My notes on chapter 7 of The Science of Success by Charles Koch:

Quotes

• “‘The problem of management’ is ‘how to set up social conditions in any organization so that the goals of the individual merge with the goals of the organization.’ This ‘includes the needs for meaningful work, for responsibility, for creativeness, for being fair and just, for doing what is worthwhile and for preferring to do it well.’”—Abraham Maslow [Wikipedia]
• “To the economically illiterate, if some company makes a million dollars in profit, this means that their products cost a million dollars more than they would have without profits. It never occurs to such people that these products might have cost several million dollars more… without the incentives to be efficient created by the prospect of profit.”—Thomas Sowell [Wikipedia]
• “The only combination of rewards and feedback that seems to improve motivation is rewards that depend not only on doing the task, but upon how well it is done plus informational feedback.”—Charles Murray [Wikipedia]
• “From each according to his ability, to each according to his contribution.”—Charles Koch [Wikipedia]
• “All human beings… prefer meaningful work to meaningless work.”—Abraham Maslow [Wikipedia]

Concepts

• Profit. Incentive that inspired entrepreneurs to be alert and take risks to satisfy customer demands.
• Incentives. Proper incentives result in good and bad people doing the right thing more often.
• Human Action. Action is taken when there is 1) dissatisfaction with present state, 2) vision of a better state, and 3) confidence that the better state can be reached.
• Time Preference. Everyone prefers benefits sooner rather than later, but people with high time preference are more likely to emphasize present benefits. High time preference individuals need greater incentives to defer gratification.
• Perverse Incentives. Incentives that unintentionally reward behavior that is not wanted.
• Agency Problem. Principal hires an agent to act in their interest, but the agent acts in their own interest, contrary to the interest of the principal.
• Aligned Incentives. When the interests of the employee are the same as the interests of the employer. What is good for the company is good for the employer and vice versa.
• Individuallized Compensation. All employees want slightly different things and vary in their contributions, therefore no two individuals necessarily have the same compensation. Even employees filling the same role will be compensated differently.
• Unlimited Compensation. Employers do not limit compensation so that employees do not limit value creation.
• Failure. Strive to avoid, but must recognize if failure was the result of a prudent risk taking or poor judgment.
• Entitlement Mentality. Compensation mistakes: automatic raises, bonuses for meeting budgets, and pay based on title/certificate/diploma/seniority/experience
• Marginal Contribution. 1) What results were achieved? 2) Would the opportunity have been captured without the employee? 3) How did the employee contribute to our culture?
• Continuous Performance Tracking. Employee performance should be tracked throughout the year.
• Carryovers. Performance evaluation should include positive and negative carryovers from previous periods. Do not reward hoped-for benefits and focus on actual, realized benefits.
• Salary. An advance payment for expected future value creation. Extra value creation is rewarded with exta compensation.
• Opportunities for Improvement. Managers should communicate both how specifically to improve and how the employee would benefit from the improvement.

Sources Notes and Links

1. Abraham Maslow. Toward a Psychology of Being. John Wiley and Sons, Hoboken, 1988, pp. 244-245. [Amazon]
2. Thomas Sowell, “Profits without Honor,” www.townhall.com, December 23, 2003.
3. Charles Murray, In Pursuit of Happiness [and Good Government]. Simon and Schuster, New York, 1988, p. 152. [Amazon]
4. William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation: 1620-1647. Modern Library, New York, 1967, p. 133.
5. Stephen Innes, Creating the Commonwealth and the Economic Culture of Puritan New England. W. W. Norton and Co., New York, 1995, p. 62. [Amazon]
6. Charles Bateson, The Convict Ships: 1787-1868. Brown, Son and Ferguson, Glasgow, 1969, pp. 20-21. [Amazon]
7. The Economist, “The Poorest of the Rich,” January 16, 1988, p. 55.
8. Thomas L. Friedman, “The End of the Rainbow,” New York Times, June 29, 2005.
9. Marc A. Miles, Kim R. Holmes, Mary A. O’Grady, Ana I. Eiras, Brett D. Schaefer and Anthony B. Kim, 2006 Index of Economic Freedom. Heritage Foundation, Washington D.C., 2006. [Current version from Heritage]
10. The Economist, “Ireland Shines,” May 17, 1997, p. 16.
11. Ludwig von Mises, Human Action. Regency Co., Chicago, Ill., 1963, pp. 13-14.
12. Abraham Maslow, Eupsychian Management. R. D. Irwin, Homewood, Ill., 1965, p. 28. [Amazon]
13. [No external reference.]
14. [No external reference.]
15. Abraham Maslow, Eupsychian Management. R. D. Irwin, Homewood, Ill., 1965, p. 26. [Amazon]

Common Symptoms and Related Mental Models

Establishing the Right Climate

Without all pieces of the MBM framework, efforts to successfully lead and manage fall short. Without incentives, we have:

MBM Framework: Incentives

Applying MBM as a Supervisor: Incentives

In addition to answering these questions for yourself, how are you ensuring your direct reports are striving to get results with their own direct reports?

