Do you know the “value add” of each repair activity? Do you know which repair activities are needlessly repeated?
To clarify that second question, consider the following example. Toby was a set-up man in the production department. He seemed to aspire to mediocrity, and that was on his good days. At least twice a week, Toby would break something and a maintenance tech would have to fix it.
Toby’s work methods were sloppy, and he often change things that had nothing to do with setting up the machine. Toby made the same mistakes, no matter how many times a tech explained the problem. These repairs were needless, even though the equipment had to run. The problem was solved by calling Toby’s supervisor to witness each repair. No supervisor, no repair.
The “value add” of an activity that is needless is, by definition, zero. Ask this question to determine if an activity is needless: “Would a customer pay us to do this?” If the answer is no, you need to eliminate that activity. Fixing a machine that Toby broke wasn’t needless, but to keep doing it was. A customer would not want to pay for that.
