Every minute of critical equipment downtime costs money. The plant manager of an appliance plant fought his high downtime rate by ordering a big sign hung over each of three critical lines. The sign read, “$650,000 per hour.” That was the revenue per line.
While well-intended, this tactic backfired. Everyone in the maintenance department saw these signs, and when critical equipment went down the responding techs worked frantically to speed through repairs to get that $650,000 per hour flowing again.
Nobody took the time to:
• Properly investigate the problem. They just replaced parts and tried to set a new speed record when doing so. To “save time” no effort was made to solve the cause of the breakdown.
• Document the problem. There was no follow-up to investigate such things as a design modification to improve reliability or stocking assemblies to eliminate many time-consuming repair steps.
• Properly investigate the solution. They just implemented the same solution each time. Their only concern was the speed of implementation. For one frequently repeated repair, an unread bulletin from the equipment manufacturer had explained exactly how to prevent a recurrence.