Balancing Technology and Workforce Engagement

One of the most overlooked resources available to leaders striving to drive higher levels of reliability into their organization resides at the frontline with the operators who interact daily with physical assets. 

 

Strategy may be theorized in a conference room, but things happen on the shop floor. Leaders often think they know what is happening on the shop floor, but sadly, life happens. For all our best intentions, we find ourselves too busy to visit or interact meaningfully with those making things happen at the front line.  

 

This often leads to implementing some mobile technology solutions in the hopes of bridging the gap and providing greater oversight and visibility of what is happening at the frontline. Technology can be a powerful enhancement to existing good practices or a fantastic distraction from addressing fundamental shortcomings in our day-to-day operational discipline. The difference is in how we consider this technology -- a means to an end of improved measurable results, or as the end game itself. 

 

 

Daily operational discipline starts with setting expectations. What needs to be done to improve the current state of reliability, who will do it, and how often? There exists a typical set of tools that can be leveraged to drive this daily discipline from operators at the front line, which is summarized in the graphic below:

 

Figure 1: Elements of a Typical Operator Care Program

 

These tools are often deployed to produce a more positive outcome, with the possibility of leveraging technology to enhance capabilities in many of these elements. It is important to understand that these tools have no linear progression. Many people fall into the trap of "the more thorough and complete our deployment of these tools, the better results we will see. Leave nothing to chance."

 

The secret to success, oddly enough, is to do less but do it very well through daily discipline. The trick is to focus efforts on what is most important by driving engagement to the frontline. This is best accomplished not with mandates but rather with goals and objectives. Tell us where we are going, and we will get us there. 

 

 

As a leader responsible for overseeing reliability efforts at the frontline, there are two outcomes: one is to achieve compliance, and the other is to achieve measurable results. One is the goal you had in mind when you started this whole effort (the results), and the other (compliance) is meaningless without the corresponding results. 

 

Achieving compliance is straightforward:

Results are real and measurable, so start with the end in mind. What are we trying to achieve, how do we measure success, and how can someone at the frontline contribute towards this success? Drive ownership of the achievement to the frontline with simple, straightforward measures and communication. Show some restraint in this; one side of a piece of paper is plenty to tell this story. Call this single piece of paper the "compelling scorecard" and focus all efforts on making the needles on that scorecard move in the right direction. 

 

Three or four properly selected measures or goals should get the job done. Focus on what is most important and select items within team members' control. Then, help them understand how they can affect better outcomes. Be specific. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

 

It's important to note that these tools are not the outcome; the result is the outcome. Whether we do this all on a piece of paper or a whiteboard or leverage some technology to enhance our performance, the answer is the same: we are always looking for those results by whatever means are available to us.

 

 

This brings us to our conversation about technology being an enabler, not the result we are trying to achieve. As shown in the graphic below from a study performed by the Aberdeen Group, with a focus on improved business process (the who, what, when, where, how, and most importantly, the why of the challenge), we should expect to see a 27% increase in results when compared to baseline.

 

Conversely, when we focus only on technology, we see a profound retreat in our performance versus baseline, in this case, a 7% decrease in performance. I often tell those I work with on these efforts, "If we start with technology, all we will talk about is charging cords and passwords, forgetting what we were trying to accomplish in the first place."

 

When we blend technology with business processes, the real prize of the effort can be realized. The Aberdeen Group finds this proper combination to yield a 75% increase over baseline performance when appropriately applied. 

 

 

Figure 2: Business Process vs Technology Maturity (Source: Aberdeen Group; Business Process Cube MIT)

 

Let's look at examples from an operator care program where technology can be blended to produce the improved results we seek.

 

 

Inspection rounds represent the visual inspections performed by operators during their daily routine. The idea is that we standardize these visual inspections across an operating area, ensuring that each operator is looking at the same asset with the same pass/fail criteria and has the means to immediately either address an abnormal condition, call for help, or formally report the abnormality for resolution at a future date.

 

It is easy to overdo many things in life with operator inspection rounds, and technology can exacerbate this tendency. Keeping with the theme that results are the prize and not compliance or the number of assets inspected on any given day, it is important to focus these inspections on currently underperforming assets, with a direct line of sight back to the results we have agreed upon on our compelling scorecard. 

 

The correct answer is to deploy these rounds on a limited initial scale, forgoing the use of technology for the moment and transitioning to the use of some mobile solution once we have built daily discipline and enjoyed some initial improvement in results. It is time to transition over to a technology-based solution.

 

 

This is the process by which those identifying a problem with an asset or an abnormality can report it formally for future resolution. The only acceptable final answer is a work request or notification in your enterprise asset management (EAM) system, becoming part of your work backlog. 

 

In some cases, with limited maturity, we may start with a simple, highly visible tagging system, with responsibilities established by supporting personnel to create the work request/notification for the operator. In more advanced organizations, a mobile solution may be deployed that will allow for immediate reporting in the field, including pictures and more thorough problem descriptions.

 

The goal here is to facilitate immediate high-quality reporting of abnormalities, with cradle-to-grave visibility by the person reporting the problem, so they can track this abnormality to resolution and speak up if the problem worsens. 

 

 

Finally, let's discuss the communication boards facilitating communication, standardization, and continuous learning. In the past, the only means available to drive this activity would be manual boards, with printed copies of data available to operators such as work order backlog, maintenance work schedule, one-point lessons, root cause failure analysis records, and yes, our compelling scorecard of results.

 

The supreme challenge with such arrangements is that the minute you slip a piece of paper onto the board, it becomes outdated. It does not take long for skeptics participating in the program to see an outdated graph chart to conclude, "I guess we aren't really doing that anymore."

 

With technological advances, it has become straightforward to replicate this paper-based system using large computer monitors and simple landing pages with links to live information. This allows teams to gather around the screen and leverage live data in ways never thought to be possible in the past.

 

Many teams are drawn to the possibilities and will ask for more and more data to be made available to them. It was not that this data was not available in the past; it was a question of overcoming the challenge of finding this information and collaborating around a laptop screen to drive standardization and a shared understanding amongst the team.

 

The adoption here is quite rapid with the correct coaching. It is important to realize that, although live data is available, it takes daily team discipline to gather around and discuss this information in a meaningful way that will drive results. Standard daily meetings and a heavy dose of face-to-face coaching dramatically speed up the adoption rate of such a capability. 

 

 

Do not walk away from reading this paper with the idea that the author is on some anti-technology crusade and that we should hold on desperately to the ways of the past. Quite the opposite is true.

  

Technology has allowed for incredible improvements in our productivity and will continue to do so at an ever-increasing rate into the future. I always tell those I work with, "I truly believe that our only limitation with technology lies with any shortcomings we might have in our imagination."    

 

However, let us also remember why we are using this technology and appreciate what adoption at the front line might look like. Any challenge can be overcome without hard work and daily discipline. People are more likely to adopt technology when they can understand why we are changing and how we can tell if it is working.

 

Driving compliance is a tireless task that we should not wish on our worst enemy. Still, the potential is limitless when we can tie the change in behaviors that we are looking for back to our compelling scorecard and celebrate our success together.