Final Thought: What’s Your Lever?

By Dr. Klaus M. Blache, Univ. of Tennessee Reliability & Maintainability Center

Knowing “what” to do is not the same as knowing “how” to do. That holds true for everything. Consider the following example.

To paraphrase Archimedes, with an adequately sized lever and a fulcrum on which to place it, he would “move the world.” On the surface, that boast appears to make sense: Just make the lever long enough (what to do).

Engineers, alas, will be engineers. They like to calculate and ponder all of the possible issues in putting Archimedes’ concept into practice: A simple version of the math, with human forces moving the earth slightly, would require forces and time at an intergalactic level. The work that’s involved remains the same. It’s a smaller effort, but over a longer period of time (so same total energy).

Reality begs to differ. As noted in the 2013 Dedoimedo.com article “Can You Move the Earth with a Lever?,” pressure at the fulcrum would be so great that it could fuse the protons and electrons and possibly result in a black hole. The author also pointed out that the mass of the incredibly long lever would weigh more than the earth.

Archimedes probably used his call for a lever as a metaphor. Looking at it from a reliability perspective means you must understand what your lever is and where the fulcrum should be placed to attain the greatest movement toward business excellence. Consider that most large- and medium-sized companies have more than 100 metrics, but achieve mediocre results. Being able to identify the vital few that can make a significant difference (what to do) would be the lever. Properly implementing (how to do) would be the fulcrum for maximum operational results.

Identifying your lever and where the fulcrum should be placed is key to achieving desired results.

Begin by focusing on roughly five R&M (reliability and maintainability) metrics. For example, the best (proven) leading indicator for improved safety is reduced reactive maintenance. Improved MTBF (mean time between failure), the key metric for reliability, is critical in operational availability. To enable top-quartile performance, it’s important to put the basics in place and do them correctly (and good things will follow). Most large changes (lean, reliability, TPM) fail due to insufficient basics.

My 2015 study of 140 companies (more than 3,000 facilities) showed that the top quartile in reactive maintenance averaged 23% predictive maintenance, i.e., finding problems with predictive technologies. The same study also showed that organizations in the top quartile:

• averaged 9% actual reactive maintenance versus 29% for the middle 50% of companies, and 64% for the bottom quartile
• were 28% better in maintenance cost (as a percentage of sales) than the middle 50%, and 69% better than the bottom quartile
• were 7% better in overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) than the middle 50% of companies, and 10% better than the bottom quartile.

A large part of this success comes from establishing a supportive culture. This is especially important for being able to sustain best-practice performance. Therefore, it shouldn’t be surprising that companies with top-quartile performance in “suggestions per employee,” also did better in safety, maintenance cost, and other areas.

Organizations typically find a lever on which to focus (what to change), but struggle with placement of the fulcrum (how to change). Many also spend substantial time second guessing their lever choice. (If you could only select five metrics to help run/improve your business, would this be one of them?)

At the core of top-quartile performance is a thriving, small-team, continuous-improvement effort, with team members understanding what to work on and how to implement. Like Archimedes, we should all dream big. But at the end of the day, someone actually has to get the job done. That means you need to know not just “what” to do, but “how” to do it.  

Based in Knoxville, Klaus M. Blache is director of the Reliability & Maintainability Center at the Univ. of Tennessee, and a research professor in the College of Engineering. Contact him at kblache@utk.edu.