Reliability Gang Podcast
Welcome the #Reliabilitygang Podcast! I would like to welcome you all to my reliability journey. I am passionate about reliability and I want to share as much as I can with everyone with my experiences. Stories are powerful and my aim of this outlet is to gather as many insights and experiences and share them with the world. Thanks for joining the #reliabilitygang.
Reliability Gang Podcast
FROM AGRICULTURE TO PRECISION MAINTENANCE - MEET MR SOLVE - HARRY CRANE
Step into a world where agriculture meets precision engineering with our special guest host, Harry Crane, affectionately known as "Mr. Solve." This episode promises to transform your understanding of maintenance practices as we uncover how Harry transitioned from the fields to become a pivotal part of our business’s Solve division. His role has been crucial in the establishment of our state-of-the-art repair center, a testament to his dedication and innovative spirit. You'll learn how early experiences with steam engines and a passion for mechanics laid the groundwork for a precision-driven approach to solving complex mechanical issues.
Join us as we unravel the parallels between agricultural and industrial maintenance, highlighting the vital role of proactive strategies in minimizing downtime. Through an insightful case study on biogas motors and compressors, we demonstrate the advantages of conducting repairs in a fully equipped center versus on-site fixes. Harry shares his journey of mastering complex repairs after completing an EX course, emphasizing the foresight needed in selecting the right tools and resources. This episode underscores the importance of fostering a culture change—moving from reactive to proactive maintenance—and educating clients on the long-term benefits of reliability engineering.
Concluding with a heartfelt appreciation for our listeners, we reflect on the challenges of implementing cultural shifts in maintenance practices. Harry's journey from agriculture to precision engineering showcases how the right tools and training can elevate work standards and engineer satisfaction. As we continue to champion reliability and precision, we express our excitement about launching a new podcast studio, promising to enhance content production and deliver even more insightful episodes. We thank you for your support and look forward to sharing more stories of innovation and dedication in our upcoming episodes.
Hello, welcome back to another episode of the Reliability Gang podcast. And I'm here with someone actually very different than my right hand man. I'm here with his better looking brother, harry Crane. How you keeping buddy? I'm good, mate, I'm good. How are you yourself? Very good, different kind of set up. Today Will's sunning up in Disney. Actually he's right now in actually America enjoying himself having a couple of weeks off, probably the busiest period.
Speaker 2:He's timed that well, hasn't he?
Speaker 1:He's timed that very well and when he asked me, I was like, yeah, of course you can. And then we've got to this year. I was like, oh crap, maybe I shouldn't have let him have it. But he works exceptionally hard so he does deserve it. But obviously, because he's away for a couple of weeks, we don't have anyone to jump in the podcast. But I thought, no, we do, we have Harry. Harry can jump in. So obviously you guys probably seen on LinkedIn.
Speaker 1:Harry's been posting quite a lot of interesting work with the Solve side of our business and, I'll be honest, he has been such an important integral part of that. Without Harry there would be no Solve. So welcome Harry to the podcast. It's his first one, so please bear with him, be easy, be easy. I'm sure he's got a lot of charisma. Harry has. One thing I've definitely noticed about Harry he's not shy at getting stuck in and talking to customers, which is very, very handy when you've got a lot of things to deal with. So, harry, explain your last year journey, kind of. It's been a whirlwind, hasn't it with you know?
Speaker 2:it has indeed. I mean, where do we start? I started with you in february. Yeah, I left my previous industry and job in the agricultural sector at the end of sort of the last year, so I had a little bit of time off, and then we teamed up in February. We had a bit of chat beforehand, didn't we? It's?
Speaker 1:crazy how, like looking at stuff now as to where it was, it's just propelled forward. It's weird sometimes, isn't it? Because sometimes you get caught up in the moment, you're like, oh, I want to be further than I am, but then you have to almost look back to where you come from to realize that actually, you know, we've probably moved a lot further than we could ever imagine really in terms of of doing what we're doing. Do you know what I mean? So, as you know, the tech solve, improve is a huge like vision of mine and obviously we did a bit of engineering work before harry come on board, but we didn't really ever have a place where we could do them reliable repairs and we get asked quite often actually from our customers do we do repairs on motors and gearboxes and pumps? And we never had that facility. Did we mate?
