item from each list. This must be
done using people from the floor that have been involved in the fail-
ures (thereby reducing the ‘Blame Game’).
Why is this so important? With a list of failure items being gener-
ated by the CMMS, cause analysis can be made compulsory on items
on each list. This creates key performance indicators for the person in
charge of reliability, e.g. three cause analysis exercises must be com-
pleted by the end of each week. I like to go a step further and set a
deliverable of “three completed Synergistic Cause Analysis exercises
must be delivered to the desk of the plant manager by Friday”
By having the prioritised list based on reliability data the cause anal-
ysis process is undertaken only on the assets that are causing problems
So why am I talking “cause analysis” instead of “root cause analysis”.
In most cases there are a series of issues, both existing, and introduced
that combine to create a failure - the question being “why did it fail
today and not yesterday”.
There was obviously something introduced today that ‘tipped the
scales’ causing the failure.
There is often not just “one” root cause. There are almost always a
numbers of issues that caused the failure.
Synergistic Cause Analysis exercises are fully completed within an
hour and a half (inside the attention span of most people) and specif-
ically identifies tasks that, when completed, can remove all the issues
that led to the failures.
CMMS also plays another critical role here. You will be familiar with
the focus group meeting that identify what tasks need to be done.
These tasks get put onto a spreadsheet, and then there is a monthly
meeting so that excuses can be presented for why each person has
done nothing. CMMS yields a simple solution to that:
We built an efficient task management process with measurable
planning and scheduling. If we put the tasks from the Synergistic Cause
Analysis into the CMMS and plan and schedule them they get done! (in
order of priority!). What I am saying is use the CMMS to manage the
tasks – well it is a task management system! Now you can stop using the
spreadsheets to capture these tasks.
Remember for this to be effective it is critical that the CMMS is cor-
rectly set up and the maintenance department is functional. Meaning
they an effective planning and scheduling process is set up for the
tasks for tradesman, the attainment to the schedule is greater than
90% and you are managing the task backlog It is now that all tasks from
the cause analysis can get completed reliably based on priority.
Now that a cause analysis has been completed the first tasks to be
identified usually have mechanical or electrical fixes. Because mainte-
nance is now functional the tasks get completed using their CMMS,
so these get done quickly and effectively. As the maintenance people
get on top of the plant issues, more and more of the production task
requirements are identified.
Here is the next problem - production don’t have a task management
system – but maintenance has – so why not get maintenance to put pro-
ductions tasks in the same schedule, on the CMMS, and measure the
attainment for the completion of the tasks collectively, on the CMMS?
Combined tasks – collective accountability for task completion –
integration of maintenance and production in a partnership - the
Holy Grail!
It is at this point that both maintenance and production are respon-
sible for attainment of the maintenance schedule, as both departments
have to complete their tasks for the maintenance schedule attainment
to be above 90%. Remember that production has a production sched-
ule also. Production will have an attainment percentage they have to
meet. The biggest impact on the production schedule is breakdowns.
It is at this point that both departments start to work closely together
to ensure that the attainment requirements of both the maintenance
schedule and the production schedule are met. When the attainment
of either schedule are not met the issues will appear on one of the top
ten lists and the two departments can work together using cause anal-
ysis to resolve the issue by identifying the required tasks and entering
them into the CMMS.
As you will see it is all about task management. There is a lot more
to it than this, however it took a functional maintenance department
and a correctly set up CMMS to achieve this result. At this point the
process is stable, with maintenance, production and the production
planners brought into Synergistic Cause Analysis processes for every
failure until the failures are resolved.
Then we start doing Synergistic Cause Analysis on high potential
incidences (HPI’s). “Proactive cause analysis”. We are now above 90%
demonstrated output and climbing quickly, maintenance is also well
and truly functional. Task management is the key to success. You are
now very close to world class in maintenance. And all this in two years
or less!
This is why I am adamant that any company who genuinely want to
get bottom line results need to be functional in maintenance and cor-
rectly set up their CMMS. It is only at this point that improvement pro-
grammes like LEAN, Six Sigma or our programme “Strategic LSS” are
able to achieve sustainable results.

