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
Human-First Maintenance: Transforming Plants Through People With Joe Anderson (Reliability X)
In this episode, I sat down with Joseph Anderson from Reliability X for one of the most honest and refreshing conversations I’ve had on reliability. We didn’t just talk tools, data, and KPIs… we talked about what really matters: people.
Joseph shares his own journey, from what he calls being a “defect initiator” (yep, he says he would’ve fired himself back then!) to becoming a leader who changed plant performance by focusing first on the people behind the machines. What really hit me was when he mentioned that maintenance departments have an 80–85% divorce rate. It stopped me in my tracks. That stat alone says it all: reliability is about more than machines. It’s about creating workplaces that don’t destroy home lives.
What I love about Joseph is he breaks down reliability into simple human truths. Relationships between operators and maintenance, leaders who actually listen, collaboration over blame. He even draws lessons from his time running restaurants to show how these principles go beyond manufacturing—they’re about how we treat people, full stop.
We also got real about why companies trip themselves up: blaming individuals instead of fixing broken systems, chasing completion rates instead of real results, buying the latest tech without teaching people how to use it properly, and cutting costs today only to pay big later.
Through it all, Joseph keeps coming back to the same truth: when people know you care, they’ll care for the equipment. It’s that simple.
If you lead a maintenance team, run a plant, or just want to get better at building a strong, reliable culture, this one’s for you. As Joseph says:
"Maintenance is simple. Don’t overcomplicate it. Don’t make it harder than it needs to be."
Hello, reliability Gang. Hope all is well. Welcome back to another episode of the Reliability Gang podcast. I have a very, very special guest. I've been following Joe for a long time on LinkedIn. I love some of the stuff that you've done. He's a pioneer within the industry and we've really had a great time, really, haven't we? Good discussion.
Speaker 1:So I'd like to introduce Joseph Anderson from Reliability X. We had to do it, we had to jump on this podcast because we've been a part of a couple of the panels, haven't we? And some of Joe's answers just completely got me absolutely hyped up and gasped with some of the things he's saying, because in reliability in general, Joe, there's a lot of fluff in there, mate, yeah for sure. And I think some of the stuff, that even some of the answers, I think people have kind of been like whoa, like might drop moments and sometimes and I think one of the jobs of us in the reliability gang is also to call people out, sometimes a little bit, you know, I mean to make sure that we're actually spreading the right message, man, right like when it comes to reliability. Joe, explain your story a little bit, and I quite like your journey as well and I quite like that, maybe explain to the viewers a little bit about your journey and kind of where you're at, and we're going to get into the depths of real reliability.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So you know, out of high school I started in maintenance. I was a lube tech, you know I call it. Uh, you know I was the guy putting defects on everything. I didn't know anything Use the defect initiator, not eliminator.
Speaker 2:Right. You never hand a new guy a grease gun right with no training or anything. So you know blowing every seal and doing it. It was nuts Like looking back on it now, I would have fired myself is nuts like looking back on it now, I would have fired myself. Right. But to come from that, I kind of worked up into maintenance management. Um, but I still didn't understand maintenance philosophy. Yeah, you know what proactivity is and how to go about being proactive. I wasn't till about 2011, 2012, where I had a mentor kind of pull me aside and slap some common sense. But from that point forward, um, you know he, he told me we, we kind of got into it. Uh, you know he, he knew how to manipulate my ego and get through it. And I think that's the thing.
Speaker 1:I think we're going through the same battle right now to be and get through it and I think that's the thing, and I think we're going through the same battle right now. To be honest, joe, sometimes and I was quite quite endearing about your story is that you mentioned that you did need the ego change. You didn't need to be able to understand that things need to be done better. And, um, I love your analogy in the in the panel about saying that you know you want to be around for your family. You don't want to to be on the site for 12 hours because you're having failures and breakdowns and that stressful environment, and that was like a very good why to why we need to be better in what we're doing For our own sanity.
Speaker 2:Well, the thing that we never talk about is, at least in the States, divorce rate in the maintenance department. Really it's like 80, 85%, jesus Christ. Really it's like 80, 85%, jesus Christ. Right, and so these guys are sacrificing themselves for the company For Literally no reason at all, because we should be doing the right thing. And so it kind of hit me. Then, after we had that conversation, I kind of went back and did a poll to understand what my guys were going through and try to help them understand that a better quality of life is what it's all about. So you can create a good quality of life when things don't break and you can be highly profitable. You can do both, and so from that point forward, I kind of invested myself into understanding what it takes to turn a plant around and I kind of brought in, you know, some previous restaurant experience, because I owned a restaurant for a little while.
Speaker 1:Oh right, okay, that's interesting. What did you bring from that kind of environment?
Speaker 2:Well, in its simplest terms, a restaurant is small-scale manufacturing.
Speaker 1:It kind of is You're taking raw materials turning it into finished goods.
Speaker 2:There's quality.
Speaker 1:There's performance, All of it, and availability, I suppose as well. And how much food is actually?