Five Stages of Competence (Learning)

Abraham Maslow noted four stages of competence [Wikipedia]:

1. Unconscious Incompetence (UI): The individual does not understand or know how to do something and does not necessarily recognize the deficit.
2. Conscious Incompetence (CI): Though the individual does not understand or know how to do something, he or she does recognize the deficit.
3. Conscious Competence (CC): The individual understands or knows how to do something. However, demonstrating the skill or knowledge requires concentration.
4. Unconscious Competence (UC): The individual has had so much practice with a skill that it has become “second nature” and can be performed easily. He or she may be able to teach it to others, depending upon how and when it was learned.

There is another stage (lower than UI) that has not been formalized by Maslow or others, dealing with Intentional Incompetence (II): intentionally incompetent individuals are those who refuse to acknowledge an obvious need to learn and who intentionally avoid learning new skills. These individuals often have excuses for poor performance, but when offered a way to overcome, refuse to do so. The significance of II individuals is that they are to be avoided since they will not learn and are beyond most help.

Generally speaking, progress through the stages can occur with the following:

• II to UI: Generally can’t/won’t happen outside of methods more brutal than society usually allows. Possibly happens in the military or in prison. Probably requires a sink-or-swim event that bypasses UI and goes straight to CI.
• UI to CI: Defining moment shows an undeniable weakness to individual. (Success enablers: self-awareness, humility, sometimes pride… “I’m better than this!”)
• CI to CC: Individual seeks out knowledge in others or through deliberate practice on their own. Knowledge must turn into action in order to make the leap from CI to CC. (Success enablers: motivation, initiative)
• CC to UC: Motivation turns into discipline through constant, attentive practice. What was once an effort of will is now just how the individual operates. (Success enablers: time, discipline)

Notes on MindTools Bite-Sized Training: Motivation

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs [people must generally be satisfied at lower levels before concentrating on higher levels, through there are always exceptions]:

Herzberg’s Hygiene and Motivational Factors [Hygiene factors cause dissatisfaction, but not fulfillment. Motivational factors are tied to satisfaction and fulfillment. Key point: these are not opposites! Environment should be as rich as possible in motivational factors, and hygiene factors should be removed as barriers to progress.]

Practical Steps to Improve Motivation:

1. Assess hygiene factors (list issues that may be objectively problematic, undermining morale, or causing team member unhappiness)
2. Resolve hygiene factor issues (efforts to increase motivation will be in vain while these are present)
3. Recognize achievements (sincere compliments are the easiest thing to do here) [Author recommends public praise, but I've seen this backfire far too much starting with getting "Employee of the Month" award when I was 16.]
4. Investigate other options to help motivate people (in reality, most managers have very limited discretion/decision rights around compensation, so explore the motivational factors, starting with, but not ending with those listed above.)
5. Look at compensation: pay related (performance-based pay, paid leave banks, achievement-based rewards), schedule related (flexible schedules, compressed workweeks, job sharing, telecommuting, phased retirement, sabbaticals and unpaid leave), and development related (rotation, skills training, career planning, internal advancement opportunities)
6. Take action

Notes on Classic HBR Article “One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees?”

The MBM mental models collections “Incentives” entry includes a reference to this article. Herzberg’s “Myths About Motivation” or attempts to create and instill motivation that failed:

1. Reduce time spent at work
2. Spiraliing wages (downward)
3. Fringe benefits
4. Human relations training
5. Sensitivity training
6. Communications
7. Two-way communication
8. Job participation
9. Employee counseling

Factors affecting job attitudes as reported in 12 investigations

Steps for Job Enrichment

1. Select jobs in which a) investment in industrial engineering does not make changes too costly, b) attitudes are poor, c) hygiene is becoming costly, and d) motivation will make a difference in performance.
2. Approach jobs with conviction that the jobs themselves can be changed.
3. Brainstorm list of changes that may enrich jobs without concern for practicality.
4. Screen list to eliminate suggestions that involve hygiene rather than motivation.
5. Screen for generalities such as “give more responsibility” that are rarely followed in practice.
6. Screen to eliminate horizontal loading suggestion. (Just increases the meaninglessness of the job. Examples: raising targets, increasing clerical activity, rotating assignments, or removing most difficult parts of the job.)
7. Avoid direct participation by employees whose jobs are to be enriched. Use their prior feedback, but avoid direct involvement.
8. Set up a controlled experiment.
9. Be prepared for performance drop in first few weeks. Job changeover may result in temporary reduction in efficiency.
10. Expect first-line supervisors to experience anxiety and hostility.

