Crisis Management and weak signals of failure
In the performance of my job as a technical auditor. I am often asked to provide the 'silver bullet' of improvement or asked to select which change will give the 'biggest bang for the buck' worst for me is 'lets harvest the low hanging fruit'. Often these requests are made in times of crisis; not meeting production demand (schedule or quality), increasing costs, Safety (Health, Environmental) incident issues or rather more simplistic the short term need to increase profit. These demand pressures lead to a multitude of interlinked symptoms which feed off each other and form linked conditions.
Getting after single symptoms of course gets you short term gain however the 'silver bullet' has a tendency to be the bullet with your name on it, the 'biggest bang' is the backfire and my favourite is the 'low hanging fruit' which are of course the ones that get pee'd on by the local fauna!
Let me explain, there is a demand, lets say "reducing the cost of production" the response may be, cut backs in the painting programme. One of the symptoms is corrosion (deterioration) of equipment. The corrosion leads to seizures and breakdown. More time and resources are allocated to breakdown so less time is spent on essential maintenance work...and so on. This corresponds a condition (see the diagram at the head of the article). Resource Constraints (1,2,3) Once in this symptom cycle, Human Induced Failures begin to take hold, staff are rushed, and the quality of work drops, morale suffers and your are now locked into the adjacent condition.
The dilemma is that you can enter these cycles at any point and unless recognised the 'engine' starts to propel itself into a crisis.
The remaining conditions are; in no particular order as they are all linked;
- Human Induced Failures (2,3,4,5,6)
- Quality Control Errors (6, 7)
- Scheduling Conflicts (6, 8, 9)
- Productivity Decline (6, 12, 14)
- Quality out of control (10, 13, 14)
If you reference the diagram you can fill in the descriptions yourselves. I would hope that readers will understand that once in these cycles it is very difficult to break out without a significant driver for change and some very bold and confident leadership. Simply trying harder, doing the same things or looking for a simple fix won't cut it.
My challenge is, short term gains (or wins) are very attractive however they are not sustainable long term. The 'bullet', 'bang' or 'berry' should be recognised as such and be part of a programme of improvements, better still why get yourselves into the crisis in the first place?
Next article, how to get out of the muddle, in my humble opinion.
*I can’t find nor remember where the original bubble diagram originated, however it is modified considerably and been converted into a set of gears. I have asked my immediate network, and the best reply (Curtesy of Tracy Strawn at Marshall Institute) was "adapted from memory after a chance encounter with a nameless maintenance professional at a long since forgotten international location ". If anybody wants to claim credit please post a note to me.