Speaker 2:being produced. Well, sure, and if I stick to my specs, my food cost goes down. The more that I sell, or the higher ticket price that I get, you know, the cost goes down. So all that relates into large-scale manufacturing. Yeah, yeah, I love that. It's just a little more complex than a restaurant. But you know, and trying to keep things simple is always something that I've tried to do, because you know the value is in simplicity.
Speaker 1:I agree so much and I think in this world that we've got now, like I've done, arp and there's a lot of tools in there and we talked about like meantime to failure and meantime before failure and all these acronyms and weibull analysis and all this data statistic stuff which I can see has been of value if you've got enough information.
Speaker 1:But the reality is we're not even really in a position right now for 80% of the clients that even apply some of these techniques, because they don't add no value, because they don't have the data there in the first place. You know what I mean. So I think, in terms of the reliability conversation, we've got to have a chat about the simplistic, the things that we need to do, and also the roadmap. Where are you actually at and are you willing as a business to be able to actually invest and resource this properly? Because, yeah, if we don't do that, I mean in my experience we've had a lot of um kickback from that where we started, because we haven't probably again another mistake from our end of kind of reflection, because we haven't really stated that key business drivers, we're not measuring the right things. You never know you're actually going to make a difference, do?
Speaker 2:you know what I mean? Yeah, I mean that's, if you're measuring the right things, you never know you're actually going to make a difference, do you? Know what I mean. Yeah, I mean. If you're measuring the right things, you see the difference. Yeah, exactly One of the things at first, as you progress from reactivity to a more proactive approach, is you can count the smile.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You can count the smiles you go out and you see if we're truly having an effect. People are happy, happier, yeah, yeah, and they don't mind coming into work now. They get excited about things and they want to see a change. Every one of us wants to see the change.
Speaker 1:It's just a lot of us don't know how to get there and how to get there and also how to collaborate to get there, because it's a team effort, isn't it? Like it's one thing? I've kind of um, even in the panel kind of spoke about getting the whole organization involved and a lot of the time we're just having these conversations with just maintenance and we're having a conversation with one side. And this is really difficult when we do that, because when production are also so viable within the conversation about how they operate the machinery and sometimes they don't see that some of their actions actually are causing a high majority of the problems, do you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean that's where a majority of the breakdowns come from. Yeah, exactly right, if you're you know. For example, you take a simple like a box machine, right, you're putting blanks in every time that thing jams. You might, you know, you unjam it and you restart the machine. You take a minute of downtime, right, that's what we don't see is the secondary effects to the machine. Right, we're torquing it. Or you know, yeah, with the damage, of course we're tweaking it right, and so it causes defects to initiate which ultimately will lead to a breakdown. Right, of course. Yeah, and so a lot of times you know you're centerlining and understanding how to properly run equipment, you avoid the breakdowns altogether, you know, and then you hope that your maintenance department has a robust strategy to be able to catch it soon enough.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know what you mean. It's also even like the point of that failure happening. How many people don't even do the rcas and nothing ever really actually gets resolved as well an rca is a blame tool anymore.
Speaker 2:Who's the person we're looking to blame for? This is the kind of scapegoat yeah, right now, and you're staying up at the people level of the cause, of not getting into the latent systemic issues. We don't ever dig far enough.
Speaker 1:Ask enough questions that we? I think that assumption is killing the RCA process.
Speaker 2:Well, it's because we don't understand. Like, for example, a 5y isn't a tool to use regularly? Yeah, it's a troubleshooting tool for operators, for simplicity, to help them understand why the machine stopped. And how can we On that? Yeah, right, you get into different tools you know, like cause mapping, or you can list out all the causes and go after it. That's why I hate root cause analysis. It's root causes analysis. Right, there's the one cause to everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're right, and that's the thing. That's what could be misleading sometimes with people looking just for one singular thing. I'm obviously want to try to go as far back to the first originality point of it, but it's also what you don't want to do is also forget the things that also come after that as well, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2:I feel like we miss that a lot. You know, in industry, you know well, systemic issues are things that are caused by culture. Yeah, right, yeah, yeah, and so it's not just okay. Yes, this person needs trained and yes, we need right. There's all these things that we've got to do to eliminate the cause, but when you get into systemic issues, you know it's all about the culture yeah, how did you find when you was running your plans?
Speaker 1:um, we speak about the, the relationship between production and engineering, and I had an example there where you know, we're at a particular plant at the minute and they're kind of both kind of almost blaming each other for everything. We're like the mediators in between and trying to get into the root cause of the problems. How did you, when you was kind of in your role, how did you marry that together and did you have the same kind of like problems with the communication side? Marry that together and did you have the same kind of like problems with the communication side? Was there a little bit of blame culture on both sides or was it different for you?
Speaker 2:well, every time you walk into a plant that blame culture exists yeah, so I already knew that going in anywhere, I went, yeah, and you have to be tough, and that's the hard part for people. You have to have, you know, critical conversations and accountability. But what I did is I put the onus back on my maintenance tech. Yeah, they come into the shop complaining that the operator doesn't know how to run the machine. Well, did you train them? Don't come to me complaining, yeah, if you haven't done your job. Yeah, ensuring that they know how to run the machine. Well, did you train them? Don't come to me complaining, yeah, if you haven't done your job, ensuring that they know how to run it. And they say, well, it's not my job? Say, yeah, it's not, but you can complain or we can do something about it.