Experimental Mental Model: Sustainable Self-Driven Behavior Changes

Implications of the Model

• For any successful personal transformation, it takes a high level of motivation to overcome Resistance. Therefore, motivation levels run high at the early stages of a self-transformative effort. The motivation may even take the form of anger or rage, but seldom takes the form of frustration or depression.
• As novelty declines with time, discipline must take the place of motivation as a driving force to sustain the transformative effort. If discipline fails to take hold, the effort fizzles.
• Social support is often used as a crutch to replace discipline (example: Weight Watchers), but when the social support is inevitably removed or distant, the risk of failing in the effort increases. For this reason, social support can bridge the gap from motivation to discipline, but the transformation to discipline-based behavior must be made.
• This mental model probably applies best when taking the step from Conscious Competence to Unconscious Competence.
• Incentives can increase motivation, but discipline makes something “just the way things are done around here.” Therefore, motivation may not decrease linearly, but can get “booster shots” along the way. The end game is self-discipline.

Assumptions Underlying Eupsychian Management Policy

Published online at maslow.org [I can not find specific documented/published evidence for these assumptions, nor more information on the conclusions and implications. Perhaps a future research project.]:

1. Assume everyone is to be trusted. [Everyone in the work group, not the world.]
2. Assume everyone is to be informed as completely as possible of as many facts and truths as possible, i.e., everything relevant to the situation.
3. Assume in all your people the impulse to achieve…
4. Assume that there is no dominance-subordination hierarchy in the jungle sense or authoritarian sense (or “baboon” sense). ["No monkey business" as in Third.ORG for example]
5. Assume that everyone will have the same ultimate managerial objectives and will identify with them no matter where they are in the organization or in the hierarchy.
6. Eupsychian economics must assume good will among all the members of the organization rather than rivalry or jealousy. [No sociopaths at the top.]: Synergy is also assumed.
7. Assume that the individuals involved are healthy enough.
8. Assume that the organization is healthy enough, whatever this means.
9. Assume the “ability to admire”…
10. We must assume that the people in eupsychian plants are not fixated at the safety-need level.
11. Assume an active trend to self-actualization–freedom to effectuate one’s own ideas, to select one’s own friends and one’s own kind of people, to “grow,” to try things out, to make experiments and mistakes, etc.
12. Assume that everyone can enjoy good teamwork, friendship, good group spirit, good group homonomy, good belongingness, and group love.
13. Assume hostility to be primarily reactive rather than character-based.
14. Assume that people can take it, that they are tough, stronger than most people give them credit for.
15. Eupsychian management assumes that people are improvable.
16. Assume that everyone prefers to feel important, needed, useful, successful, proud, respected, rather than unimportant, interchangeable anonymous, wasted, unused, expendable, disrespected.
17. That everyone prefers or perhaps even needs to love his boss (rather than to hate him), and that everyone prefers to respect his boss (rather than to disrespect him)…
18. Assume that everyone dislikes fearing anyone (more than he likes fearing anyone), but that he prefers fearing the boss to despising the boss.
19. Eupsychian management assumes everyone prefers to be a prime mover rather than a passive helper, a tool, a cork tossed about on the waves.
20. Assume a tendency to improve things, to straighten the crooked picture on the wall, to clean up the dirty mess, to put things right, make things better, to do things better.
21. Assume that growth occurs through delight and through boredom.
22. Assume preference for being a whole person and not a part, not a thing or an implement, or tool, or “hand.” ["What shall we think of the well-adjusted slave?"]
23. Assume the preference for working rather than being idle.
24. All human beings, not only eupsychian ones, prefer meaningful work to meaningless work.
25. Assume the preference for personhood, uniqueness as a person, identity (in contrast to being anonymous or interchangeable).
26. We must make the assumption that the person is courageous enough for eupsychian processes.
27. We must make the specific assumptions of nonpsychopathy (a person must have a conscience, must be able to feel shame, embarrassment, sadness, etc.)
28. We must assume the wisdom and the efficacy of self-choice.
29. We must assume that everyone likes to be justly and fairly appreciated, preferably in public.
30. We must assume the defense and growth dialectic for all these positive trends that we have already listed above.
31. Assume that everyone but especially the more developed persons prefer responsibility to dependency and passivity most of the time.
32. The general assumption is that people will get more pleasure out of loving than they will out of hating (although the pleasures of hating are real and should not be overlooked).
33. Assume that fairly well-developed people would rather create than destroy.
34. Assume that fairly well-developed people would rather be interested than be bored.
35. We must ultimately assume at the highest theoretical levels of eupsychian theory, a preference or a tendency to identify with more and more of the world, moving toward the ultimate of mysticism, a fusion with the world, or peak experience, cosmic consciousness, etc.
36. Finally we shall have to work out the assumption of the metamotives and the metapathologies, of the yearning for the “B-values,” i.e., truth, beauty, justice, perfection, and so on.

