Dear All,

Over the next 10 - 15 years the baby boomers will be leaving the industry in droves. As with every other aspect of their lives they will create a ruckus when they do so!

In this case they will be taking out a large amount of the experience, knowledge and skills that they have built up over a lifetime.

In the generations since this one entry levels have declined, there are more gradute entry engineers than experience trained engineers (generally) and this is a situation that is getting worse with each year.

As the average experience levels in your company drops - and the quality of some of the remaining knowledge becomes less (overall) than the baby boomers.... what is your company doing to try to head off this bow wave of problems that are coming down the pipeline?

I have done some work in this area recently, and I am very keen to see what else is going on throughout the world.

All replies greatly appreciated...

Company actions are contradicting, seems that they do not represent responses to the problem. I have seen some of the baby boomers being transferred (promoted?) to positions that looks like taking them out of the way and putting younger ones in the Supervision / Engineering positions.

We surveyed over 800 companies about the pending skills shortage and I am writing some detailed reports. One of the reports is very comprehensive with the effort led by Howard Penrose who has performed incredible research that will be released in August this year.

I am also writing what I think is a very unique report,summary and interpretation of the data Reliabilityweb.con collected and from some other sources. I will release the full report in October with a Keynote presentation at IVARA's User Summit.

Two stats that you might be interested in:

Question: Please indicate the best description related to procedure based maintenance within your maintenance workforce.

• 9% Have capture 100% of their maintenance procedures documented
  
  
• 35% report having more than 50% of the their maintenance procedures documented
  
  
• 48% report having less than 50% of their maintenance procedures documented
  
  
• 8% report having no maintenance procedures documented

Note: The question did not dive deeper into the quality and value of those written procedures

Question:Please indicate the best description of knowledge capture within your maintenance workforce.

[LIST]

9% Had completed a plan to capture maintenance workforce knowledge

11% Had a budget and a plan to capture maintenance workforce knowledge

21% were considering a plan to capture maintenance workforce knowledge

56% had no a plan to capture maintenance workforce knowledge

3% provided "other" as an answer

Our studies show this brain drain starting within 5 years at some companies so time is running out to capture some of the best maintenance knowledge and experience in generations.

We really appreciate all the maintenance and reliability professionals who took part in this project and we will be sending you an email with advance download links to the report.

Stay tuned for more soon.

Terry O

Eugene

The other problem is that of attracting Gen Y and Gen X to maintenance positions.

All they would need to do is read the woes on this forum to make the decision to sign up for Microsoft or Cisco Certification and leave maintenance far behind.

Until Management finds a way to make maintenance a desired career path with similar professional advancement opportunities - they will suffer a lack of skilled people entering their maintenance workforce.

All the trade colleges, skills courses and apprenticeships in the world will not turn that around.

Note to management/asset owner: It is you that benefits most from proper asset management. Take care of your assets and they will take care of you! Take care of the people who take care of your asset and they will also take care of you!

Terry O

Terry,

I would be fascinated to read this report where is it sourced from?

There are two really key issues that we have come accross in trying to deal with this for our clients. (And of course the field goes far beyond this theme)

The first is not merely skills, but knowledge as you have indicated. Things such as reaction in contingency.. the best way to undertake a once every twenty years project, operations of complex plant. (The parts that are not captured in the operating procedures)

quote:

In a water company in the south of Europe there was a guy who used to walk his dog every morning. When he did so he walked past his plant and took some time to clean out one of the filters there.

He had done this for around 15 years... and nobody knew he was doing it!

He recently suffered a heart attack and, of course, wasn't there to wash out this filter on a regular basis.

The result was a raft of consent breaches, until the company finally worked out what was going wrong. In the interim they paid several thousand Euros in fines and suffered significant damage to their public image

The second is in the way that this is solved.. Knowledge continuation is far more than capturing information onto documents so somebody else can pick them up and read them. (This is document management is we're honest, and people often don't read them!)