Speaker 2:We have to be the ones to grab the bull by the horns and lead the charge. Who else is going to do it? No one's coming to save you, right? So we have to make a decision. Are we gonna be the ones that push us forward? Are we just gonna complain?
Speaker 1:and not even that. Our life is not gonna get any easier by complaining there's no actions, no output, for that is there's no amen, yeah.
Speaker 2:And then going out and doing a little bit of hand-holding and showing them how to go about doing it as well, cuz a lot of people have that fear of the unknown. I've never done it before, I don't know how to do. It's awesome, man, come on, let you know, let's show you, let me go. Yeah, definitely, and you just start educating them. What what you start finding is is, as your maintenance technicians work with operators, your technicians learn more than the operator does. Yeah, I know you mean.
Speaker 2:Yeah because the operators on this thing 24 7 they understand the internet.
Speaker 1:Even they can start to pick out certain noise or certain things that are a little bit abnormal. These machines because you are right, the engineering team are not on these machines all day. You know the operators are by the machine and you know there's a lot they can add to this as well. Did you kind of, within your appliance, get your operators to do kind of any maintenance on the task?
Speaker 2:Yeah, CIL is well, the L piece is debatable. Depends on the plant. What do you want to do?
Speaker 1:But at least clean and inspect, yeah, and I suppose that is operator driven maintenance, in the sense of just cleaning and making sure things are nice and tidy and giving them the culture of that. I mean, again, we had the same issue with the one that I was talking about the other day with the cleaning of the machine and them not doing it and getting to the root cause. But I mean there was again we talk about root cause analysis. There was a few issues there. It wasn't just the fact that they weren't talking the heads on correctly at a certain rate. The fact is that their cleanliness is a problem.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, and communication, communication. Yeah, instead of blaming each other, it's wet together, right yeah, you, let's solve the problem.
Speaker 1:Three problems, right, three houses that need to be addressed, and that's the thing as well. Like you said, if you just uh, you know, did the talking up, okay, maybe that might stop these things, but it's still going to be other things in the plant that are going to end up happening because of the communication and then the poor cleanliness, right as well.
Speaker 2:The thing is is to get people to understand the principle and how it applies, because once you understand the principle of it, it applies to everything. Yeah, yeah, you know. And so it's not just this one thing that we tighten the head.
Speaker 1:It's the reason why why are we doing this? Where's the culture within that and how do we start to drive that forward? How?
Speaker 2:how do you like a difficult life. I know, yeah, you like this difficult life. I know, yeah, you like this difficult life. It could be a lot easier. I would rather see an operator out reading a book that I gave them, because they don't want to touch a machine and things run. Yeah, right, and I'm helping them grow at the same time, either personally or in business, by reading a book, and what we do is we have this tendency to say, oh, he's reading a book, he needs to grab a broom and start sweeping. It doesn't mean he's so, I know, man, but what we like that is, if we truly care about our people and we want to see them grow, we have to invest in them, and there's a million ways we can do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, into people, right yeah, it's all about people it is, and I think I think we lost the way that we communicate. Like you look at like clients a lot of people that we see. I don't think they're that happy in regards to what they're doing. It's very frustrated.
Speaker 2:Well, it's a toxic culture because if they see leadership doesn't care, why shouldn't we? Yeah, you know they did for a while, and then they shut down and quit telling you about problems. And then they you think that employee is a bad actor. It's like no, for 20 years they told you this issue was going on and you did nothing about it.
Speaker 2:Now they've conditioned in a way where they're just like they're not going to say anything or they're frustrated and they're acting out because they're frustrated. But what's the root cause of that? Yeah, we're not sitting down and you know, maybe they got in a fight with their wife this morning before they left the house.
Speaker 1:Yeah, maybe they had a crap day. You know what I mean. Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 2:Right it's like not everybody.
Speaker 1:It will happen, don't it? We all have bad days. Every one of us have issues. I'm not being funny. One day I may may have happened, might have an argument or whatever, and I'm gonna be me right in a happy stage, and I think we often really forget about that as well with, like, even the people that we're trying to manage or trying to, you know, kind of coach and mentor, and I think empathy, like you said the other day, empathy is so key and, um, yeah, we need to start really treating people better of course.
Speaker 2:There's a great book. It's called leadership and self-deception. There's a great book. It's called Leadership and Self-Deception. Who's the author? It's the Arbinger Institute. Yeah, but Leadership and Self-Deception, that book offended me.
Speaker 1:Was it one of those books you read? You're like, oh my God.
Speaker 2:It's almost uncomfortable to read. Yeah, it was one of these books where it happened myself in a mirror and I didn't like it. Yeah, right and um, I quit reading it.
Speaker 1:I'm like nope like I'm not reading after it's calling me after about a week I was like, all right, come on, come on you gotta read this joke.
Speaker 2:You know, like the. The problem is is they're right and I didn't like it right. Yeah, um, but it's about how we all have this issue of lacking empathy. Yeah, right, like you're at the grocery store, at the gas station, how many times do you just stop and talk to somebody?