Notes on Peter Drucker’s Management Challenges for the 21st Century

See: Google Book Preview

• Drucker states on p. 5 that there is (or must be) ONE right organization structure. He also states that there is (or must be) ONE right way to manage people. These statements run directly counter to what I learned in Intercultural Business Communications class based on the LESCANT model [about LESCANT]. Different approaches to organizational structure and management will be needed based on Language, Environment, Social Organization, Context, Authority, Non-Verbal, and Time-Perception aspects. The preview does not include any elaboration Drucker may have provided, but this seems counter to my intuition.

Notes on TED Speech Barry Schwartz on our Loss of Wisdom

Link to the speech here.

• [I don't agree with the speech so much, but it forms an interesting counterpoint to the idea of incentives. Schwartz proposes that we should act on the basis of moral principles rather than incentives. Reeked a bit too much of "new socialist man." Not bad in itself, but contrary to thousands of years of human history.]

Notes on Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

Link to YouTube video here.

• When cash rewards were given by economists studying motivation, they found that “higher pay = better performance” was true as long as only mechanical skill was involved.
• When task called for rudimentary cognitive skill, larger rewards led to poorer performance.
• Experiment replicated in India, where rewards were relatively larger. Results the same.
• Money as a motivator (at work): if you don’t pay enough, they won’t be motivated. Pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table, so employees are thinking about work, not money.
• Primary motivators for complicated, vague, or highly skilled work: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.
• Autonomy: Desire to be self-directed. Contrary to traditional management methods which seek compliance. Don’t try to incentivize people as much as just get out of their way.
• Mastery: The urge to get better at stuff. Tasks are fun when you are good at it.
• Purpose: Making a contribution. Profit and purpose come together. When short-term profit is paramount, investment and customer service tends to suffer, which isn’t a very inspiring confluence for talented people.

Incentives Category from Rooted in Prosperity (MBM Blog)