Maintenance Manager verses

Budget Administrator
T
he modern philosophies of maintenance dictate that the cost to
maintain a production site is determined at the time the plant is
built. This would normally be documented in the asset management
plan and included in the life cycle costing on the equipment. However
you will seldom see this done, certainly in the lower risk industries.
With this new equipment being maintained using condition base
methodologies, maintenance savings can be made from increasing the
reliability of the equipment. This effectively defers the need to maintain
the equipment as often and effectively defers the cost of that mainte-
nance to when the condition monitoring of the equipment indicate that
the maintenance work is truly required.
Once a plant is under control a proper Zero-Based maintenance
budget can be built that captures all the major maintenance activities
for the next twelve months. The incentive of this type of maintenance
budget is that the budget will come in favourable if equipment service
life is extended by; deferring maintenance costs only on the grounds
of low criticality, extended service life through good maintenance prac-
tices, and condition base service work.
Doesn’t that sound wonderful! In most cases the reality is much dif-
ferent. Maintenance is often a target for cost cutting in financial hard
151
times. More often than not, the cost cutting does not result in actual
savings just more deferred maintenance that will only have to be done
at a later date, often as a breakdown and at a greater cost.
The main result of this is that Maintenance Managers, who should
be managing maintenance, end up administering a maintenance budget
that is inadequate to manage proper maintenance effectively. Often as
money gets progressively tighter, decisions are made to cut the inad-
equate maintenance budget further. Within a short time this mainte-
nance money fails to achieve the key objective - maintenance – “doing
work that sustains or improves the reliability of your plant”.
So the question becomes how much does it cost to properly main-
tain a plant so that reliability is sustained? This needs to be determined
by completing a Zero-Based maintenance budget. This would normally
be done looking at major maintenance requirements over the next
twelve months. It is important to point out now that a plant must be
functional for the maintenance budget to be attainable. Breakdowns
are the killers of maintenance budgets, until you have breakdowns
under control you will struggle to stick to a maintenance budget in any
professional way.
These major maintenance activities need to be put in order of
one to infinity. In the past I have prioritized them from one to three
of importance, however that makes it too easy for someone in senior
management to just say – don’t do the threes! By having a list that is
numbered in order of priority from one to infinity when a decision to
slash a maintenance budget is made you are able to say “from number
158 down will not be completed next years, I will need someone’s signa-
ture on this please”.
Interestingly when a zero-based maintenance budget is built the
compliance related work ends up at the bottom end of the budget.
Because there is such a focus on plant output, reliability based issues
are at the top of the list. It is a brave executive that signs off to forgo
maintenance that will compromise compliance in the plant in favour
Maintenance Manager verses Budget Administrator | 153
of short term cost savings. However this is not about catching out
decision makers, it is about having enough money to do maintenance
professionally.
There are other ways to decide what maintenance needs to be done.
You could complete an RCM (Reliability Centred Maintenance) study
on the plant. This is something that is good to have and necessary if
the consequences of failure in the plant are catastrophic. However the
cost to complete this is quite high but there are some very good com-
panies out there that can assist with this. However it is never justified
to complete RCM on every asset so a Zero-Based maintenance budget
is the best way to go.
Sadly many maintenance managers are too busy to complete this
Zero-Based maintenance budget. In quite a number of cases there is a
lack of data to complete this budget. This is where a functional CMMS
is critical; budget information can be forecast from the CMMS when it
is correctly set up. With information from a well setup CMMS you can
now build a five years maintenance budget projection.
What you find from a long term strategic Zero-Based budget is that
the maintenance cost for the plant is not a stable flat line; it changes
dramatically each year depending on the build quality and duty of the
existing plant. For example if we look at a simple beef slaughtering
plant and assume running two shifts five days a week with very mature
technology. Assuming that the company has used a simple and proven
design the maintenance cost will look something like the graph below.
Life cycle costing vs. Maintenance Budget
$12,000,000.00
$10,000,000.00
Maintenance
Budget
$8,000,000.00
$6,000,000.00
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016
So when we look at the plant from new we see that maintenance

cost can drop in the first year or so as the plant is new. Normally at
the five-year mark there will be some major component replacements
required. In the case of a meat plant this could be the slaughter chains
and sprockets. The point I am trying to make is the budget changed
from year to year based on the major maintenance requirements of the
plant. As the plant gets older the maintenance costs will go up to keep
on top of the deteriorating plant and buildings. So often due to budget
slashing the maintenance budget is reduced, often triggering the slide
into Chaos Fatigue by the maintenance department.
Sadly this is often misunderstood and pressure goes on to continue
to reduce the maintenance spend over time. The major maintenance
events become surprise failures and the maintenance manager is vili-
fied for the maintenance overspend. So ultimately a long-term strate-
gic maintenance budget is required to control expectation of senior
management and remove these surprises and the inevitable resulting
Chaos Fatigue.

