by Rolly Angeles, Reliability Consultant

 

We all know that training plays a vital and very important role in any organization and industry yet most of the time it is not taken very seriously and worst of all it had been the subject of cost reduction measures and initiatives.

 

They say that our people are a company’s biggest asset, but I tend to disagree with this statement since I believe that not all people are assets and that only the right people are the company’s greatest asset and the wrong once are liabilities. Hence, to acquire the right people they must be trained & educated so that they can build their skills and perform their work better, as technologies change, our skills needs to be upgraded in order to cope up with technology.

 

Most industries are looking for a quick fix solution for every single problem they have and they want it done fast and quickly. Hey, lets just copy the best practices from this plant and let us not re-invent the wheel and so a group of people was sent to a journey to copy and benchmark the plant’s success and apply them in their plant and sad to say it did not work.  Did you know how many years they try to achieve that stage ? Did you know how many failures that plant undergone just to reach that stage ? Is their culture, values, beliefs goals, the same as your industry ? Did you know what changes their people made to make that adjustment ? Is the operating condition or operating context their equipment is having the same as yours ?

 

OK, it did not work so lets try another strategy, so you just hired someone who can do the job.  I can’t tell what word you use in your country but here we termed this as pirating which means one industry getting some key people from other industry and offering them much better compensation and salary.  I used to know someone with tremendous amount of knowledge on TPM (Total Productive Maintenance and it’s not me) which was pirated by one industry so that the strategy can be implemented in their industry, after a year, this guy left his work since no one seems to be following  what he is recommending because everyone was busy doing their own day to day things fast and quickly.

 

Again let me state the facts that there is no silver bullet solution or rocket science strategy that will transform a plant’s reliability overnight.  Everything will start from its very basic foundation and that is through training and education.

 

Ok, lets say that I have convince you at this moment and that you are willing to send your people finally for training and if you do then this is just the start of a bigger problem.    A group of people was sent to training and they have absorbed the learning’s and when they return to their work nothing happens.  Management then noted that nothing happens & concludes that training is not the answer and considered it a waste of time and money.  Again they resulted once more in their usual fire-fighting and reactive mode of strategy.

 

Lets take sometime and try to absorbed the message,  that in order to make things fast, we need to slow things down. Lets just take things in a simple way and one step at a time. 

 

Training is an investment, whether you have your own training department or the training will be performed by an outside consultant like me  there would be cost involved such as materials, food, snacks, cost of consultant, handouts, overhead, facilities, electricity, lodging if the consultant needs a place to stay, space if you will be renting or to be done inside your plant etc. Try to plan ahead before spending your money on training.

 

First, we need to have a specific reason on why we need our people to have these trainings.

 

Second, management must understand what the training is all about.  I have often received feedback from people that I train if their management had been trained in the things that I have been discussing. I think that they should be the first to  attend the training before sending their people to it.

 

Third, management must provide the time for their people to practice what they have learned.  Support is not enough, there must be management commitment.  Support and commitment are two different things.  Your management can support yet never commit to your initiative.

 

Fourth, management must provide time to review the logistics required to complete the home run.  Is the consul-tant still needed in the initial stage of implementation ?

 

Fifth, people want to be recognized for their efforts, it gives them a sense of pride and enthusiasm to work better. Although I am not speaking about giving them money in return, but rather by acknowledging them for their efforts.

 

I have been involved in training people for the past 8 years, in which 5 years were spent when I was still employed and the last 3 years conducting training and seminars as an inde-pendent reliability and maintenance consultant and I realized that there is a big difference between them. And since I started this training and consultation venture of my own, up to this point in writing, I have trained around 2,635 people, 165 batches (I started to record only last 2002 up to the present so I know its more), 14 subjects all on reliability and maintenance courses.  Let me share with your some highlights of my career in training.

 

AT AMKOR TECHNOLOGY :

 

A dramatic reduction of breakdowns in their facilities nine substation equipment from 49 times in the year 2000 to only 3 breakdown for the year 2001 through the implementation of Reliability-Centred Maintenance Strategy.

 

A dramatic reduction from 888 failures from 436 equipments as of January 2001 to only 14 breakdowns as of September 2001 through the application of TPM’s Planned Maintenance 4 Phases Through Zero Unplanned Breakdown

 

AT LEPANTO CONSILIDATED MINING COMPANY

Quote from their 2003 Annual Report that a reduced in main-tenance cost from an average of 57 million pesos ( 1 dollar is around 45 pesos) during the 1998 to 2000 period to an ave-rage of P 37 million pesos during the 2001 to 2003 period.  The reduction in maintenance cost was due to our Preventive and lately with the introduction of Predictive Maintenance and Condition-based Maintenance Strategy.