Speaker 1:yeah, and not even that, even that you're in a queue and you've got someone in front of you. Maybe you've been a bit slow and your default is like oh come on, hurry up, man and you're right. It's like we have this weird kind of we have to. It's like the subconscious part of our brain is very-. We have to manage the narcissists.
Speaker 2:We have to because we all have it right. Yeah, because the world revolves around us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the total tolerability of what we're doing sometimes is, you're right, we have to almost consciously remind ourselves that we are people and maybe when we go into work and go into that environment, maybe we're kind of working off these automatic programs where that narcissism almost comes through a little bit, because, you're right, the world revolves around you. Am I meeting my kpis? Is the boss going to come and tell me off because he's not doing what he's doing? Was the customer going to be annoyed at me because my employee may be not doing what he should be doing, rather than thinking about, well, how I trained him? Is he aware of what he's doing?
Speaker 2:and all the rest of it. Are they going through, like I said, 80, 85 divorce rate? Are they fighting every night they get home, yeah. Are they kids acting out or all this stuff?
Speaker 1:they've got a problem with their kids. Potentially you know they are they be in trouble.
Speaker 2:You know you have them you know, some kid is addicted to drugs and they're dealing with that issue. Yeah, yeah, if you don't know your people well enough to know what's going on in their lives, then you're not doing your job. You've felt them as a leader, so that's the leadership thing and it's almost being really.
Speaker 1:And I think you are right with that, joe, because I think some of the engineering managers that we've met many you know we deal with a lot now we've got a lot of guys that I'm going out to site and doing a lot of cm services and reliability stuff. But you are right, you can. You can tell the ones that are really in tune with their people. You can tell by the way that their people react to them. Yeah, and the energy, and it's not even what is said, it's how the relationship is and how open things are.
Speaker 2:It's respect it is right. So like giving people like maybe this person for 20 years has come into work on time or he shows up, but now all of a sudden he's going through this stint where he's showing up late all the time there's a problem.
Speaker 2:Instead, what we do is that's a point, that's a point, that's a point. Write them up. Yeah, it's like well, hang on, like we've got now. If he's doing it as blatant disobedience, we Accountability, right. But if it's because, well, my wife left me, now I got to run the kids' school and I got to do the—we need to figure it out. What can I do to help? Right, what can I do to help? Because I need you here, I want you here, you're important to the team. What can I do to help? How can we make this work? But people won't do that. Instead, it's have a plan. Do you think we give up on people too quickly?
Speaker 1:Of course, because it's easier to blame them than to focus on us. It's easier to maybe just for the problem to be eliminated as opposed to yeah, but who caused the problem?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're right. Most of the time it's the leader, it's the leader yeah, yeah. And then we blame them and say, oh, it's easy, we just get rid of them. Then the next guy comes in. Same thing happens, but that's the self-reflection bit.
Speaker 1:It is Because, until you really realize that it's you, you're kind of in this perpetual loop of insanity, aren't you? Because you're going to be causing the problem, and it's a bit like maintenance. It's a machine, you're causing the issues and problems. You're not getting to the, the root cause of it and dressing it because it's you being. It's like that whole self-realization that you've got to put yourself through the self-awareness a little bit as well. Right, how did you're obviously on the other side now you, because you, you can consultancy, so you obviously go to clients, you talk to people and stuff. How do you you through that journey, your kind of self for where you've been, how do you get other people to see it? Is it easy enough to do? Is it hard in some circumstances in terms of what you've got?
Speaker 2:Well, most of the time it's easy because it comes through education and action, right? So if I tell you, hey, you know, get an ultrasound gun where you can do, you know, mechanical inspection, right, and we go out and we check bearings and they find one, right, they're seeing it live time that this technology is working Right and it adds value to that.
Speaker 2:It's like think about this Like, let's take a simple conveyor and let's just say this conveyor is a modular, you know, interlocks or whatever conveyor four bearings, a motor and a gearbox, couple shafts, right, simple, simple machines. I always tell them look, if I understand the condition of my bearings and the condition of my gearbox and the condition of my motor, I can use structure-borne ultrasound and oil analysis. Just that's it. Okay, what else is there left to check? Um, you know, oh well, maybe there's broken modules. Awesome, I can have an operator. They're out there every day if they see something broken, put in a work request, effective, right. What else? You know? Once a year, maybe you break apart the belt and check the spot. Yeah, as a pm, which, yeah, which means I don't need any pms outside of that annual because everything's done on pd.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, getting them to understand maintenance strategy, and it's like getting them in the position to like, say, here's the value, yeah, here's how you get the value out of it. Do you know what I mean? Opposed to rather kind of selling at them, because I think mate so many people within our industry as well. Where we see it is the way they sell is through technical. This sensor can do this. No one cares about that. Obviously, it's important to be able to identify the failure modes that we're trying to see, but where's the value here for me? Well, where?