The One in Ten Rule of

‘Maintenance Mortality’
M
aintenance mortality is an important thing to consider when
deciding what maintenance is appropriate. There is a human
error rule that one job in ten will suffer from a human error
related failure. That means that 10% of everything that is pulled to bits
will start to fail when it is started up. This is a significant issue when
there is a large-scale maintenance shut on.
Keep in mind that this 10% rule applies to work done by someone
who is competent at their job and it also takes into account human
error in the manufacture of parts supplied and condition of the plant
being maintained. The concerning part is that if a person takes little
care in what they are doing the mortality rate will be much higher.
There is no economic solution that totally removes the risk of failure
due to the 10% rule. However NASA when they were sending space
shuttles into orbit ran a process that had one person doing the main-
tenance work while another person stood beside him reading out the
procedure from a manual. A third person would come at the comple-
tion of each task and check and sign off on the task.
Although two space shuttles suffered catastrophic failures resulting
in extremely regrettable loss of life, can I just say my heart goes out to
the families of the brave astronaut’s who lost their lives in the pursuit
155
of furthering human knowledge for all of us. Following the root cause
analysis, neither of these failures were caused by maintenance errors.
So it is possible to avoid the 10% failure, however I would argue that
when human life is not at risk it would be hard to justify the three per-
son model used by NASA.
You may choose to question this 10% rule, however it seems to be
consistent with statistics from other industries. For example I heard on
Australian radio the other day that 10% of people that enter the pub-
lic health system can expect complications due to human error. From
my experience if you get one person to rebuild ten pumps that are
identical you can guarantee that one of them will fail at start up from a
damaged bearing or leaking mechanical seal.
Now this rule is at one in ten when you are good at what you do, it is
worse when your maintenance people are rough with the equipment.
An important thing to recognise is that all maintenance people will have
failures if you are not seeing the failures, then they are either good at
hiding them, blaming someone else or they are not doing any work at
all. Getting people to come forward with their failures is very difficult.
The 10% failure risks can be minimised by the following:
1. Don’t pull anything to bits if you don’t have to.

This means that pulling something apart to check it has the same
level of risk as completing an overhaul on it. Therefore if it is not
faulty then a 10% chance of failure is introduced. For this to be
effectively avoided there needs to be a focus on the appropriate
maintenance inspection methodology applied to each piece of
equipment. The application of predictive maintenance method-
ologies will assist in avoiding this type of premature mortality.
2. Fix it professionally so you don’t have to pull it to bits as often.

Repair jobs are often done too hastily and often because they
are repaired as part of a breakdown. The correct level of care
The One in Ten Rule of ‘Maintenance Mortality’ | 157
and attention when undertaking maintenance will pay dividends

in equipment life between overhauls. A hastily installed bear-
ing will often not last more than twelve months before failure;
however a correctly and professionally installed bearing will last
onwards of five years.
To be able to achieve this level of reliability there needs to be a

focus in the following areas:
1. The use of clean rooms

Clean rooms are about ensuring that foreign matter does not
get into bearings and components when units, such as a gear-
box and electric motors, are being assembled following an over-
haul. A bit of grit of only 5 microns in a bearing (your hair is 20
microns) will cause a bearing to start to fail when you start it up.
In short the bearing enters its “failure developing period” from
day one.
2. Cleanliness of lubrication
There is little point in putting effort into assembling machinery
in a clean room if you are only going to pour dirty oil into it! This
is done by having dirty oil filling equipment or by not keeping
stored oil airtight (leaving the lid off a drum, etc.). I wish I had
a dollar for every time I went into a workshop and saw lids left
off oil drums or oil beaker with dirt or grindings in them from a
workshop environment. Oil cleanliness is critical to reliability.
3. The importance of alignment

By not aligning couplings between motors and pumps, or other
driven machines, either when they are direct coupled or when
they are belt driven will add extra load to the bearings or belts
and result in premature failure. Make sure that the tradesmen
are trained and have the tools to complete alignments effec-

tively. In reality a long ruler or a stringline may be enough for
belts and pullies, for couplings you need the right gear.
4. Correct bearing installation

Bearings need to be installed using bearing induction heaters, or
as a minimum the correct bearing installation tools. Too often we
see bearings installed using a punch on the inner or outer race of
the bearing. This will damage a bearing and condemn it to failure
within twelve months.
It is important to note that these are not the only areas that deter-
mine professional maintenance behaviour, however a focus on the
areas listed above will show a dramatic improvement in plant reliability
in the medium term.

