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THE
ROLE OF THE RCA DRIVER
The RCA driver can be synonymous with the RCA
Team Leaders. These are the people who organize
all the details and are closest to the work.
Drivers carry the burden of producing
bottom-line results for the RCA effort. Their
teams will meet, analyze, hypothesize, verify
and draw factual conclusions as to why
undesirable outcomes occur. Then they will
develop recommendations or countermeasures to
eliminate the risk of recurrence of the event.
All the executive, manager and Champions efforts
to support RCA are directed at supporting the
Drivers role to ensure success. The Driver is in
a unique position in that he/she deals directly
with the field experts, the people that will
comprise the core team. The personality traits
that are most effective in this role as well as
a core team member role will be discussed at
length in Chapter 6.
From
a functional standpoint the RCA Drivers roles
are:
1. Making arrangements for RCA training for team
leaders and team members - This includes setting
up meeting times, approving training objectives
and providing adequate training rooms.
2. Reiterating expectations to students -
Clarify to students what is expected of them,
when it is expected and how it will be obtained.
The Driver should occasionally set and hold RCA
class reunions. This reunion should be announced
at the initial training so as to set an
expectation of demonstrable performance by that
time.
3. Ensure that RCA support systems are working -
Notify RCA Champion of any deficiencies in
support systems and see that they are corrected.
4. Facilitate RCA teams - The Driver shall lead
the RCA teams and be responsible and accountable
for the team's performance. The Driver will be
responsible for properly documenting every phase
of the analysis.
5. Document performance - The Driver will be
responsible for developing the appropriate
metrics to measure performance against. This
performance shall always be converted from units
to dollars when demonstrating savings, hence
success.
6. Communicate performance - The Driver shall be
the chief spokesperson for the team. They will
present management updates as well as other
individuals on-site and at other similar
operations that could benefit from the
information. The Driver shall develop proper
information distribution routes so that the RCA
results get to others in the organization that
may have, or have had, similar occurrences.
The Driver is the last of the support mechanisms
that should be in place to support such an RCA
effort. Most RCA efforts that we have
encountered are put together at the last minute
as a result of an "incident" that just
occurred. We discussed this topic earlier
regarding using RCA as only a reactive tool.
A structured RCA effort should be properly
placed in an organizational chart. Because RCA
is intended to be a proactive task, it should
reside under the control of a structured
Reliability Department. In the absence of such a
department, it should report to a staff position
such as a VP of Operations or VP of Engineering.
Whatever the case may be, ensure that an RCA
effort is never placed under the control of a
Maintenance Department. By its nature, a
Maintenance Department is a reactive entity.
Their role is to respond to the day-to-day
activities in the field. The role of a true
Reliability Department is to look at tomorrow,
not today. Any proactive task assigned to a
Maintenance Department is typically doomed from
the start.
This is the reason that when
"Reliability" became the buzzword of
the mid 90's that many Maintenance Engineering
Departments were renamed as Reliability
Departments. The same people resided in the
department and they were performing the same
jobs, however their title was changed, and not
their function. If you are an individual who is
charged with the responsibility of responding to
daily problems and also seizing future
opportunities, you are likely to never get to
realize those opportunities. Reaction wins every
time in this scenario.
Now lets assume that at this point we have
developed all the necessary systems and
personnel to support a RCA effort. How do we
know what opportunities to work on first?
Working on the wrong events can be
counterproductive and yield poor results. In the
next chapter we will discuss a technique to use
to sell why you should work on one event versus
another.
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