Reliaview^TM

Dear Reader,

Since this is the first edition of RELIAVIEW^TM, I thought I would pick the greatest thought leader I know in the area of Maintenance and Reliability.  His name is Charles J. Latino, and I am proud to call him both my Father and Mentor.  Having worked with him for nearly 15 years, I learned the foundation for what Reliability actually means in industry.  Charles has over 55 years of experience in the field of Maintenance and Reliability.  Having spent nearly 35 years working in the chemical industry for Allied Chemical Corporation, he served in various roles in Maintenance and Engineering until he was promoted to create the first corporate Reliability organization in the company’s existence.  This is commonplace today, but in the early 1970’s this was a groundbreaking event.  Charles spent nearly 13 years improving the performance of dozens of the facilities within Allied.  His team was responsible for inculcating the Reliability culture throughout the corporation.  In 1985, Charles decided to retire from Allied and promote these concepts and techniques throughout industry.  He formed a company called Reliability Center, Inc. in Hopewell Virginia to facilitate this process.  Since then, RCI has trained literally thousands of Reliability professionals, in all different types of industries, around the globe.  We are very excited to have been able to bring you this interview in our first edition of RELIAVIEW^TM.  Enjoy!

Ken Latino

Q. Over your distinguished career, what are the primary factors that plants need to focus on to improve their plant’s reliability?

A. The courage to move in the direction of reliability. This needs some clarification. Managements are always under pressure to produce products.  There are times when this mission seemingly comes in conflict with the reliability aim.  For example, we all know that we should find the root causes of breakdowns in our ability to produce product.  Root Cause analysis takes time.  Oftentimes the management will opt for a quick fix instead of the right fix that will eliminate the problem.  It takes courage and innovative thinking to find the compromises that will tend to satisfy both missions.  

    Another example will help to round out my answer.  When the analysis is completed, recommendations for eliminating causes are submitted.  These recommendations can be expensive and time consuming.  Hopefully, the investigators have also submitted a financial justification for the needed changes. However, the post breakdown environment is much less demanding of change than the environment that existed immediately after the breakdown.  Weak managements may chose to delay or even not pursue the recommended changes.  Again, it takes a courageous and innovative reliability management to find alternative solutions and to continue to press the point.

Q. Over the past 50 years, what has changed the most in industry as it relates to reliability? 

A. It is my view that reliability, awareness and technology have allowed us to spot problems early, measure their impact, and to do this faster. As a result, it has helped to promote the reliability effort. This answer also requires some clarification.  Today, we can project what can happen to reduce productivity in our manufacturing plants. We can do this because it is easier to identify errors because we are more aware of them.  And even though we have not eliminated punitive consequences for failure, we are more error-tolerant, and tend to correct such problems with training.  Through the use of software, we have been able to reduce significantly the time it takes to perform reliability analyses and to determine harmful trends and track the impact of solutions. As a result, Reliability Approaches are becoming an indispensable arm of industry. 

Q. On a similar note, what things have remained constant over the same period of time?

A. Because we are human, we form paradigms during our careers.  This is a remarkable force for continuity or maintenance of the Status Quo.  We generally aim to please, and we tend to wrap ourselves around those who compliment our actions.  This is easy, and yet hard to criticize.  Easy, because we can lump a lot of human actions or inactions together and label it “Resistance to Change”. Hard, because we need the brakes paradigms impart.  Imagine an environment where everyone is imposing change.  We would have unbearable confusion.  Yet, we need our best thinkers to break away from the pack and move us towards progress.

    With the concerns I’ve mentioned, I feel that dictatorial  management will always provide the brakes by stifling change.  Whereas, the more progressive managers encourage free thinking so they will produce the progress that propels us into the future.  Incidentally, this is precisely why America is such a great country. For the most part they allow people to think, and eventually, to change their systems.     

    This doesn’t really answer your question, but it is how I see the Reliability world.  We are making remarkable progress, but you have to step back to see it.  Additionally, our speed of progress is impeded because it is nature’s way of controlling change.

Q. Having worked with you for some many years, I repeatedly heard you talk about culture change.  What are your thoughts on culture change in the area of reliability, and why do you feel that it is so important?