Lubrication the Forgotten Art -

Doing The Basics
S
o what are the basics? Every plant requires some sort of lubri-
cation activities; however the methods of doing these lubrica-
tion tasks vary greatly. It has often been the thinking that you
just have to give anyone a grease gun and send them off to grease
everything.
It all sounds good, and off these people go putting the same grease
into everything, greasing everything to the edge of its life. You will
have heard someone say “It better to put in too much grease than not
enough”. Industry best practice suggests that it is best to put the cor-
rect amount of grease in. There is a formula for this that you can get
from your bearing suppliers on the correct volumes based on the bear-
ing size and duty.
Giving a grease gun to operators and sending them off to grease
things is now a supported model with Lean and “autonomous main-
tenance”. That is fine if you are lubricating a shaft running in a bronze
bush. In this case over greasing is fine, considering you are not only
lubricating you are using the grease to expel contaminants like dust and
water. However when you are greasing a bearing the intent is to put in
a measured amount. I need to explain this.
159
When you put grease into a bearing you want the grease to inject
into the bearing while it is running and the grease needs to travels one
and a half times around the bearing race, and that is all. You don’t want
to under-grease the bearing as this will mean not enough grease and
the balls will make contact with the bearing race and start to fail.
Equally you don’t want to over grease the bearing as this can cause
a number of issues, at the very least the seals may be forced out letting
in contaminants. When greasing electric motors you don’t want grease
in the electric motor this will occur if you over grease these bearings.
We should never let an untrained person loose with a grease gun;
however there are more often than not issues with maintenance peo-
ple and their lack of knowledge on the requirements for greasing. If you
combine poor practices of bearing installation with poor lubrication
practices and then bring in a one in ten failure rate for the mainte-
nance work done. You can easily see how the maintenance effort is now
four times what it should have been if the maintenance department is
functional and these simple installation and lubrication practices are
followed. Let me give you an example:
This was in a dairy plant where every year they changed every bear-
ing in every pump – both motors and pump units, in effect bashing
out the old bearings and bashing in new ones. At the time there was
a 3-month gap in the milking seasons that allowed for this work to be
done. Due to the volume of work required to change every bearing in
every pump the tradesmen had to work really fast to get it all done.
I started on this site just as the winter shutdown was about to begin,
this was to good an opportunity to miss. As the tradesmen removed
every bearing they were told to put the old ones into a pallet crate. We
undertook a study of every bearing that was removed from the plant. In
the bearing supply agreement the bearing suppliers had offered unlim-
ited bearing analysis. So we were able to send away every bearing to an
independent lab to identify the condition of the bearings.
Lubrication the Forgotten Art - Doing The Basics | 161
The outcome was a surprise! 83% were in a failing developing period