The solution is not only to capture knbowledge, but where possible to codify it and make it better itself.

I think this is the challenge of the 4th generation of asset managemers.

Was keen to find out what innovative steps are being taken by companies out there. Will this be in the report?

Terry,

I fully concur with the sentiment and focus of your statement here below. (And have been having this debate openly for at least 5 years now)

quote:

It is you that benefits most from proper asset management. Take care of your assets and they will take care of you! Take care of the people who take care of your asset and they will also take care of you!

The problem is also being challenged by recent legislative changes ion Canada and the UK in the areas of corporate killing etcetera. (And there are also related issues regarding economic risk but thats for another thread I think)

Regardless of this, a recent phenomena has been the asset owner / asset manager / service provider splits.

Where the asset owner outsources the entire management and operations of their asset base, thus distancing themselves from the people who actually take care of the asset base, as well as from the methods / thinking / and techniques that are used.

There have been rather strong pushes back against this. The recent insourcing (by sledgehammer) of several billion pounds worth of maintenance contracts by Network rail in the UK is an indication of how this is turning around in some areas.

However, as long as there are economic incentives to whole sale outsourcing, and the establishment of the asset owner and asset manager spilts, then the workforce will be even more transient and unstable than at any time previously.

So, while you address your comments to the asset owners (and rightly so) there are other elements at work that mean they have little or nothing to do with those who now maintain and manage their asset bases.

This is getting even further perverted with the outsourcing of engineering and other "non-contact" areas to countries with entrenched low wage regimes. The phillipines, China, India.. the usual suspects. Different values, different values of workers efforts, and different values of what work is worth.

A striking situation.

Guys,

Some recent comments by a range of Chief executives from the mining industry on these issues.

http://www.mining-journal.com/Breaking_News.aspx?breaking_news_article_id=369

Daryl,

The data I posted is from a study I created. We posted a survey online and requested participation from Reliabilityweb.com members.

We had over 800 maintenance and reliability professionals participate.

As I mentioned, Howard Penrose and I are working togther workforce report that will be available in August.

I am also working on a higher level summary that will be published in October.

It is a very interesting time in history for maintenance and reliability professionals.

Terry O

I know that the erosion of the experienced maintenance staff is a concern everywhere but I would like to hear about the situation in the PdM field. Our management has a "succession" plan for supervisors and managers but everytime I bring up the maturing of the PdM staff they seem to leave the room. I would think that is easier to train or find a maintenance mechanic or engineer than to train or find an experienced Vibration Analyst or PdM expert.

RGF:

It takes approximately one year for an analyst to become familiar with the capabilities of their technology and three to five years to gain proficiency.

At the same time, no, there does not seem to be much effort by companies to address the retirement and aging of the 'technical' trades of vibration, infrared, motor diagnostics, etc. There are a large number of reasons for this including:

1. the lack of understanding of these skills by managers;
2. Problems with the trades communicating with management (and vice-versa);
3. The expectation that schools, training, etc. will generate instant experts;
4. The short-term experience that if personnel are removed from these skills that there is no impact on reliability and availability.

There are other reasons, but the fourth is the most potentially damaging. Based upon previous studies that I have been involved in, field experience and other studies that I have reviewed, it takes 12-24 months to see the impact of the removal of a planned maintenance program and/or personnel. In a time when managers spend only a short time in their position prior to advancement, or are only given short term goals, putting things off and not seeing an immediate negative reaction, the option of reducing maintenance and/or skills can seem reasonable.

The study that Terry mentioned is one that we completed in January, 2006, that will be published in August, 2006 ('Skilled Trades in the 21st Century'), which is focused on the R&M industry. It was an off-shoot of a larger, longer-term project on Maintenance and Management Communication (Part 1 of the Maintenance and Management Communication project can be downloaded from http://www.motordoc.org for free, each of the additional parts will be made available as they are published).

