The Managing
System: How to Get Your Dreams to Work
By David A. Army, Strategic Asset Management and Gwendolyn
Army, Foresight Consulting, Inc.
Originally
presented at the
International Maintenance Conference
BACKGROUND
A Hysterical
Perspective
There has been a
great deal of debate over the years revolving around how
maintenance or more importantly, maintenance processes should
and should not be measured. In fact, there is even a committee
within SMRP dedicated to answering those questions. The theories
vary far and wide, but in essence, most of the debate is
centered on how to measure both the current status and the end
result of what has been accomplished. Should it be measured on
maintenance cost per unit output, cost as a percent of
replacement value, on equipment uptime, etcetera, and etcetera.
The debate
continues to rage, but we contend that the debate is focused on
the wrong timeframe and perhaps framework. All of these
measurements, as stated, concern themselves with “outcomes”, or
after the fact measurements of changed variables.
If we look back
seventy or eighty years, to when most of the current accounting
and measurement methods were developed, we find not much has
changed about how we report and measure effectiveness. But times
have changed significantly.
There are four
primary reasons why new performance measures are required:
1. Traditional
accounting and measures are no longer relevant to a company
moving toward a world class operating environment, although they
portray a certain reality
2. Customers are
requiring higher standards; competition has increased, which in
turn requires metrics that relate how well the organization is
meeting those standards and competition
3. Management
techniques, technology and reporting mechanisms used in plants
have changed significantly
4. Behavior change
is now recognized as a key contributor to the success of any
process initiative
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