Speaker 2:does it actually? The problem with selling technology for a lot of people is that a lot of organizations thinks that the technology replaces the skill set, not understanding that you have to train them to give them the skills to be able to utilize the technology. Yeah, and so there's a thinking that well, I bought that, why aren't we using it? It's like that doesn't replace the skills that you need in order to utilize it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's the same with even online sensors, because someone still needs to interpret that, to add the action to it. You know what I mean and that's that's another misconception as well about kind of replacing this whole element of people and the skill set. You still need someone to interpret the information and not even interpret make a decision. That's the hard thing, because we might be able to tell a plant that, okay, you've got a defect here. Whatever, you know, they may have a planned shutdown in three or four months. Yeah, the defect's fairly bad and they're now trying to discover the risk. Do we wait or do we intervene? And that's a hard decision to make, sometimes with limited data. Do you know what I mean? So the data there is evident. What we're seeing, we don't really know when it's going to fail. It could be tomorrow, it could be four weeks, it could be six months. We know unpredictability's there with bearing defects, depending on what we've got then.
Speaker 1:Now he has to make a decision and I remember speaking to one engineer manager and he really hit the nail on the head and he kind of said well, information is brilliant, but you are still going to give me the same report as someone else, as if they know what they're doing with the VA. The decision is still on me. Do you know what I mean? So it's guiding people to make the right decisions and make the right calls when their job's on the line with some of this stuff, some of the implications of him potentially shutting that machine down early. It's going to cost the business a lot of money. But then if he does wait to the shutdown period and it does fat in between, well, who's heads on the chalk and block if their information's being passed over as well?
Speaker 2:Well, that's communication, though, really yeah, and you as a leadership team. When the engineering manager communicates that we have this bearing defect, he should be sharing it with the leadership team, and they should be making the decision together. Right, because then who do you blame when everybody said yes or everybody said no?
Speaker 1:Collective agreement, yeah, but then also, I suppose that promotes as well the fear of making the wrong decision as well, like and eliminates that, because you're making the collective one, but not only that, you've put everyone's brains together as well about it. Do you know what I mean? The thing is, though, in our industry, we don't see that a lot. We see a lot of it's him, it's all on him, and if he makes a mistake, he's the one who's going to suffer, and that's just not. It's not a healthy way of I mean, think of the pressure of that guy, yeah.
Speaker 2:But that's why it's your job to pull them in. Yeah, instead of you know you weighing all the risk on yourself, you pull in the leadership team. You say, look, this is what we're facing, you know? Here are my thoughts, here's all the facts. Here's what we've got. Here's my opinion. What do you guys think? Yeah, they say, well, we need to make it last another four months. Okay, so as long as we're clear, right, I'm all for trying to get it and we'll do everything in my power to try to get it to last another four months.
Speaker 1:But if it does fail, understand the consequence yeah, we got it okay great yeah, and then maybe then they can maybe put a portable online system on it to test it every day, just to double-check, and maybe or be the guy that shoots it with a tube of grease.
Speaker 1:Just whack a whole tube and they know about it. That'll be all right. Yeah, the more the merrier. I love that. I love that as well. The latent bearing defect yeah, we'll put grease in it, yeah, yeah, that will reverse the defect. Yeah, put grease in it, yeah, yeah, that will. That will reverse the defects. Yeah, you know, it will take the defect out of the bed and everything will be okay. It's like guys, it's gonna work.
Speaker 2:There's a hundred percent of defect there as well, but when you pull the whole team in now, blame is distributed across everybody.
Speaker 1:Therefore it goes away yeah, you're right, yeah, if you keep it on yourself to make that decision and the mistake does happen, which they will and then they will put put the blame on you, but I suppose because you didn't communicate your communication skills that allow you to be able to not pass the blame but collectively discuss a problem that needs to be, like, solved together.
Speaker 1:You know, I mean again, though, it all bottles down to communication again, doesn't it? Yeah, the leadership issue it is, and I think companies like we look at maintenance, we look at all the tools and the stuff, but for me it's quite evident that we've got to be good at communicating first. We've got to be good with people first. What can we do to really train our guys? I mean, obviously there's things you can send your guys on, courses and stuff, but I do feel like some of them, courses are a little bit generic. I think we need the empathy stuff. But how do we start to inspire a workforce initially to get that bit right, the communication, that, the empathy and all of that, because you gotta lead yourself version it.
Speaker 2:Yeah right, you're. Your people are only as good as you are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so first it's fixing you and then first and fix, and then people will follow.
Speaker 2:But the question is are you willing to put in the work?
Speaker 1:Yeah, Are you willing to over, kind of, because it's going to be quite. It's going to be a little bit of an uphill battle first and you've got to get out of your own demons and then your own insecurities. I know it sucks, trust me it. It's hard, but does that make you a better person, joe, in life in general? Joe Nye, always Will, barron, because I mean, if you do change the way that you operate with your team, that's going to rub off on your family, that's going to rub off on the people around you, it's going to rub off on your friends.
Speaker 2:Joe Nye, I know you become a good human being. I think we need more of those, Will Barron. Oh mate, we do.
Speaker 1:This is getting deep. This podcast, this is getting really philosophical. Oh my God we're going into. It's a deep waters now. It's a large gap in the industry, yeah, but I love this conversation because it's so. This is what I need. I need to have these conversations with people that actually really understand. It's not just about reliability, it's about people, it's about how do we communicate. It's about empathy, and I don't think I've had one conversation with anyone, even on this podcast, about them. Elements. We've always talked about the tangible things. We've always talked about what we need to do at work and how we need to, you know, manage the maintenance and what cmms is we need to use, and all the rest of it. We've not really talked about the other bit, which is so integral to all the rest.