• Five Dimensions Roundup 5/5/2011: Lists the five dimensions and asks for examples of success or failures attributable to getting them very right or very wrong.
• What’s New? 4/29/2011: Links to videos on Motivation Through Equity and Risk-Taking, Conducting a Pre-Mortem Meeting, and Payments as a Form of Communication and asks to compare/contrast to MBM.
• MBM as Advertised: Incentives 4/6/2011: Links to incentive-based commercial [YouTube] showing Michael Jordan and Larry Bird shooting off for a Big Mac.
• The Art of MBM: The Joy of Teamwork 2/18/2011: Links to Canadian Idol version of the Canadian Railroad Trilogy [YouTube]. Describes the role of purpose in Fulfillment.
• The Pursuit of Happiness 1/27/2011: Money doesn’t buy happiness, but people flourish when they earn their own success.
• The Art of MBM: Empire Builder 1/14/2011: Describes the feats of James Hill, who built the only railroad without taking government subsidies, and proceeded to survive the panic of 1893 better than his competitors. Empire continued to expand until Franklin Roosevelt forced him to stop.
• Quick Takes: Incentives in the Workplace 1/5/2011: Links to radio show about joint venture between GM and Toyota. Toyota introduces innovative (to GM) management techniques and (according to narrative) saves the mill. Compares to performance of other similar unionized facilities.
• Marginal Incentives in Football, Armed Robbery, and the Firm 12/8/2010: Points out strangely similar penalties for rules infractions in football with dramatically different degrees of “badness.” Marginal deterrence is kept small when large “crimes” have almost the same penalty as small ones.
• Culture is Priority One 11/15/2010: Reviewed in precious Virtues & Talents notes.
• Creative Shirkers, Creative Employees 10/21/2010: Motion-sensing lights meant to save energy annoy a non-moving reader in the office, so the author spends 30 minutes rigging a clever device that will keep moving and not allow the motion sensor to shut off the lights. Example of a bureaucratic initiative creating waste, however well-intentioned.
• Heatball: Was Ist Das? 10/19/2010: German company markets now-illegal incandescent light bulbs as “mini-heaters” to get around the rules.
• While We’re On the Topic of Incentives…. 9/21/2010: Picture of a large sign indicating an upcoming narcotics checkpoint. Asks what you would do if you were “trafficking.”
• The Use of Incentives for Those of Us Who Don’t Run Organizations 9/7/2010: Asks how non-CEOs use incentives element of MBM Framework.
• Compensation 9/6/2010: Refers to video above (Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivated Us). Asks three questions: 1) What is the purpose of compensation? 2) What is the role of vision, decision rights, knowledge processes, and virtue and talents in the determination of compensation? 3) Remember that whatever the “game” being played, there is always a bigger game being played around it. Consider the larger questions: what is the role of business in society? What does it mean to have a job?
• MBM Readings 8/3/2010: Reviewed in previous Vision notes.
• Responsibility, Accountability and Authority 4/12/2010: Reviewed in previous Decision Rights notes.
• Economics Everywhere 3/17/2010: Rambling post about oranges, Coke, Wendy’s, Moneyball, and Freakonomics. [No particular insight.]
• Someone Finally Takes the Time to Analyze the Housing Bubble 9/21/2009: More on the mortgage bubble [again, no mention of the incentives created by the federal reserve.]
• The Mortgage Mess Explained (Sort of) 12/5/2008: Brief description of the securitization of mortgages as a result of “easy lending” and the FDIC and federal government. [The responsibility of the Federal Reserve was missed here.]
• Why there will be Gas in Georgia 9/12/2008: Reviewed in precious Knowledge Processes notes.
• Spontaneous Order Revealed 8/11/2008: Brief description of the importance of spontaneous order. [Spontaneous order is the result of a convergence of Virtues and Talents with Incentives and functioning markets. Spontaneous order does not "just happen."]
• When No One is Accountable 7/17/2008: Brief description of moral hazard.
• Creative Destruction Threatens Snail Shortage 7/7/2008: Rising wages cause eastern European snail collectors to find better jobs. Jobs will shift to people with lower opportunity costs.
• The Importance of Vetting Knowledge 7/1/2008: Reviewed in precious Knowledge Processes notes.
• Entrepreneurs and Disaster 6/25/2008: Entrepreneurs react the fastest to anticipated demand after a disaster. Entrepreneurship is in our blood (see: black markets).
• The Heroic Entrepreneur 2/6/2008: Details the life-threatening lengths that spice entrepreneurs went to in the East Indies for 60,000% markups.
• Property Rights, Spontaneous Order, and Clearing the City 12/17/2007: In Chicago, private businesses cleared away the snow after a major storm in order to make way for customers. Only the post office remained uncleared.
• What Affects “Them” Affects You 7/19/2007: Luxury taxes ended up destroying jobs and having a net loss of revenue to the government in both 1965 and 1990. Companies often do the same with IT or facilities management, adding up the costs and then distributing them to various sites as a kind of tax. Proposes the internal market as an alternative.
• Starvation in the Land of Plenty: how property rights saved America 7/3/2007: Tells the story of the almost-destruction and resurrection of the Jamestown colony and ties it back to property rights. [No one tells this story better than Thomas DiLorenzo in How Capitalism Saved America.]
• E.T. Phoned Home but Bangladeshis Can’t 4/11/2007: Government of Bangladesh cracks down on underground phone companies violating the state’s monopoly on phone service, resulting in a complete lack of access for some.
• Beware of “Filtered” Vodka 3/2/2007: Vodka company uses methanol in their product due to government incentives (import tariffs).
• Eying the Prize! 2/16/2007: Richard Branson offers $25 million in a contest for a device to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Author hypothesizes this will generate more creativity than $250 million in government grants.
• Reward Value Creation 5/16/2006: The only sustainable way for wages to rise is through increased productivity.
• Executive Accoutability – Asian style 12/3/2005: CEO of Tokyo stock exchange cuts own salary in half as gesture of responsibility in stock exchange shuts down. Recommends using RCFA to address true systematic cause instead. [Shallow analysis. Author fails to consider that the executives having "skin in the game" would build trust with shareholders and stakeholders, thus making them more likely to trust and do business with this company.]
• Through the Eyes of a Child 11/2/2005: Reviewed in previous Decision Rights notes.
• Leading Change 7/27/2005: Reviewed in previous Vision notes.
• How much is too much? 6/16/2005: Discusses high pay of corporate executives and relates it to scarcity and subjective value.
• Hypocritical Congress – are you surprised 6/8/2005: [Useless political rant.]
• Teaching your kids about money 6/1/2005: Gives a poor example of a man setting up perverse incentives for his children and points to The Millionaire Next Door as a better example.
• What do Incentives and Light Bulbs Have in Common? 5/11/2005: In the Soviet Union, there was a black market in burned-out lightbulbs. Workers would take them to work, replace a good bulb, and report the burned out bulb to maintenance, who would come get the old bulb and sell it back to the black market. Turnaround was estimated to be less than 24 hours.

Book Review: Maintenance Engineering Handbook by R. Keith Mobley

Mobley’s handbook is not what I expected. In the practice of maintenance engineering, there is some information that is valuable to have on-hand for access at any moment:

• Torque tables and calculations for a wide variety of fastener materials and sizes
• Structural and corrosion-resistance properties of typical industrial materials
• Cross sectional and three-dimensional geometric properties of different shapes
• Cause-map and logic tree (RCA) templates for common problems and failure modes
• RCM templates for common components.
• Diagrams on my facility’s manufacturing processes.
• Diagrams of the function of common equipment to facilitate discussion (most of the people I work with swear they can’t draw)
• Troubleshooting charts for common equipment and systems in my plant.

What Mobley’s handbook does mostly contain is a collection of essays on topics similar to those described, and others.

