My Take: Do You Want To Know The Truth?

I checked in with an old friend the other day. Heinz Bloch will be the first to admit that he’s not everybody’s cup of tea. But he’s mine. I met him approximately 16 years ago and he’s been sharing words of wisdom with me ever since. Our latest communications involved issues raised in my December and January columns on the state of reliability efforts across industry—and lack of management support for them.

As Heinz recently explained to a correspondent who wondered what he’d been up to lately, he’s still around, but tends to get to his point a little faster than in the past (which he sometimes regrets).“Every once in a while,” he wrote, “I participate in a failure investigation and get more and more depressed.“ His recap of such a gig and getting to the point sparked this month’s “My Take.”

In late 2015, Heinz was called into a plant to examine the “cremains” (his words) of a failed pump.  Meeting with site reliability personnel, consensus was obtained on various deviations from best practices. In this instance, those deviations had converged and led to a near-miss incident. The group then met with management to report on the collective findings and recommendations. 

As the meeting was about to adjourn, one manager asked Heinz if he had made any other relevant observations. His answer was another question: “Do you want to hear the truth?” Unfortunately, he immediately realized that was the worst possible reply he could have given. “The manager’s ‘yes,’ would expose the meeting attendees to a long list of deficiencies and risks. The manager’s ‘no’ would be even worse in the eyes of the attendees.” (As it turned out, that curious manager really did want to hear the truth. Heinz obliged by revealing more than a few problems.)

The point of this story, as Heinz noted, is that industry can only hope good top managers are serious about addressing the deficiencies found at their sites. “None of us stands to gain,” he said, “from being indifferent to the costly mistakes of others. Re-learning all over again and not paying attention to lessons learned by others is not only expensive, it can be deadly.”

Think of the benefits to be had if managers across industry would, in his words again, institutionalize accountability at all levels. “Insistence on facts and accountability will ruffle many feathers,” he explained “but ruffling feathers today would be a very small price to pay for tomorrow’s operations.”

To that end, Heinz continues urging managers to “annoy” those they manage with advice to read books and articles. “They need help to acquire factual knowledge,” he said. He also believes it’s acceptable for managers to inflict a bit of discomfort on some of their engineers by insisting that they present facts instead of mere opinions.

Asked to sum up what industry, in general, could be doing to improve the state of reliability, he quickly pointed to a time-tested, proven solution. “If we would groom and nurture maintenance and reliability professionals, perhaps with apprenticeship programs similar to what Siemens and Daimler-Benz have been doing for the past 120 years,” he said, “we would not be in the bad shape we’re in today.” To put things in perspective, he continued, “If we trained, nurtured, held on to personnel, and rewarded in the right manner, we wouldn’t have six deviations from best practices, say, on a single component, which, in turn, could lead to the type of previously referenced ‘cremains’ of a critical pump and associated near-miss incident.”

Truth be told, whatever your cup of tea may be, Heinz Bloch continues—feisty as ever—to give us much to think about. I am eager to hear your thoughts. 

jalexander@efficientplantmag.com