Speaker 2:If you get the morale high because people know you care, a lot of your issues go away. Yeah, and people don't understand that. Like, for example, if you know how much I care about you because I come out I shake your hand, ask you if you have any issues, how's the family doing whatever? Every day I'm making my rounds. Yeah, you are going to start paying attention. You are going to start paying attention.
Speaker 2:What happens when nobody cares? It's like I don't care, if it jammed, I'll jam it and do it again. And what it does is it shifts people's awareness into understanding that I don't want that thing to fail. So I got to make sure all my center lines are met, the right boxes are in and everything. So a lot of the mistakes that we just kind of let go because we don't care, those things start going away. Yeah, right, and it's nothing we did. We didn't have a more robust maintenance strategy, we didn't have a really great operator strategy. All we did was show that we cared about people and that's why I always say like that morale covers a multitude of sin.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like if you can get that bit right, it's like the cheat code to a degree that a lot of people don't realize. They're trying to implement all these things and implement all these kinds of changes without having the morale bit right and the empathy bit, because we talk about changing culture but a lot of the time we only talk about that as a means to get to the outcome, without actually caring about the people in the first been six months talking about change management.
Speaker 2:In that same time, I'm already turning your planter, yeah, so you can talk about it all you want.
Speaker 1:It's like they've created this framework and this process and completely gloss over the fact that you need to be nicer people it.
Speaker 2:It's the great thing about consultants we like to take things, package them and sell them when a lot of times they're not even necessary. How about you go out and do something? Solve one problem, make it go away and you just won that person for life. You want to change culture. That's how you change culture.
Speaker 1:Go do something Now. He's always going to be able to remember that, because that's something that that guy listens.
Speaker 2:That's all they're thinking. That guy listens, so if I bring him another problem, he'll go and listen to me, which means that they see you as caring, which is such an empathy. Though it's simple, again, it's so simple that we can't comprehend its simplicity, so we have to make it complicated you know why do we do that as human beings?
Speaker 1:man, it's, it's not just. It's not just that is it, it's all things in life that we try to over complicate everything. It's like almost because it's almost too good to be true. We have to be able to justify something else and enjoy that, and a lot of times it's just too good to be true.
Speaker 2:We have to be able to justify something else and then try to and a lot of times it's just because we can, because we're smart or whatever, Like I'll give you an example.
Speaker 1:I wasn't too logical at times, though, and then let you know, less, less emotional, you know.
Speaker 2:Well, what like? I'll give you an example. In a bakery that I worked in, the maintenance manager before me, it was just we did muffins like muffin tins. It's batter, frozen batter, and instead of putting in a conveyor, just a little 90 conveyor, because he could, he put in all these air cylinders and switches and a little compact logics, all this PLC work and you know to come in, kick it out. You know, move it in, kick it out. You know, move it in, kick it out all this stuff. When all he needed was a name. It's like why would you do that? And now you have 50 single points of failure when a conveyor is one of the most reliable because they have low points of value. Yeah, yeah, because I, I can do it.
Speaker 1:So I over engineered this thing because I can't how many things do we see at design stages like that, joe, because we see it all the time. It's what we're looking at, kind of like looking at the problems of things. It's like why have they designed it in a way that is so overcomplicated? And you're right, you've got three or four processes in there that don't actually need to be in there. Now you've got to maintain three extra things. Now you've got three extra things that could fail.
Speaker 1:And when we're looking at these things at design stage like obviously a lot of the things that we potentially buy in the factory is not a decision. Sometimes you know we come into a place and something's been poorly designed right away. Yeah, yeah, it happens. Do we have to start looking at design on everything initially? Just try to eliminate the fact that we have got more points of failure. To try to make it more simple how do we approach that? When you've got a lot of assets or a lot of things that have been designed poorly, we'll get maintenance involved in the design process yeah bring in operators a lot of times.
Speaker 2:Engineering designs in the silo.
Speaker 1:There is yeah, I mean how many times that we even had a case where we did some acceptance testing for a big pharmaceutical company in the UK and it was so. It's so crazy this story, right, because we did a lot of acceptance testing before they even taken, you know, delivery of the goods, but we identified so many design flaws to the company and so many design flaws to the company and they just ignored it. They ignored it, right, and we was like, right, okay, they failed the acceptance testing, but they've not even understood the resonant curves of these fans. You are going to have huge problems with this because when they got them sent back, they were stiffening the structures and doing all sorts without even testing them to understand that changing the natural frequencies of these things was completely blind. So they do do that without doing the proper tests. Right, and we said to even the guys that manufactured the fan. So, basically, this company is an ahu company, so they'll take a fan, pop it in, they'll take this, pop it in and they'll build it all and they'll use their suppliers around it.