The book’s primary use on my bookshelf will be to refer young engineers and other who might need a remedial education in fundamental topics to get them started. “Never worked with pumps? Read section 5, chapter 12 and then we’ll discuss the reliability issues we’ve been having.”

Key Concepts

• Maintenance engineering is a tactical function with responsibility to ensure maintenance practices are safe and effective. Reliability engineering is a strategic function with long-term accountability for efficiency, maintainability, and life-cycle cost.

Useful Features

The book covers maintenance engineering in a broad and shallow manner. Therefore, features what one might find useful will be very situational. There are many useful pictures, diagrams, and methods throughout the text. Here are just a few.

• “Maintenance Engineer’s Toolbox” (pp. 3.133-3.152)
• Motor troubleshooting charts (pp. 6.21-6.35)
• Contactor troubleshooting charts (pp. 6.53-6.54)
• Sources of materials found in wear particle analysis (p. 7.134)
• Analysis techniques for the oil from various types of machines (p. 7.136)
• Lubricant handling checklist (p. 8.33)
• Entire chapter on piping (pp. 9.55-9.89)
• Welding procedures for typical maintenance applications (pp. 10.32-10.33)

Table of Contents

Section 1: Organization and Management of the Maintenance Function

Chapter 1: Redefining Maintenance—Delivering Reliability

Chapter 2: Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Maintenance

Chapter 3: Maintenance and Reliability Engineering

Chapter 4: Cooperative Partnerships

Chapter 5: Effective Maintenance Organizations

Chapter 6: Operating Policies of Effective Maintenance

Chapter 7: Six Sigma Safety: Applying Quality Management Principles to Foster a Zero-Injury Safety Culture

Section 2: The Horizons of Maintenance Management

Chapter 1: Corrective Maintenance

Chapter 2: Reliability-Based Preventive Maintenance

Chapter 3: Predictive Maintenance

Chapter 4: Reliability-Centered Maintenance

Chapter 5: Total Productive Maintenance

Chapter 6: Maintenance Repair and Operations—Storeroom Excellence

Chapter 7: Computerized Planning and Scheduling

Chapter 8: Computer-Based Maintenance Management Systems

Section 3: Engineering and Analysis Tools

Chapter 1: Economics of Reliability

Chapter 2: Work Measurement

Chapter 3: Rating and Evaluating Maintenance Workers

Chapter 4: Work Simplification in Maintenance

Chapter 5: Estimating Repair and Maintenance Costs

Chapter 6: Key Performance Indicators

Chapter 7: Maintenance Engineer’s Toolbox

Chapter 8: Root Cause Analysis

Section 4: Maintenance of Plant Facilities

Chapter 1: Maintenance of Low-Sloped Membrane Roofs

Chapter 2: Concrete Industrial Floor Surfaces: Design, Installation, Repair, and Maintenance

Chapter 3: Maintenance and Cleaning of Brick Masonry Structures

Chapter 4: Maintenance of Elevators and Special Lifts

Chapter 5: Air-Conditioning Equipment

Chapter 6: Ventilating Fans and Exhaust Systems

Chapter 7: Dust-Collecting and Air-Cleaning Equipment

Section 5: Maintenance of Mechanical Equipment

Chapter 1: Plain Bearings

Chapter 2: Rolling-Element Bearings

Chapter 3: Flexible Couplings for Power Transmission

Chapter 4: Chains for Power Transmission

Chapter 5: Cranes: Overhead and Gantry

Chapter 6: Chain Hoists

Chapter 7: Belt Drives

Chapter 8: Mechanical Variable-Speed Drives

Chapter 9: Gear Drives and Speed Reducers

Chapter 10: Reciprocating Air Compressors

Chapter 11: Valves

Chapter 12: Pumps: Centrifugal and Positive Displacement

Section 6: Maintenance of Electrical Equipment

Chapter 1: Electric Motors

Chapter 2: Maintenance of Motor Control Components

Chapter 3: Maintenance of Industrial Batteries

Section 7: Instruments and Reliability Tools

Chapter 1: Mechanical Instruments for Measuring Process Variables

Chapter 2: Electrical Instruments for Measuring, Servicing, and Testing

Chapter 3: Vibration: Its Analysis and Correction

Chapter 4: An Introduction to Termography

Chapter 5: Tribology

Section 8: Lubrication

Chapter 1: The Organization and Management of Lubrication

Chapter 2: Lubricating Devices and Systems

Chapter 3: Planning and Implementing a Good Lubrication Program

Section 9: Chemical Corrosion Control and Cleaning

Chapter 1: Corrosion Control

Chapter 2: Industrial Chemical Cleaning Methods

Chapter 3: Painting and Protective Coatings

Chapter 4: Piping

Chapter 5: Scaffolds and Ladders

Section 10: Maintenance Welding

Chapter 1: Arc Welding in Maintenance

Chapter 2: Gas Welding in Maintenance

Book Review: Maintenance Management Techniques by A. S. Corder

In 1976, it was the U.S. bicentennial.