Speaker 1:And I took a bit of a risk last year and I remember having the building and at the time it was like, right, I really need someone to run with this. I need someone who's going to really have the ambition, have the vision and share that vision, but also have the faith when you can't see anything. And when Harry come, spoke to us in February it already knocked out a wall with a better center and he he literally took the role with two hands and just absolutely ran with it. How has it been since then, from when you first started, to how much you've learned from now?
Speaker 2:It's been busy. There's a lot more to learn than I thought there was and there's a lot more I've taken in my stride that I didn't think I would as well. It was a very big change up of being sort of not bottom of the barrel but being in that employee status where every time I've got a question there's somebody to ask, and it wasn't like you and Will weren't there for that, but it was like this is my bag. I've now got to figure this out, like the problems.
Speaker 1:Did you like that? Did you like having that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Getting, getting and getting the problem solved at the end of it is good job satisfaction for me, seeing where we come from to now and obviously, as you say, when you look back on that, with the wall being there and everything that we've built in these 10, 11 months, there's a lot of satisfaction there for sure.
Speaker 1:Huge amount because I think when you look around, I'm proud of what you've done and, you know, proud of what we've achieved in the last, kind of you know year or so, but kind of you know year or so. But we actually call Harry Mr Solve now, and we call him that for a reason, because whether it's solving a problem for a customer or having a solution within the repair centre, because you know, when we're building this, obviously I used to be a winder and there's a lot of things that I've brought to the table, but there's a lot of things I didn't know. Do you know what I mean? So when you're just a winder somewhere and you've kind of looking at them processes, you don't have all the answers, do you do you know? I mean so me, and Harry was a very much while I say Harry more than me I was kind of giving him problems and it was like, right, we need a bit of a solution for this and Harry would come out and come out with a solution to be able to to rectify some of the problems that we had, to be able to even build that repair centre, which was not the easiest thing to do when you've got a limited budget.
Speaker 1:You know we funded all of that pretty much from our own capital, which is, you know, we've got some asset finance and stuff and bits and bobs, but a lot of it was done out of the profits that we made last year. And it was a really difficult thing to do as well, because you you want to spend money on the right things but you don't want to scrimp and then have to, you know, buy poor quality things that then you have to buy again and but then you also have to have that way up of is do we spend the money here, do we spend it there? And and and I think one thing harry given me was was a lot of clarity about the decision making of how we should do things. Do you know what I mean? Do you enjoy that side of decision making?
Speaker 2:I do, yeah, purely because I never had the opportunity to make them decisions. I'll be honest, though, mate.
Speaker 1:Not everyone likes that. You know what I mean. But I think to be able to be a part of the Solve division, you've got to be able to make a decision. You can't procrastinate in this game. You know, Is that something you had in the previous way or you didn't really have that ability to do that?
Speaker 2:We did to some degree. So as soon as we left the yard on a job or whatever it may be, we're our own bosses. You know We've got to make the call of is that serviceable, is it? We could obviously ring back and reference with the higher techs or our manager and whatnot, but a lot of the decision is trusted in you, Okay.
Speaker 1:You did have an element of that, yeah.
Speaker 2:A little bit of it. But when it comes down to say things in the workshop, where it's more serious gearbox-related engine work and you've got big decisions to make, that would still be down to the manager, ah, okay, but I'd still sometimes like I'm disagreeing.
Speaker 1:I want to replace that. I disagree with my manager, but he's telling me, oh well, the cost of this and that we can't afford to right. So that's where kind of the first reliability, kind of in Harry, came. You know, I mean, and I think how, how is it on the agricultural world in terms of, because obviously it's very different in terms of engineering? But what I would say is some of the stuff that you deal with is still quite complex, because you know some of the gearboxes that you had to fix in the field with limited resource, limited tools and stuff. What has that taught you in terms of, like, moving into this industry?
Speaker 2:yeah. So I think that's a lot where my whole solve mentality sort of come from, because you're, as you say, in the field with limited tools, limited resources. Obviously you can come back to the yard and whatnot, but everything is so time pressure orientated Really.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Because you've got matey boys standing in the field waiting for you. That's money stopped. And he's owner operator, maybe small farm, whatnot? It's constantly go time.