Speaker 1:Obviously, the AHU company is an approved supplier for the pharmaceutical company, but the pharmaceutical company is unaware that there's other manufacturers involved in this design process, not just one person, but it's still the AHU companies that understand who they're using as vendors and making sure that they're doing the right kind of things to be able to implement the right tests. But what's really ironic about the story is that when this went to tender, the pharmaceutical company had two options and they went with a cheaper option, with this other guy the more expensive option they they did all these tests. They did finite element analysis. They did all the resonant curves for these things. If they had been made, they would have obviously been considered at design stage, but this was so bad Every single time it went back they didn't understand how to correct it and it went back and forth, back and forth, fail and fail. You can imagine the logistics costs of sending these things back to the manufacturer when you don't understand lifecycle costing.
Speaker 2:That's what gets you into that position.
Speaker 1:That wasn't what really hurt. It was the time because they went six, seven, eight, nine, nearly a year over the project and that costs the company pharmaceutical company millions of pounds. But when you choose the cheaper, you suffer the consequences. I know and this was such a prevalent example that I use nowadays where they didn't have a criteria to what quality was required to be able to perform the function of what they needed and they went with a cheaper option because that was their procurement KPI, as opposed to the reliable option, and it cost them a year of production. It cost them a lot more, it cost them a huge amount more and it was quite funny.
Speaker 1:They all got political and there was always your phone pointing the finger. And don't get me wrong, there was definitely some elements of fault on all parts there, but the reality is it was the mindset in terms of buy cheap, get cheap, and I'm not saying that's always the case, but they still didn't really hold accountable on what terms they wanted to make sure these things could provide and as well, you might have a project deadline and they might be able to say, yeah, we can deliver. But what I think the company needs to also ask. The question is is okay, what parts are required to be able to ensure the reliability of what we need? And they didn't ask them questions.
Speaker 1:And then the design stage was an absolute crap show. It was just we was in the middle of this absolute storm and we was just like, oh my God, it got quite bad. But I mean again, don't cheat the messenger, right, we was kind of in between and we did obviously get quite a lot of money for the acceptance test and all the rest of it, but it was just also such a great example at design stage. Why is it so important to be able to A not go cheap on what you really need to be able to perform, but also set the standards of what you want?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and that's where requirement documentation, stuff like that, specifications yeah, you take the time to do that upfront.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it can save you so much time later on.
Speaker 2:that's the whole design for reliability phase. Yeah, you know, doesn't exist in a lot of space.
Speaker 1:What do we need to do to start ensuring that that's done, because it's I just I, joe, I see everywhere it's like even now, new equipment's being bought and I'm like it's not being designed really for the purpose of what it is, or there's been things missed. How do we make sure that industry wide they know that these things are more important than just such an important part of the process, the reliability?
Speaker 2:it's like anything else. It's education. You've got to educate people, bring awareness. What is the design for reliability process? How does it work? Is education like? You got to educate people? Yeah, bring awareness, you know those types of things. What is the design for a reliability process? How does it work? You know, do you have your stage gates in place to keep you from making a lot of those mistakes? Yeah, that type of stuff, um, and a lot of times it's it's cheapest, slowest cost mentality. But what they don't realize is 10 years later, it costs them 10 to 40 times more it does, and it's such a huge.
Speaker 1:That's the thing. When you're looking at short-term KPIs with cost, how does that affect long-term KPIs with reliability? And again, this is another thing that we talked about in this discussion, these panels. We got asked the same question, didn't we? What metric do we need to use to be able to ensure that we're getting the best out of the planet? Every single time it was OEE, but I don't know. I mean, for me, it's quite evident that is, but when we go to different sites, we ask them how are you measuring the effectiveness of all your processes? Not many people are doing it.
Speaker 2:Well, they don't even know what processes they need to be effective. Yeah, so in maintenance, the way that I break it down is you have to understand an organization, systems and processes, and a lot of people don't understand. But an organization basically is a collection of plants, right? So they have 10 facilities or whatever, right, that's an organization, the collection of those plants. Within every plant there's a number of systems that make up a plant. You have the maintenance system, the operation system, the engineering system, the safety system. The engineering system, the safety system, the quality system. What the system is is all of the processes that allow you to function right. So, for example, in maintenance, I teach there's 15 foundational processes that you have to have, for example, planning and scheduling.
Speaker 2:Planning and scheduling is a process, right. A process does not complete the work, it's a part of the work. The system in and of itself completes the work right. So planning and scheduling if I plan and schedule work, that doesn't get the work done. Right. So you have a work management piece.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you need to know what to do that way.
Speaker 2:The MMS piece. Right, there's all these processes that we have to have in place, and having the right processes. That's your effectiveness piece. You're doing the right things? Yeah, then you can focus on making those processes more efficient. Yeah, until you have the right things in place, why would you focus on?
Speaker 1:efficiency and that's why I think a lot of people are measuring the wrong things, because they haven't got the processes that are actually. And that's the thing about a false KPI. It's a bit like work orders and work order completion If all the work orders are crap and you're doing 100% of crap, you're doing 100% of crap. Pm completion same thing.
Speaker 2:PM completion is Right. The PM itself. I'm 100% ineffective in my PMs. Like, how does that even make?
