Welcome Cliff Williams back to the Podcast. Cliff is a principal advisor with People and Process as well as TMS Asset Management. The guest has also worked as an asset manager for many years.

In this episode we covered:

What's Cliff currently working on?

Presently we are leaning more towards asset management-trying to incorporate maintenance reliability into asset management.

What is operator care?

It implies that those who are operating any piece of the equipment are involved in reliability such that; they need to take care of the machine.

In fact, they are the closest to the machine enough to identify the issues and participate in finding the solutions.

It's like turning car renters into owners, correct?

Yes. It is about breaking the barrier between the operators and maintenance. The operators need to accept new challenges involved in addressing some of the issues that affect the pieces of equipment in their custody.

However, it requires a lot of change management.

How does operator care differ from autonomous management or TPM?

Autonomous maintenance is part of the operating context but it succeeds well if it goes along with preventive maintenance. Operator care on the other hand, looks at changing the role of the operator to assist in maintaining a required operating level.

Operator care does not really change the culture of the organization whereas autonomous maintenance requires culture change.

Where should we use operator care and autonomous maintenance?

It largely depends on the environment;

Autonomous maintenance is best suited for places with a lot of interaction between the operator and the machine or the product. The team is often large in this case. Whereas operator care works in places with minimal or no interaction with the machine. The operation is often computerized such that they only operate a system.

What prerequisites are often needed to implement operator care?

Involves defining what we are going to measure, the impact on people. But you cannot do it without work management,  Right?

Yes. People have to understand the expectations; anticipate how much will be done. Sell the idea of reporting issues that have to be worked on but also be clear that work management is key. Communicate that:

What level of planning is needed?

It's all about change management: you have to sell the idea (what are the desired outcomes and what is expected of the team?). Communicate well to avoid misleading information from other sources.

Anticipate areas you will experience resistance to the change and address them beforehand.

Some organizations simply put up names on a RACI chart and switch responsibilities but it doesn't work like that, does it?

That way both autonomous maintenance and operator care will fail.

About training:

So it is not just the what but also the how and why ?

Yes. The goals have to be clear to the team- if it's about improving availability or throughput.

What similarities are there among organizations that have succeeded in operator care?

The culture is more engaged and collaborative as opposed to command and control. People are often willing to take on extra tasks.

The maintenance team is more involved in value adding projects since operators are capable of taking on technical tasks.

Anything else you want to share?

Where do those who want to make a shift start?

Eruditio Links:

Cliff Williams Links:

Rooted In Reliability podcast is a proud member of Reliability.fm network. We encourage you to please rate and review this podcast on iTunes and Stitcher. It ensures the podcast stays relevant and is easy to find by like-minded professionals. It is only with your ratings and reviews that the Rooted In Reliability podcast can continue to grow. Thank you for providing the small but critical support for the Rooted In Reliability podcast!

The post 272 – Operator Care: A Thought Out Approach with Cliff Williams appeared first on Accendo Reliability.