Speaker 1:And that's kind of really kind of parallel to, obviously, the production environments that we're in. And this is where detect solve actually really works really well, because if you're running to fail in your factory, you're in a very similar scenario to these guys within the field that need to get the tractors going to. It was almost like their production line, isn't it? And if, if you've got that in a factory environment, you don't actually have the time to actually probably get things reliable, you know you got to get a quick fix involved and that's part of the problem isn't it a lot of?
Speaker 2:it is also weather, obviously, factory downtime. You're losing a lot more capital because you've got a lot more men there and obviously a lot of production work. But weather-based.
Speaker 1:You have a track to go down for a day and the rest of the week it's raining. That's the problem. There's a lot of different factors in there. Do you know what I mean in terms? But again, I suppose that all kind of ties into the the point of trying to be able to be a bit more proactive with the maintenance, so you know when we can do our maintenance. It is done in a reliable way and it's less pressurized, but we still can do that.
Speaker 1:So we recently have had incredible work with materials change. We've done a great work with, first of all, identifying a lot of different issues on some of these biogas motors, and so these, these compressors, basically, are the bread and butter of what their process is. They'll compress the gas and they'll send them to grid. These are the most important asset on the site. Without these assets and there's no redundancy, these things are constantly driving and pulling that gas into grid.
Speaker 1:But because they're ex environments, this made it very difficult as well, because when we found issues with the bearings with these, and there was some definite electrical problems that we'll get to later on what we were able to do was actually have a strategy where we could use the spare, get that repaired and then change the spare around at different sites to be able to make sure the downtime was left to a minimal. Okay, the reason that we could do that is because this spare that we had could be repaired in the repair center, couldn't it? And there was no pressure. Or there was pressure, we obviously had to do it as quick as we could, but it wasn't rushed, was it what allowed you? So? When you're in the repair center, harry, how does that? How does that differ to being in the field or even on site sometimes? How does that allow you to be a little bit more reliable with your work?
Speaker 2:We've just got a lot more time on our hands. We've got everything to our disposal. We haven't just got a van full of tools. We've got a workshop full of tools, everything that me and you have built over the last 10, 11 months, everything that we've got. We need this. We've everything that we've got. Ah, we need this.
Speaker 1:We've gone out and got it. You just feel so much more comfortable, don't you, when you're in that environment, don't you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, everything's there. If you get to a point where something is not as expected, where you're pulling something off, let's say, for example we've got the tools and the equipment to then handle that from there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is always an issue, isn't it? On site? And as well, obviously, of pressure when you're changing the bearing on site. Yeah, because if you do run into a problem and you've got the limited tools and resource, that also could be a risk to be able to actually extend the downtime of what they've actually kind of planned for, which you know can be a little bit difficult.
Speaker 1:But this scenario with this particular customer was able to do it in a controlled way, was able to do it on our, in our repair center, but also very reliably as well, and it's exmo and harry big congratulations just obviously passes the x course we can now repair, um, you know ex motors as well.
Speaker 1:We'll probably talk about a little bit like that because he knows a hell of a lot more than I do now because I haven't done the course. But, um, obviously because of that he was also able to overhaul these motors, because we couldn't do these on site either. That you can't do an in situ bearing change on the exmo is very difficult to be able to do that and obviously regulations probably would would 100 shy away from that. But because harry had these qualifications, was actually able to still do this behind closed doors, and it was very handy because this particular site had multiple sites and they had one spare that was able to, you know, be used at multiple sites, which was a very efficient thing to be able to do. Do you know what I mean? Because some, some sites, don't even have a spare, you know. So that could be another problem can't it?
Speaker 2:You look, as we say, obviously building the whole journey, the decision to get the flatbed that we said is worth it, and look how many miles we've clocked up on that over the last couple of months.
Speaker 1:Oh God, yeah, 100%. And this is the hard thing when you're decision-making, because you're almost like looking into the future and saying, well, what jobs could we have, what is the range of work that we're going to be servicing, but what tools do we need? And it's really difficult to justify a return on investment sometimes, because you have to have something like that without the work being there. Yeah, yeah, you don't know what you don't really know what's gonna.