Speaker 1:sense. It makes no sense and we go to sites it's like, oh, we're behind on our PMs and I'm like, well, if you did 100%, you would be still just 100% more reactive. They're still ineffective. They're still ineffective.
Speaker 2:It's crazy, yeah, but that's what we're taught, and we just kind of regurgitate what we're taught. Or somebody hears something and decides that's the direction we're going to go, without understanding it. Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 1:Yeah we see it quite a lot and it can get frustrating at times, but then I suppose sometimes they need to see it for themselves. I mean, you can tell someone you know, to the cows come home, that the PMs are not effective until they actually start to realize it themselves. Well, telling pms are not effective, um, until they actually start to realize it themselves. Well, telling them and showing them are two different things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, I see, telling them just you're wrong, wrong, wrong. Yeah, that's all they're seeing. And now you're gonna face ego. Yeah say, let me show you why this is the case yeah it's a different way of approaching it, right? If I'm just always like why are you doing that and that? Right, oh, you're attacking me.
Speaker 2:So now I'm like I don't care what you say, you and I, yeah, we're gonna see who wins this argument, right? It's not even about what the point of the argument is. Yeah, right, it's like arguing with your wife. You know you're, you're in it. Are you in it to win the argument? Right are?
Speaker 2:you in it, right or are you in it? Is this going to build the relationship or is it going to hurt the relationship? It's so true, mate. It's so true, yeah, and so taking time to show them why, so that they see it for themselves, you don't have to argue with them once they see it.
Speaker 1:And that's so true, isn't it? Because I love the way that you always take the conversation back to your wife or your mate or your friend. It's true because if you relate it to that, it's like, oh yeah, he's going to be annoyed about that. That's probably not the right way to communicate with this guy. What makes that different to communicate and to engineer managers? It's the same thing.
Speaker 2:Look, if my wife walked up to me and goes you're obese, you really need to get to working on it. Fatty, right. How do you think I'm gonna respond to that? You know what I mean. You're gonna be like what I'm like what. Give me a sandwich Like I'm eating now, like I'm gonna eat more. Right you made me feel sad that no one needs to eat.
Speaker 2:It's not motivating me to go to the gym and right, but if she approached it and said you know I love you, I want you to be here for a long time and let me show you yeah let's go for water together. Yeah, let's do that together. How about a steak instead of the bowl of cereal? I'll make you something a little bit.
Speaker 1:You know it's still nice, but it's still. I suppose that's the way of caring.
Speaker 2:Well, you're building them up, yeah, yeah, I see, and in doing so, you're helping them help themselves.
Speaker 1:We've got to really have that, we've got to be really intricate with it, because I think, if you can, if you can have the empathy and really think about that and be creative with the way that you explain things, because I think identification is one thing. You need to know where the problems are, yeah, but addressing that is another, completely different matter, and I think you need to be able to be empathetic to what you do but also creative, just like that example there, how can I, rather than rather than telling him, how can I show him? So when I do show him, he sees it, but I'm not almost stepping over the line as well and almost not blaming, but kind of pointing the finger.
Speaker 2:Well, like PM, completion right, let's say they're always 100%.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm not going to go in and say, why are you measuring that? That's percent? Yeah. I'm not gonna go in and say, why are you measuring that? That's wrong. I'm gonna say let me show you something. Right, let's look at, let's say, they do the pm over the weekend, right, and then their Monday morning startup is trash. Trash, yeah, because every time they touch a piece of equipment there, they don't put the risk of putting more defects in than getting them out. Is there? Right? It causes other issues. Say, let's just track what your startups are versus your pm completion and they start to see well, there's four hours of downtime every monday morning after we do pm. Yeah, you're currently, and they're going. Oh, so, so you can be a hundred percent complete. That doesn't mean that they're working right, it's still causing, but it's still showing them you're not going.
Speaker 2:Why are?
Speaker 1:you're not going. Why are you doing this? Yeah, you're doing the, you're showing them. But also what I like about that, you're trying to get the facts that support your argument not argument, but support your theory, you know. And when you do that, it has this double amount of effect and I think, a lot of the time, even us I mean we're guilty for it as well, because we're so passionate about this and we all do we just want to just, oh, quick win. Like I want to make it better.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:So then you go in there completely unaware of how you're talking to this guy and he's like, well, no, and it can be so frustrating as well. So, yeah, I totally get it. But Joe, but Joe, honestly, mate, we could talk for days, we could literally run the clock for like hours and hours, but we've got to cut this one off. But I definitely would love to do this again, mate. Yeah, for sure, we can do it over Teams. We can do whatever my pleasure man. Honestly, man, you're an inspiring guy. No-transcript, we're definitely now going to think, we're going to definitely link up now and I want to be able to talk, I want to get more out of you, do?
Speaker 2:you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:So we can apply it to what we're doing as well. But any last thoughts, Joe, just for the podcast.
Speaker 2:No, just keep your head up, it gets easier. Keep your head up and it gets easier. I love that the more you start to understand it, the easier it gets Love. That Maintenance is very simple Don't make it complex, don't overcomplicate it.
Speaker 1:Thank you, joe. I really appreciate your time. Buddy Appreciate you.