A. If a culture is made up of the thinking and actions of the majority of any population, it is the composite of the paradigms that guide these people.  When I came on the industrial scene, the mind set of management was that every effort must be made to keep producing equipment running.  If it stops running for any reason then do whatever is necessary to get it running again quickly. This, in turn, provides the encouragement, the recognition and the emotional rewards for most workers to make sure it happened. As you can see, there is no element of analyzing for root causes, and therefore no provision for permanent fixes.

    As a young engineer, I knew that this was not a recipe for excellence or progress.  If we continued on this course, we would not achieve the potential for runnability that I knew was possible, but which most people could not even conceive in their minds. So, a change in culture was needed.   

    To change a culture, one must provide large incentives for change. Opposing thinking has to be overwhelmed.  One way to do this is demonstrate what could be accomplished with, in our case, reliability changes.  The trick is to get the opening for the demo.  I was able to do it in Allied because I had the authority.  With each demonstration, I gained more authority.  We demonstrated remarkable results, but I made a terrible mistake.  I apparently did not explain why and how the results were happening.  The management was just happy with the outcome. As a result I was not able to institutionalize the Reliability Approach.   

    But through public presentations and some advertising it caught on and many industrial and other institutions want to practice it today.  What helped were the computer and the PROACT software because it simplified the thinking for the user.  And it added discipline to the method.  We now get greater precision and speedy results, two factors that attract users.   

Q.  I have heard you talk about the use of a Reliability Policy.  Can you explain what that is and why you think it is so important for the success of a sustainable Reliability process?

A. A policy is what a management sets forth to influence and guide the decisions of members of their organizations. It is strategic, not tactical, in nature.  I believe that all organizations need a reliability policy that says, in some fashion, that all deviations from normal or routine operations must be studied to determine their root causes.  This does several things for an organization: 

1. It provides an inventory of happenings that detract from the mission of the organization. 

2. It determines reasons why each of these happenings occurs.

3. It allows, with proper software, for a quantification of the cost of each happening.

4. It allows an enterprise to determine what happenings have cousins so they produce groupings of like causes.

5. It allows for organizations to determine the probability of specific groups of happenings occurring in the future, and their impact on the mission of the organization.

6. It provides a means for organizations to determine what and how many resources will be needed to eliminate groups of causes.

7. It allows much more accurate projections of organizational capabilities to perform the organization’s mission. In other words, more precise forecasting.

8. It provides a means of determining organizational training needs.

9. It can also provide a way to control and reduce inventory of supplies used to compensate for deviations. For example repairs of equipment.

10. It can be used to reduce the need for staffing.  As the causes for deviations are eliminated, less staffing will be needed.

One can see that all of these attributes are obtained much more easily with properly designed software, and that is one of the missions of the Reliability Center.  

Finally, one can also see that such a policy is the heart of excellent operations.

Q. If you could provide some advice to today’s Maintenance and Reliability professionals what would it be?

A. When I started working in industry, the mantra was “Get it going”.  Management, as I said above, just wanted the producing equipment running. The Maintenance, and later the Reliability professionals, changed all of that.  Today, progressive management wants to know why a process or a mission fails and what will be done to get it running, so that whatever shut it down does not happen a second time.

The Maintenance and/or Reliability professional works for either one of the more progressive managements or one of the “Get it going” managers.  If the latter is true, then my advice is to do what is right, find the root causes and correct the problem once and for all. The risk is that you may be put aside, bypassed or fired, but not if you are clever you can work both sides of the street.  Provide the boss with what he or she wants, while at the same time collect the data and intelligence needed to identify root causes.  You can do it. I know, because I did it.  When the final results are in, the boss will be a hero, and he or she will know who provided the solutions.

If your boss is a progressive management type, your job will be to extend their thinking to include forecasting whether your mission objectives can be accomplished or extended to include greater achievements.  Remember ,your boss always wants to make or exceed his or her numbers. You can provide the precision needed to look accurately into the future.  And by preventive testing, you can control the path to the future.  You can do this.  The only thing that holds us back is our fears that we may not succeed, but if you stay in front of the pack in technology and its use, it will be very difficult to fail.

You are the professionals that will make the difference. Have fun piling success on top of success.