Speaker 1:So when obviously we we get it, it's crazy. So we first bought it. It's kind of sat there, oh great, nice asset sitting there not making any money. And this is what's really difficult about a repair center, because and honestly I take my hats off to anyone that's been successful in building this because when it comes down to condition monitoring business, okay, you know you need the equipment. You know you need some vibration equipment. You need to be able to. You know, know what you're doing, you need to have the knowledge. But generally, when you've understood what you need and you've got the knowledge and you've got, you know you've done that and you've done that and you're comfortable with it, the model's quite easy to reciprocate and grow and scale and it's just about kind of then promoting that model further.
Speaker 1:But when it comes to the repair centre, you know you've got motors. You've got the electrical side as well of motors that needs to learn. You've got gearboxes, you've got pumps, you've got mechanical seals. You've got all these things that you know, even this year, that we're still learning around, but also you've got the element of precision maintenance that we are really promoting off the side of it and you know the beautiful thing about having Harry. He will never, ever cut any corner, and that is so important for what we are as a business. You know so every single time, even when you had that at you know, burgess, when you had that before, it was like no, we can't do this because of this. There was always that integral moral thing that you've got. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where does that come from? Or is that just Harry? It's just in him.
Speaker 2:I'm going to have to give that to me, old man, really. Yeah, I think so, and I think that's a lot where my soul comes from as well. It was definitely reinforced through, obviously, previous employment and you know, you're in the field limited tools, I know, and I love that.
Speaker 1:But there's something still very integral there that I think is so aligned with our mission at Maintain, and I think this is why for you, this has worked so beautifully well and it hasn't for some people that have come in. It's because you have that moral reliability. No, it has to be good, it has to be okay, and that standard is really difficult to come by within this industry at times, you know. So explain kind of what. What did your dad teach you when you was younger? Was you kind of, your dad was very much into engineering.
Speaker 2:I know because I've spoken to will about that a lot. Yeah, he, um, he just taught us a lot of things, do you know? I mean, we was always out in the shed. Obviously he's building a steam engine. I'm sure will's talked about that a little bit.
Speaker 1:You gotta tell. You gotta tell people the story about the steam engine. So harry and will's dad, I really respect him and I really appreciate him for giving harry and will this engineering kind of knowledge and love for it he was definitely the start you know he was the start of these without, without harry and will's dad maintain would not be what it is, because these two have had a huge impact on the business, and you know. But it does stem from a story, doesn't?
Speaker 2:it, yeah, yeah, so, um, I must have been. I'd have been younger than 10, I reckon, and he drove up I think it was up lincolnshire way and he's always looked. I maybe used to have a big full-size steam engine and he's always been to the steam rallies and sort of looked at this and I think that's a passion for it. Yeah that's where all of our heads started, were, and mine and will's when we was younger, going to these steam rallies and whatnot thinking, oh, I know how that works and there's lots of moving components and whatnot.
Speaker 2:And then he finally bit the bullet, as I say, and I think it was up lincolnshire or around that area and he bought one out of um casting. So you got sort of the rough shape of things, but you've got to mill it out or put it on the lathe and turn it down, get everything down to perfection. And I remember spending that's incredible probably months, months of one winter bending all these wheel spokes and heating them up with a little butane torch and bending them perfectly just so they all fit around the wheel. And that was a perfection thing. You didn't get them bent right. They won't sit flat.
Speaker 1:So he's got to then get so that all and that's so cool because that them things at early age almost kind of prime you for the future, don't they? In terms of what you're doing? And that's where experience, I suppose, starts at a very early age, doesn't it especially for YouTube, of seeing that and being around that kind of environment, and that for us is amazing, that YouTube can bring kind of then precision and its elements into it, because, you're right, if you don't quite get it to the standard that you need, it's not going to work do it right and do it once do it right and do it once.
Speaker 1:And that philosophy is, you know, is, is is one that I maintain is such an important element, because it's not about just finding the problems and it's not just about fixing them, it's also about making sure they don't reoccur. And and that's when the reliability loop is is kind of tied in, because you might be able to do the first two, but if the last bit isn't done right, then you're back to square one again and it also makes kind of like what we're doing quite futile. So, without being able to really have that 360 solution, it's really difficult. But you, to be able to have that, you need the right mindset and the right culture, and this is where we move into culture as well. I think this is a perfect kind of um moving into, because you're like harry, you'll know as well when you first come.