due to lubrication. This covered lack of lubrication, wrong lubricants,
though surprisingly 28% of these were due to over lubrication. Over
and above the lubrication issues 14% of the total bearings showed signs
of installation damage. The worst fact was 17% of the bearing changed
had nothing wrong with them. The important thing to note is these
bearings should have lasted 5 years or more if they had been installed
correctly and lubricated correctly.
The following year when the maintenance department had gone
through The Evolution of Maintenance™ programme, they were ready
to tackle the process differently. We had changed the way we lubri-
cated the plant. The person completing the lubrication activities was
also doing the condition monitoring based on a strict computer gener-
ated schedule.
Two months before the maintenance shut we did a special run around
all the pumps that had historical had bearings changes annually. Only
the pumps showing a failure-developing period were to be worked on,
this included the mechanical seals, only the leaking mechanical seals
were to be changed. Following the condition monitoring exercise only
22% of the pumps required attention.
In one year of being functional in maintenance we had dropped the
maintenance effort required in one area of the business by 78%. Now
consider that there were 1373 pumps on this site, you will get a feel for
the scale of cost saving. Further to this the tradesmen were now able
to spend time doing the required work more professionally. Ultimately
this allowed for increasing levels of reliability and further cost reduc-
tions over the upcoming years.
Here is the important one when you maintain 1373 pumps you would
expect to have 137 pumps that start to fail from start up due to the one
in ten rule (this is assuming the tradesmen were good – and these guys
were very good). However if you are only working on 303 pumps during
the shut then you are only likely to have issues with 30 pumps following
the start up. Subsequently the plant started on time.
There is a bit more to this - we did have an operator going around
for the three months running all the pumps that we were not working
on. This was done weekly and was done to stops issues with bearings
sitting in one spot and mechanical seals sticking.
Moving forward a few years, after my time there, this company
moved to winter milking. This involves calving at different time of the
years so that milk is available all year round. Because of this change the
site only has a three-week window for maintenance now. This would
have been impossible with the old method of fixed time replacement
with these pumps. Now with these bearings only being replaced on
condition correct lubrication will now pay dividends in reducing the
need for maintenance.
Correct lubrication plays a critical part in the overall process of
functional maintenance. Training is required for all people completing
this work and getting it wrong will have a devastating impact on the
reliability and ultimately the maintenance cost of a plant.
“Plants don’t close from poor workmanship,
but from poor management”
W. Edwards Deming

Conclusion
I
n most manufacturing and mining companies the biggest sustainable
gains, that can be made to the companies bottom line profit, will be
made by getting maintenance to “functional”. We have been demon-
strating this for over a decade now with a 100% success rate with our
change programmes. It is normal to see this change process get main-
tenance departments to functional and puts millions, if not tens of mil-
lions, of dollars of profit onto a company’s bottom line.
However I want to tell you about what I call “oblivious irony”. I am
regularly entertained by oblivious irony, but not in this case. Here is
the frustrating part; many maintenance managers are reluctant to com-
plete a Gap Analysis, let alone a maintenance change programme, due
solely to their ego. I believe this is due to a perceived need to do it
themselves, as if getting help to get to functional is a blight on their
ability and consequently their ego. The Irony here is - it is these guys
who fail to deliver sustainable results because of Chaos Fatigue.
Within eighteen months Chaos Fatigue will have moved these guys
onto another role, often with another company. The incoming mainte-
nance manager, entering the sub-functional maintenance department,
will remove all processes run by the previous manager and start to
implement their own ideas.
The ensuing chaos, that saw the end of the previous maintenance
manager, now consumes the new maintenance manager. Very few of
164
Conclusion | 165
their new ideas will be successfully implemented before the cycle of

Chaos Fatigue runs its course. Another chaos-fatigued maintenance
manager hits the job market and moves onto the next sub-functional
maintenance department.
The irony here is that the maintenance managers that seek help to
get to “functional” are the people that get promoted to better roles
within the company. These are the people that get to talk at confer-
ences about the progress they have made getting the department to
functional. At conferences and seminars these maintenance people go
on to present the advanced maintenance improvements that they and
their teams continue to make now that time is available. These guys are
held up as the true hero’s of the maintenance industry.
However the maintenance managers with the big egos bounce from
Chaos Fatigue failure to Chaos Fatigue failure in twelve to eighteen
month cycles. Sure they are able to tick the box on some gains within
the maintenance department they are leaving. However the new incom-
ing maintenance manager will likely cast these gains aside in favour of
pursuing something different.
If you are a maintenance manager you have an opportunity to break
the Chaos Fatigue cycle and build a genuinely successful and sustain-
able career in maintenance. This will have you consistently delivering
results and doing the “fun stuff” of maintenance in a sustainable and
meaningful manner.
If you are a site manager, general manager or vice-president of
operations there is a very good chance that there is millions of dollars
of profit locked inside your business, a gap analysis will confirm this.
Senior managers are the same as professional athletes – the ones that
deliver the results get the best roles and the big dollars.
Thank you for reading my book I hope it has added value to what you
know and do. As always I welcome your comments and input.
www.synergisticmanagers.com
HAOS FATIGUE - The Company Kille This book is compiled using information, experience and results from over 20 years
of managing change in the manufacturing and mining industries.
This book captures the issues and solutions to major problems that are holding these
industries back.
This book identifies a series of significant issues that are stifling output and robbing
manufacturing and mining companies of valuable profits. Practical and hands
on, this book captures industry’s biggest efficiency issues and presents successful
solutions to these ongoing debilitating and profit robbing plant issues.
As manufacturing and mining have been declining in the west, this book demonstrates
that these industries have been looking at the wrong place to increase efficiency.
This book demonstrates how a directional change in capital intensive industries,
like manufacturing and mining, will increase plant efficiency, profitability, and long
term stability.
This book will be of value to people wishing to understand manufacturing and
mining, and for industry managers on the front line to the executive level, setting
them up for guaranteed improvement success.
“The battlefield is a scene of constant chaos. The winner will be the

one who controls that chaos, both his own and the enemies”.
Napoleon Bonaparte
About the Author