Oh What a Night [YouTube] by the Four Seasons was near the top of the pops.

Computers were still the exclusive domain of geeks.

Gasoline, already subject to the ravages of early 1970s-era inflation, averaged 59 cents per gallon.

The Dow Jones, not yet the object of a stock market bubble, sat at around 1,000, denying options-traders and derivatives-peddlers their time in the sun.

New houses ran about $43,000, keeping the opportunity to package bad mortgages and sell them to pension fund managers from being quite the profitable enterprise it became in the early 21st century.

And it was in that auspicious year when A. S. Corder’s Maintenance Management Techniques was published.

Oldsmobile Cutlass, Best-Selling Car in 1976

In those ancient times “reliability” had yet to come upon the scene as the popular new concept. CMMS was a figment of some geek’s imagination and EAM systems weren’t even that. Vibration analysis referred to something done with a screwdriver. Temperature measurement usually meant something akin to “laying on hands.”

But industry was moving away from pure reactive maintenance and toward planned maintenance, the subject of Maintenance Management Techniques. That is, the book presents a method for taking a plant from reactive emergency maintenance to planned corrective and preventive maintenance.

Actually, one of the great strengths of the book is that the subject matter is approached from a kind of age of innocence before the confusion created by computer systems. (Although the book itself presages the growth of computer use in tracking maintenance and compiling statistics.)

Most of the forms and examples presented would be used on paper. The forms are minimal – just what is needed and no more. The input is by handwriting or by typewriter. And yet, while quaint, wouldn’t this clarity and simplicity be ideal in reducing confusion and getting the information needed into our systems?

Key Concepts

• Procedures must not be static, but must be continually adapted to new organizational learning. [This concept is very similar to continuous improvement without referencing the term.]

Experience shows that too many firms, after writing their maintenance schedules, proudly bind them in a reference folder, forget about them, and send the related job specifications to the printers to be run off in their thousands. Thus the planned-maintenance scheme becomes stultified and management wonders subsequently why maintenance performance, costs and downtime, after initial signs of considerable improvement, show a disappointing leveling off at a point far sooner than was hoped for.

• Caution: the “type A” failure curve is referenced as the model for machine deterioration in section 5.3 on “predictive maintenance.” Although the Nolan and Heap study had been published by the time this book went to press, it apparently had not yet become common knowledge in England. This is a minor detraction for an otherwise good book. [The assumption of constant operating conditions is noted, however.]

Useful Features

• Plant inventory card (p. 26) and electrical-equipment inventory card (p. 27)
• Maintenance request form (p. 59)
• Job specification example (p. 69)
• Inspection report (p. 75)
• Planned lubrication forms (p. 83)
• Work priority index (p. 87)
• Daily standby record (p. 96) [A temporary substitute for planned maintenance designed to collect information on maintenance needs while placating operations managers who do not want to give up standby personnel.]
• Maintenance reports: weekly labor tabulation (p. 98), weekly emergency maintenance summary (p. 100), four-week maintenance report (p. 101), and maintenance top-ten analysis (p. 103)
• Workshop planning flowchart (p. 156)

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Maintenance Organization

Chapter 2: Costing

Chapter 3: Planning and Control – Preparation

Chapter 4: Planning and Control – Operation

Chapter 5: Planning and Control – Progression

Chapter 6: The Central Workshop

Chapter 7: Materials and Stores Control

Chapter 8: Education and Training

Chapter 9: Cost Studies

Appendix A :Staff Job Descriptions

Appendix B: Plant-Inventory Preparation

Appendix C: How to Fill in the Maintenance Request – Staff and Supervisors’ Instructions

Appendix D: Preparation of Maintenance Schedules

Appendix E: Preparing the Workshop Order Set

References

Index

Book Review: Maintenance and Reliability Best Practices by Ramesh Gulati

Key Concepts

• The role of maintenance is to preserve the function of an asset, not to run the asset itself. (For an explanation, see the chapter on PM Optimization, which describes RCM.)
• Condition-Based Maintenance (CBM) has an advantage over time-based maintenance when the life of the equipment is variable or not known with much certainty.
• In maintenance Planning & Scheduling (P&S), the planner determines what and how, and the schedular determines who and when.
• TPM, 5-S, and Visual Workplace and fundamental tools in operations reliability.
• Lagging indicators show after-the-fact results. Leading indicators are process measures. Well-designed and measured leading indicators are better are identifying sustainable performance improvements.
• The generation gap plays a signficant role in workforce management. While individuals vary in their motivations, attracting talent from each of the generations requires different approaches. For example, Baby Boomers often prefer the prestige of job titles, opportunities for networking and learning, and long-term benefits. Generation Y prefers work schedule flexibility, change and challenges, and work that has a higher meaning.