Speaker 1:You've probably experienced a range of customers, even from the detect side, and harry's actually been on site doing some vibration analysis with us because I think it's really important. He understands that side of the business and what it means, and harry's even filled in a little bit because he's very intuitive about kind of how it works and how we can find the diagnostic side of things, and you did a lot of that as well, didn't you before? Yeah, bubble shooting, didn't you? But just in a different way, didn't you? Yeah?
Speaker 2:so we used to do the full circle. Obviously, when we was in the agriculture side would diagnose the problem myself and then carry out the repairs soon very similar to kind of what we're doing here, isn't it?
Speaker 2:it? Yeah, very similar. Obviously, we'd have a diagnostic tool that we called an EDL, an electronic diagnostic link, I think it was called the tag. And, yeah, we could pull codes off machines and then start looking through the wiring schematics or if it would be a mechanical schematic and tracing where the oil's going or what the issue may be. And I think that's where you've got the methodical side of my head being solved is because you start with a dioxide and it's understanding the full circle of how's this problem been caused?
Speaker 1:Because you don't want to be chasing your tail, do you? You want to know and this is the beautiful thing about vibration analysis and I think this is why you're so interested is because when you do get to an issue or problem, you're like right, what's the exact issue? So I can, rather than wasting time of trying to troubleshoot, I know exactly where to look. And when you've got complex systems, or you know gearboxes, or you've got you know fans or different fan bearings and different kind of drivetrains and stuff, it's very, it's very difficult sometimes to know how to get to the solution. If you're looking at the problem as a whole, if you can kind of break down little areas and see where the actual problems are, you can can say right, this is what we need to fix. So obviously, when Harry's been on site, he's obviously seen it. But also what I think you've actually probably witnessed is the culture has been extremely different from one customer who you know it's all good Like as reliability engineers, we all want them customers that are like yeah, found the problem, yeah, here's the fix, let's do it reliably, let's do it the right. Here's the fix, let's do it reliably, let's do it the right. Of course, that's what we want because that's the business model that we have, but we know that inherently not all the customers are like that and if they were, it would be probably too easy for us.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of customers that were also taking on this culture change and all the rest of it, and you've also worked, doing a lot of solve work as well.
Speaker 1:For them, customers as well which can be challenging because some of the conversations I'm not going to name any names I've come back and you know questions they've asked. It's a bit like no, we can't do that because that's just not the way we do things. And having that, how do we do that? How do we kind of even on the repair side of things, especially when people are trying to cut corners, how do we get them to look kind of like the bigger picture? And how people are trying to cut corners, how do we get them to look kind of like the bigger picture? And how do we start to gradually get them to change the culture within sites, to look at more reliable practices, rather than just trying to kind of bodge things and get going again to then reoccur and repeat the problem? How do we do that, harry? How would you express that within customers as well, in your point of view?
Speaker 2:I think you've said it a lot is a lot of. It is just the culture of the people, do you know? I mean, people are still caught up in the way and I think a lot of the customers even some that we've bought on, that haven't got the detect side of the business, that are just using us for repair work, is I've got a problem, it's broken, you can fix it now I need it fixed, yeah, and it's sort of like that is great, we'll fix it, we'll get you out of the muddle.
Speaker 2:Let's get it back in as quick as we can to reduce this downtime, if there is any, or whatnot. But I think they've just got to understand we can get ahead of this. We don't always have to operate like this. So it's helping them where they can, solving the issue straight away, repairing the motor, getting them back going, and then it's starting that sort of culture change with them and trying to sort of explain look, this is where I was a year and a bit ago.
Speaker 1:I know how you feel, but I'm telling you this way is far better and I think understanding, because I'm still new into it, if you know what I mean and agree, and look, a year or two ago I'd have said the exact same thing with you, but that was just being naive that was yeah, that's that's almost like you know, not really looking at all of the ways that things can be done, yeah, and also just having the having the understanding that this technology exists but also know the power of what you can do, and I think that's that's also another one. I mean, I was at a site the other day doing va and they've got a couple of issues on some some critical kit and that, you know, great guy, this guy really nice guy, really lovely guy, but doesn't necessarily it kind of uses us to be able to get that information. But whenever we do kind of say, look, you need to take action on something, there's always some rebuttals or it's kind of some kickback to say, oh well, no, we had an engineer that just went out and checked it. Well, what did he check? You know you've got to understand that the technology that we're using looks at far more advanced things and you can only do so much when you check something or you look at or you inspect.