Each of the studies are being developed by volunteers and not being funded by any special interest group. This was particularly important as we reviewed a large number of skilled trade and workforce studies then researched their references and premises. We often found that the facts were twisted or mis-quoted to meet the specific interests of the authors (some deliberate, some not).

Sincerely,
Howard

NPR reported this morning that many companies have been converting traditional pensions to self directed 401K or IRA type plans to save money.

Most people cannot or do not save enough to retire at 62. These same companies that are saving because of the pension moves now - may actually have an aging workforce that sticks around simply because they cannot afford to retire! Age discrimination laws in the USA prevent mandatory dismissal.

Maybe corporate greed will solve the coming skilled workforce by making sure aging workers stick around.

Terry O

Many employees in my company are awaiting for some kind of medical insurance plan for retired employees paid by the company.

Terry,

Interesting twist to the discussion.

I have no idea about the USA, but where I currently live, in the UK, there is talk about raising the retiring age to try to stem the tide of retirees.

Daryl

Probably politically incorrect not to identify IRA's as Individual Retirement Accounts.

Terry O

Terry,

I have just cought on to something you mentioned earlier. In the UK, Europe, and as I recall in my own country of Australia, there are mandatory retirement ages. beyond which you simply cannot, to the best of my knowledge, remain as an employee.

In the UK these are currently set at 60 although there has been some recent agreement with public sector employees that I am not really aware of.

There is a belief in these countries that people shouldn't work all the way to the grave for a variety of reasons. (Even though you would not want to try to survive on the government pension schemes)

But with people living for longer and in better health, it seems ridiculous to maintain the retirement age at this low level.

Mandatory Retirement?
Let me see, my birthday is on 01MARCH, if God allows me, in some time in the future I will turn 60. My employer in February 28th will congratulate me for another good job, project completion, or marvelous idea that save the day; and on the next day the company will tell me they have no more use of me because I'm 60???

Glad , to have still 19 years to prepare for that moment.

More than glad that my plant is in Puerto Rico and not at the old continent (headquarters are in UK ).

I have followed this thread with great interest and we have debated the why's and the consequences of the shortage of skilled workers in debt.
But Daryl's main question:

quote:

.. what is your company doing to try to head off this bow wave of problems that are coming down the pipeline?

In My not so Humble Opinion IMHO has not been answered yet.

Since it would be too much to let "grandpa" mechanic write a book, even "force" the younger crowd to read it , I opted for another approach.
I started looking for these famous Problem x Cause tables for various type of equipment (still an on-going project) and blended them in an application.
I gave it to my maintenance craft and also the equipment owners and asked their opinion. Some of them came back with suggestions related to situations they encountered in the past, thus the final product will be more directed to our equipment on the plant.
Currently the most consulted part is the automotive module, (everyone has car ), thus I am now in the process to rebuild the tables easily and finally sit with my feet on the table and the work is getting done.
This project started out of frustation with some of my customers who were not very descriptive in their problem formulation when punching in a request in the CMMS. At least it minimized the gueswork associated with the very enlightning description "pump not performing"
At least it lead to animated and colourful debates between operations and maintenance on the subject cavitation and each group trying to gather amno to proof their point.

PS.. desperately looking for problem x cause matrixes..

fail.jpg (141 Kb, 13 downloads) problem x cause

Check this out for an employment record!!
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/03/22/eveningnews/main1431707.shtml

quote:

In My not so Humble Opinion IMHO has not been answered yet.

In IMHO not many companies are doing something at all about it.
* Maybe a few contact technical colleges and universities in their communities to try to have the academia shift their curriculum to what the industry needs; but that is education knowledge not experience knowledge that is retiring with the "old boys".

Eugene,


In Australia there was an effort to start an Alumni network within one industry in particular as I recall. (retirees used as coaches and mentors for up and coming staff etc)

But, of course, this was a short term fix. The retirees soon got to the point where they either weren't interested in going in to assist, or weren't able to. Not only that but their knowledge became outdated. (Knowledge has a shelf life)

So, back to square one!