Call 911
In 2005, a ceilings manufacturing plant on the West Coast was experiencing high downtime rates. I was asked to come to the plant and run a Kaizen event to reduce the impact of downtime on the plant.
I was given a small team consisting of four production technicians, two mechanics, one electrician, one engineer, and one supervisor. Our mission wasn’t to solve the specific mechanical or electrical downtime problems, but rather to understand why the response to and recovery from downtime took so long. This was a new concept for the plant and for me, but we felt we were up to the challenge.
On the first day, after getting to know everyone and aligning around our mission for the week, I trained the team in Lean principles. After the training, we decided to walk out to the shop floor and gather feedback from technicians, mechanics, electricians, engineers, and others impacted and frustrated by the downtime in the plant. Almost to a person they told us they felt there was a basic training issue related to the skills of the mechanics and electricians that serviced the lines and didn’t understand why the plant didn’t invest more time and training in their people.
Not satisfied with this and knowing we wouldn’t be able to train all mechanics and electricians during the week; I knew we had to look for other issues we could impact. Back in the meeting room, the team discussed other reasons they thought downtime was so high. After a while, it became apparent we were just finger-pointing and guessing. So, I proposed an experiment. I suggested we stage a downtime event and then observe it from all angles. We would observe the technician making the call for help, the mechanic taking the call for help and others who were involved with the downtime event. Three team members went to the maintenance shop, two went to the supervisor office, and the rest of the team stationed themselves at the point where the downtime would be staged.
One hour later, with everyone in position and the crew aware of our experiment, we staged our downtime event, which was designed to be an electrical fault in one of the paint dryers. After a few minutes of trying to correct things, the production technician made a call to the maintenance shop to tell them about the downtime event. Five minutes later a mechanic and electrician came out to the line. They looked a bit bewildered. The technician that called them wasn’t around, he had gone to the breakroom. It was hard not helping the situation get resolved, but we were observers and had to let things play out naturally.
Ten minutes later, the technician came back and told the mechanic and electrician about the downtime issue. They realized they didn’t have the tools they needed and went back to the shop. Minutes later, they returned and found the technician, who directed them to the location of the downtime. They were on the wrong side of the line, so they carried their tools over a series of steps in order to get to the area to be worked on. They looked annoyed.
About five minutes later, the line was back up and running. The team went back to the meeting room to assess the full downtime event. It turns out that the line was down for more than thirty minutes, of which five minutes was the actual repair and restart of the line. Twenty-five minutes was wasted effort, waiting, and frustration. After a review of Lean principles and much heated discussion, the team came up with a solution to improve the effectiveness of downtime response and recovery. In essence, they crafted three questions to be asked and answered at the time of any downtime incident. They were:
1. Who am I speaking with?
2. What is the downtime issue?
3. What is the exact location of the issue?
The team realized they were essentially creating a script, much like those used by dispatchers during 911 calls. By answering these three questions first, they could reduce the efforts and frustration of the maintenance team by helping them identify the tools and skills they would need, direct location to go to and who their point of contact was. The team also agreed the person making the call shouldn’t leave the area until the maintenance team arrived.
Knowing that they were creating a new way of doing things in the plant, they decided to make it easy for everyone to use. They posted signs at every phone on the manufacturing line in the plant and also in the maintenance shop and engineering offices. They also trained the crews and management and demonstrated how downtime calls should look.
Over the next few weeks, team members were assigned to different locations and helped out any time a downtime event occurred, ensuring the three questions were asked and answered. It took a while, but eventually it became a habit in the plant. Not coincidentally, downtime and general frustration were reduced. The simple communication not only improved productivity but also teamwork between the production and maintenance departments.