Speaker 1:So the whole point of doing vibration analysis or trying to do that is to try to look at the bigger picture from just your regular inspections, because it can pick up a hell of a lot more things than what you can do when you see it. So this kind of culture change as well. For them it's going to be difficult because either two things going to happen something's going to fail when we said it's going to fail and they're going to be like, oh crap, we should have probably maybe took action, or it's going to get to the point where they actually do kind of listen before it happens. But it's going to take a little bit more kind of persuasion to be able to do that. And this is also a very difficult position that we're in sometimes because we don't want to push too far. You know that we're in sometimes because we don't want to push too far. You know against what people think.
Speaker 2:But at the same time, if they don't do that, they're going to have to learn the hard way. Yeah, and, as you say, especially as they're in that damaging pit as they are, because they've come to us with the repair. They're already in the red, if you will, in possibly downtime, or they've had a changeover of motor and it's like I need this repaired and it's like we can't, then, oh well, you should have got us in three months ago.
Speaker 1:Now's not the time to do that. I know you've got to get them out of that mess as well. So, no, I totally get your point. Now I think it's very, very vital that, look, we are repair service as well. We are there to solve the problem, even albeit that we have not, might not detected it before. But then it's almost the re-education part to say, look, why did? Why did it fail? What has happened within this repair?
Speaker 1:So what we'll do as well in the repair centre is have a look at signs of why. Do you know what I mean? So say, for example, the bearing's electrically fluid. You can say, well, there's electrical problems here. We need to now start looking at the electrical issues, because if you put this back in, guys, it's perfectly fine now, but whatever you've got in terms of your inverters creating these issues, that's going to just make it happen again. So this is kind of where maintain reliability is with the repair center.
Speaker 1:And to solve this division is don't get me wrong, we can solve the problems, we can come in, we can, we can do that work. But there's a bigger picture behind it and it's also about educating people with with the right practice and the right reliable practice, so that we don't keep seeing these problems happen again, and I think everyone would agree with me. We don't want to keep seeing repeat failures, do we? Do you know what I mean? No, we don't want to see that. We don't want to see that. So next parking point, right. So we've got a couple of points here as well, points here as well. So this is an interesting talking point. What agricultural engineering compared to precision maintenance? Obviously harry has been in the fields with his. I've seen some of his tools.
Speaker 2:He's custom made some of these spanners like I'm not what custom made makes it sound way better than what it actually is.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm you know, I'm you know I don't want to try to makes it sound way better than what it actually is. Okay, I'm, you know, I'm you know, I don't want to try to make it sound. But look, these tools that he's kind of made. It's like well, have you done it? Then, when he explains to me what it's for, I'm like, okay, I can see, I can see the concept of of why you've has come in. We've like here you go, harry, here's the Aquam AT400. And Harry opens it up and his eyes are like, ahhh, what is this? And I'll be honest, harry learned to use that piece of equipment and he can use it probably better than I can now within probably three weeks. Absolutely. And do you know what it is with alignment equipment? It's it.
Speaker 1:I can't make it easy. Anyone can follow the screen and do that, but it's the engineers behind it. That is such an important thing when it comes to alignment. So when you buy a piece of equipment, you can follow the prompts, you can follow the prompts, you can follow the scripts, and that's all very well when you've got a nice alignment and everything's going to plan. But what happens when you've got horrible soft foot? What happens when you've got horrible pipe strain? And I think they're the things that, as an engineer, you can visually see and you can probably get yourself out of that situation with the equipment.
Speaker 1:So I think what was beautiful when Harry come on, when we give him some proper belt alignment equipment, we give him some precision alignment equipment. We've got the SKF bearing heaters, we've got do you know what I mean? All these pieces of equipment that just make your life tenfold easier. Do you know what I mean? And intertwine into that precision maintenance. How does that differ to where you were? And right now, I know Harry loves the equipment as well. He loves the vibration stuff. How does that kind of your transition from agricultural to precision has been a really seamless kind of transition. How are you feeling with the work you do now, opposed to what you used to do before, and why is it important?
