From Our Perspective: Pushing The Reset Button

Visiting the home of friends recently, I noticed their children watching the 1993 Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day. For readers who aren’t familiar with it, the plot centers around a TV weatherman (played by Murray), who is sent to do a story on Pennsylvania’s “Punxsutawney Phil,” the infamous winter-weather forecasting groundhog. After getting the story and beginning their trip home, the TV crew is forced by a blizzard to return to Punxsutawney. There, Murray’s character becomes caught in a bizarre time loop that forces him to relive the same day over and over. The rest of the movie is about how he first squanders opportunities to reset his life, and later embraces the opportunity to perform good acts and win the affection of his news producer (played by Andie MacDowell).

Getting the chance to metaphorically “push the reset button” as Murray’s character did is something many people wish for in both their personal and working lives. Interestingly, although Groundhog Day is, of course, a fantasy, its very seductive premise is very real—if you know how and where to look for the reset button!

Consider the lubrication and maintenance world, where we are often forced to regularly manage many situations that are seemingly out of our control. This brings up a lengthy pet peeve: change wish lists. The reality is that the ineffectiveness and inefficient practices of maintenance departments are the
root cause of most maintenance issues that we confront on a daily basis.

Unfortunately, in real-life situations, we don’t get to relive the same day again and again. And reset capabilities don’t magically appear before us as large red buttons. Instead we have to learn to recognize “reset” change opportunities—or seek out our own “reset” opportunities guided by our pet-peeve change list. We also must be ready to capitalize on them when they occur.

Some typical reset opportunities include:

When an existing lubricant-supply contract is up for renewal. This requires talking with purchasing to determine when the lubricant-supply contract will be up for bid. This is a great reset opportunity to enlist the prospective supplier to perform a lubricant-consolidation exercise and then put in place a
lubricant-management program complete with standardized workflows, dedicated storage area and dispensing equipment, labeled reservoirs, etc.

When a special plant tour is scheduled. If a VIP or public tour or open house is to take place at your facility, look on it as an opportunity to clean up plant machinery and surrounding areas. Include a 5S clean-up of the lube-storage/dispensing area. This will make it easier to detect future leakage problems and reduce the chance of contamination.

When a manually lubricated bearing fails. Take advantage of a bearing failure—especially a critical failure—to learn why it occurred. Then put forward a proposal to replace single-point manual grease points with either an engineered manual-block dispensing system for multiple points or automated single-point lubricators.

When a CMMS upgrade or change is implemented. Any time legacy data has to be transferred from one system to another, you are presented with a golden reset opportunity. Look on it as a chance perform a data scrub of meaningless unrelated data, introduce improved work flow, code-management and value-based PM job tasks.

Remember: “Groundhog” reset days aren’t just Hollywood fantasies. Nor do they come to us only in winter! Please don’t hesitate to share some of your ideas and experiences along these lines. Good Luck!