Sean Michael Stayner is a specialist change manager
with an engineering background, Mr Stayner has
worked managing change and efficiency improvement
in the mining and manufacturing industries around
the world, for more than two decades. From this work
Mr Stayner has been able to identify serious issues in
manufacturing and mining companies that are robbing
these companies of significant profit.
Mr Stayner has been a very vocal advocate for the need
for a change in focus in the way we look at equipment
intensive industries. These specific changes, that Mr
Stayner is advocating, have consistently demonstrated
that tens of millions of dollars, and in some cases more
than a hundred million dollars, of profit can be delivered
to a company’s bottom line, in less than 12 months.
As a consequence Mr Stayner is a regular guest lecturer
at Queensland University of Technology and is a guest
speaker at conferences around the world.

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CHAOS FATIGUE

The Company Killer

SEAN MICHAEL STAYNER

lasting productivity improvement. What’s new here is the focus on peo-

Introduction to “The Evolution of Maintenance™”........................................13

Understanding Chaos Fatigue...............................................................................19

Plant Reliability Starts with Maintenance........................................................22

Constantly Chasing the Magic Pill......................................................................29

The Maintenance Fix Commitment....................................................................32

Repeating the Norm.................................................................................................36

How it All Went Wrong........................................................................................... 40

The Evolution of Maintenance™......................................................................... 44

Understanding Maintenance Basics...................................................................47

How Maintenance Change Programmes Fail.................................................54

What is Step One?....................................................................................................59

Basic Areas of Function..........................................................................................63

”Maintenance Planning” and “Maintenance Scheduling”.......................... 74

The Five Types of Managers..................................................................................92

Organisational Management Explained...........................................................101

Stayner’s Pack Mentality.......................................................................................105

The Need for Change............................................................................................109

The Maintenance Problem Everyone Misses................................................ 113

Corporate Maintenance Strategy...................................................................... 119

Continuous Improvement Programmes..........................................................122

Centralise-Decentralise the Progress Killer...................................................132

Insanity at Work....................................................................................................... 136

Unions and Militant Works Forces.................................................................... 139

Understanding Computer Monitored Maintenance Systems................ 144

Maintenance Manager verses Budget Administrator................................ 151

The One in Ten Rule of ‘Maintenance Mortality’........................................ 155

Lubrication the Forgotten Art - Doing The Basics..................................... 159

Mr Tracey Moran – my long term colleague and friend who shares my

teams. Effective teams lead to continuous plant improvement and this

➢ Improving the operation of the plant by modifying it

➢ The installation of new equipment.

You are probably asking yourself ... why it is so important to under-

Understanding Chaos Fatigue

life at work. It is quite normal to go to a plant and see every mainte-

Plant Reliability Starts

* Gary Hamel is chairman of Strategos and a visiting pro-

“...of 50 companies, including Fortune 500 companies such

We have consistently demonstrated in high-speed, and FMCG

We need to understand why this is the case.

● To get plant reliability you must have process reliability.

The diagram below shows how this is the case. To be an effective

To get a consistently reliable plant you need to have ‘process reli-

Plant Build Quality

➢ Was the process built to do what it is currently required to do?

What I am asking is ... What ‘modifications or improvements’ are

Additionally, remember we have not put a cost to your downtime

Constantly Chasing the

The Maintenance Fix

Repeating the Norm

The only way to break this totally pointless loop is to appoint a

How it All Went Wrong

get serious, with deferred maintenance issues resulting in poor reliabil-

managers, an educative process to effectively and genuinely help them

The Evolution of Maintenance™

Our unique point of departure from all other change managers is

Understanding Maintenance Basics

Criticality based Maintenance

I have described the evolutionary path in this way so we can under-

Preventative Maintenance. Historically this has meant pulling things

Item: Variable transmission.