Speaker 2:as well. Well, I'm incredibly more happy and satisfied with the work that I output now because it's done to the standard that I agree with. That I wanted to do a long time ago yeah, I see you've had that moral.
Speaker 1:I need to be able to do this better, and you weren't able to achieve that.
Speaker 2:So go going on to them tools and that, like what you're saying with the AquaMAT 400 and whatnot. I remember in my apprenticeship the first thing they taught us was the seven steps of diagnostics.
Speaker 1:Okay, right, that sounds very interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it talks you through how to diagnose a problem, what you need to know, what you don't, et cetera, et cetera. And the first one was always know your system.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, understand the system.
Speaker 2:Before you touch anything. Yeah, touch anything, yeah. So I took that approach with when obviously we've done a little bit trained on the at400. We went through quite a lot on it and I was like I need to know everything. I want to know everything. So I'm there in my own time researching through how does this work, why does this do this and what every? Because I want to solve the problem. I don't understand this system fully, so I want to some of the things we'll never use on it, but I still want it to know it, to understand it, because we're in the environment where we can do the job properly. Agriculture was so time-driven and time-orientated and cost-orientated understandably that you couldn't do a proper job.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I see You're always kind of. The pressure's always there, isn't it Like just get it done.
Speaker 2:The metrics that you're measured on is time on the job. It doesn't matter about repeat failures or how you can go out to the job three times and that doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:It doesn't matter. It's just in the how quickly you get the job done in the present. So that really doesn't promote reliability, does it? That's kind of almost the opposite yeah, and they've got.
Speaker 2:It's just a poor measuring system of metrics to bonus people on. Really and you just couldn't keep up with it. You're constantly, constantly, well, I'm over time, so you can't do the job properly. You need to cut a corner.
Speaker 1:If that be, drive quicker or whatever it may be Do you think, though, because of that in the end they actually would spend more money.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100%, really.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow, Without a shadow of a doubt, because you would actually have to repeat things that you've probably done, where you probably thought you could have fixed better at the time. Here we go again, because you almost knew that wow, that's incredible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're taping up electrical connections that you've just soldered because there's not enough time to get heat shrink. Yeah so you just quickly rush this through and you're not putting all the cable ties back on. I just slam the guard back on because I'm already over by half an hour. That's crazy. That's crazy. And it's just quickly patting it up and that's that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I suppose that's almost like the culture within that industry. So when you come over, then when you actually had the time to do these things and you had the tools as well, I suppose that scratched a huge, horrible itch that you had for a long period of time. I think that was almost really demoralising for you as well, because I think when you first come over you looked almost broken at the fact about it, Because I think every engineer, like I'm the same. I take a lot of pride in what I do and I want to do a good job. Like every VA report I used to send when it was just me had to be absolutely spot on, and sometimes some people would call it a little bit crazy that I would spend this extra time on things that probably wouldn't matter, but it mattered to me. And I think when you're forced to not do that type of stuff because of the metrics or whatever you're measured on, I forced to not do that type of stuff because of the metrics or whatever you're measured on.
Speaker 2:I think it can really actually get to you, can't it? Yeah, yeah, leaving, leaving sight after doing a job, and I've fixed it customer's happy.
Speaker 1:You know he's back going, but I don't. But you would feel crap about it. Yeah jiggling or I know just it's a horrible kind of like subconscious thought, just knowing that the job could have done, job could have been better.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then you get to the point where you run yourself so low of, oh, this isn't good, and you're just constantly thinking it's just demoralising, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Yeah?
Speaker 2:And then you spend the time on that job and you do it all perfectly and you feel real good that it is great. And then you get back and you get told off because you spent too long.