Noteworthy Features

• Calculations for economic order quantity (EOQ), page 117
• Calculations for estimating reliability, page 138
• Summary of CBM/PdM technologies, p. 215
• Brief description of several maintenance & reliability analysis tools (fishbone, FMEA, standards, Pareto, RCA, Six Sigma, etc.) p. 308
• List of trends and practices that are important to understand. p. 357

Limitations

• The Basic Test on Maintenance and Reliability Knowledge (chapter 1) had some poorly-worded questions that made the intent unclear. Here are several examples with my comments.
• Question 3 . All maintenance personnel’s (craft) time is covered by work orders.  T/F? Answer: “true” in order to ensure maintenance and repair costs are accurate. [My answer: false. Breaks and lunches are not generally covered by work orders.]
• Question 7: Utilization of assets in a world-class facility should be above 98%. T/F? Answer: “true.” [Can we possibly be thinking of the same meaning of asset utilization?]
• Question 12: It is a common practice for operators to perform PMs. T/F? Answer: “true,” assuming the organization is deploying TPM. [But the question does not say anything about TPM. The question asks if it is "common" for operators to perform PMs, not whether it is a good or best practice or whether it is a component of TPM.]
• Question 13: P-F interval can be applied to visual inspections. T/F? Answer: “true.” [I still don't know what the question means by "applied." Visual inspections do not detect faults until near the end of the failure curve, so as a fault-finding task it will have to be done more frequently to ensure the fault is caught before total breakdown. Is this what the question means?]
  
• Question 16: The primary purpose of scheduling is to coordinate maintenance jobs for the greatest utilization of the maintenance resources. T/F? Answer: “true.” [My answer: false. The purpose of scheduling is to maximize return on capital investments by getting the right work done at the right time and removing efficiency roadblocks. Maximizing maintenance utilization is a purpose only insofar as it promotes ROI. Therefore, the given answer is only a partial truth.]

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introducing Best Practices

Chapter 2: Culture and Leadership

Chapter 3: Understanding Maintenance

Chapter 4: Work Management: Planning and Scheduling

Chapter 5: Materials, Parts, and Inventory Management

Chapter 6: Measuring and Designing for Reliability and Maintainability

Chapter 7: The Role of Operations

Chapter 8: PM Optimization

Chapter 9: Managing Performance

Chapter 10: Workforce Management

Chapter 11: M&R Analysis Tools

Chapter 12: Current Trends and Practices

Book Review: The Back of the Napkin (Expanded Edition)

One of the newer books out there on visual communication is Dan Roam’s The Back of the Napkin. This is a reader-friendly and un-intimidating book that makes a good introduction to drawing for the purpose of communicating and selling ideas.

Roam presents a systematic framework for approaching complicated problems with simple figures and drawings in several ways and then combines them into a large codex.

The codex consists of two dimensions: the six ways of seeing, based on the six types of problems, and five characteristics of the drawing.

The Six Ways of Seeing

1. Who/what problems and questions are best illustrated through portraits.
2. How much problems and questions are best illustrated through charts. This is where most communication happens in business. While it is a perfectly valid tool, it is often overemphasized.
3. Where problems and questions are best illustrated through maps.
4. When problems and questions are best illustrated through timelines.
5. How problems and questions are best illustrated through flowcharts.
6. Why problems and questions are best illustrated through multi-variable plots. These plots are more complicated than the other drawings and might take more practice for the average user than the book provides. However, the book makes for a good starting point.

S.Q.V.I.D.: Picture Characteristics

• S: Simple vs. Elaborate. For any of the above problems, a quick and bare picture can be drawn. Also, we could draw a picture rich in detail.
• Q: Quality vs. Quantity. The picture could emphasize the subjective (quality) or objective (quantifiable, numerical) nature of the subject.
• V: Vision vs. Execution. The picture could be of the end state (vision) or of the means of achieving the vision (execution).
• I: Individual vs. Comparison. The picture could be of a standalone person or object, or it could be of the subject and other people and objects with differing characteristics.
• D: Delta (change) vs. Status Quo. The picture could be of the change expected, or of the subject as it is.

Putting it Together

Most of the frameworks can be combined with most of the picture characteristics. (An exception is qualitative representation of a “how much” problem. It just doesn’t work.)

Generally, you’ll use the codex because you have a problem, so that’s the place to start. Pick which kind of problem it is, then try to draw a picture of it using circles, lines, words, and other simple shapes.

If you have difficulty, you refer to the S.Q.V.I.D. model to generate ideas.

The book contains detailed examples of the process, and is well worth a look. As a sort of “Visual Problem Solving for Dummies” book it will be most useful to people unacquainted with the subject. But if the exercises are performed and the content absorbed, the reader will not be a “dummy” on the subject for long.