Speaker 1:It's horrible, so it's like I know. So the and that's the. I think that's the beautiful thing about you coming to maintain and why it's probably worked so well is that the metrics that you wanted completely flipped and there's like. I do have the time to do this properly. I can enjoy this job and and and do it in a precision way, and it's not about taking long on it. It's about doing it to the best of your ability in the time that you've got, but also never cut the corners, but also use the equipment that's going to allow you to do it quicker but more precise and actually give more reliability, like the precision maintenance elements that we've got, like the bearing heaters that we'll take to site, having the right bearing pullers as well. So you're not trying to cut bearings off shafts and ensuring that we have that right equipment, which isn't cheap, by the way, but also allows us not to be able to potentially cause damage when we're trying to take bearings off. We're trying to actually do the maintenance before we put the bearings back on again.
Speaker 1:It's a huge amount of difference, isn't it? In terms of like? The culture change as well, so that's really interesting actually to see kind of like, especially for you, because I think, when you've told me these stories, it's just you're like stepping in a different, you're like almost stepping off a different planet, aren't you? Yeah, just stepping into the like the reliability planet it was everything so different?
Speaker 1:you've got the tools.
Speaker 2:You've got like crazy it was so eye-opening, moving, being like, oh, we can actually do this properly. And then you get all that satisfaction and the joy back and it's like we're doing everything properly or as best as we physically can for reliably. But not just that the job satisfaction knowing there is nothing else I can actually do to make this better, to do this job to that next level. That was that. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1:it is satisfying because we the other day went out and uh tested a couple of the motors that we repaired, actually in the repair center and they'd been aligned by Harry. And when we come back and even Harry does the VA checks as well now after he does the job. But even the other day when we was kind of out there late when we was helping the customer, I was looking around at the equipment that we had and it's like we had the ADX tester on site. You know that's a lot of money. We had the vibration and analyzer just sitting there. Alignment we had the alignment gear sitting there and it's just crazy how much money we've invested in this equipment. But it has to be done because the end product of all of that investment equals the motor when we test it running under one millimeter per second because it's been precision aligned and the bearings are purring. We know exactly how much grease is in them bearings and there's no better feeling of doing that whole piece of work, testing that asset and walking away from it completely knowing, like you said, that we've done absolutely everything we can do to make sure that's running in the best possible condition now, that is, maintain reliability.
Speaker 1:And I think the last two months for me has been probably the most rewarding since I've ever started this business, because don't get me wrong we haven't this year had the huge growth that we had last year. We've definitely acquired some great customers, but what we've done within our own customer base is provide the tech, solve and prove better. And that's where the satisfaction is coming from, and I've got to thank you, mate. You've been a huge part to play in that kind of journey, huge part to play, and without you, it wouldn't be what it is. So I'd like to thank you here on here, in front of everyone. The you wouldn't be what it is. So I'd like to thank you here on here, in front of everyone.
Speaker 1:The reason why you're seeing all these case studies with these bearings coming out and all the rest of it is because the fact we're doing this work now and you know you're you know huge part of that, so you should be proud of that as well, from where you've come and where we've all come from the last year and now it's just a case mate. In it, the world's our oysters now. It's just like we've got to scale this out now. Yeah, we know it's the right way of doing me yeah, I really appreciate that, mate.
Speaker 2:I really do. I think we've, we've both and maintain has come a long way in what? 11 months not?
Speaker 1:a huge amount of a year yeah, it hasn't even been a year and I think you know, sometimes you question what you're doing and it's like you know you invest all this money in this stuff and you're like, oh, oh God, like you know it's, it's like it's not ever ending pit, but there's, there's things you forget about, and but when you start to get the work and you start to see the results of it, of what you're doing, that's when it all starts to make sense. Just a bit like you said with the flatbed, it's like regularly picking up jobs that we wouldn't be able to pick up.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know the investment, even in in in the press. You know very expensive press, but you can't like the job that we had to remember, the one for for Eco Verde, like that took nearly 45 tons of pressure. You know normal press Got that out. So these are the times where you get the justification, you get the feedback back, and it's not always straight away, it's always long-term. So, guys, I want to thank you for kind of being involved with this. I want to thank Harry for jumping on. I definitely think he needs to jump on more because he's been a great host, will better watch out. His spot might be taken. But, guys, thank you for tuning in so much. Hopefully we can get another one out for you this year as well. We try to aim for two a month, but if we don't have a lovely Christmas and the start of the new year, we've got a whole new exciting podcast studio to be reporting from. That's going to be ready to go and we're really going to start pushing out the content again. So, guys, thank you. Thank you, harry.
