Joe,

You've said it all, I totally agree. As Led Zepellin's Robert Plant said in his song " Stairway to Heaven",

Yes there are 2 paths you can go by but in the long run, your stairway lies in the whispering winds.

The choice is really up to us then.

My Warm Regards,


Rolly Angeles
Teacher

This is all getting much too profound for me. I don't think I would risk telling the employees that their stairway lies in the whispering winds.

I come from a place where this may not be well received

Rolly,

When I started and Managed the PDM Program in a large Paper Mill 5 PM's running. I did not think about and did not know at that time some of the things that might change because of what we were doing in PDM. I started thinking ahead a little more when a shift Maint. guy said, I do not know what you guys are doing with those Vib. thingys, but we are not changing Motors and Pumps at night like we used to. That was because we were changing them on the Day shift on planned outages. The Head count was reduced on the dark shifts. They were utilized on Days. The more problems we found the more work had to be done, the more people were needed to do it. Maybe fewer Machanics are needed, but another PDM guy is needed = No reduction. Sure some ruthless uninformed Headhunter can show up and start chopping heads. We can not control that situation. When that happens, it usually means, get ready we are up for Sale and someone is just reducing the head count to make it look good on paper. Focus on the things you can control. Always do the very best job you can and things work out most of the time.

Bryan,

I understand my friend where you are coming from, I write down this thread since I was also a victim of slashing manpower, our department on TPM was dissolved since we were considered as excess baggage and non value. We were 8 in that department and we were given a choice to transfer but I've decided to go out with uncertainty since TPM is where I feed comfortable to work, the rest of them stayed and move to other departments and most of them resigned from their posts.

I resign because I firmly believe what I was doing for the company is right, and I resign for my principles. Should I stayed and picked the easier path and hang in there maybe I'll get some promotion since it was 5 years ago.

I then worked in a mining firm afterwards as a Technical Training Manager where I develop most of my courses on reliability and maintenance since I saw that this is where they are weak.

Profound, not perhaps, life is what we choose it to be, it is full of uncertainties. I do not recommend to benchmark what I did and go with your principles and leave. The decision is really up to us.

Should I go back in time again and ask myself if I should stay, my answer is that I've made the right decision, I have upgraged my knowledge on reliability and maintenance today, I have no regrets.

My Warm Regards,


Rolly Angeles
Teacher

Just to add up, we have a couple of industries as far as my knowledge is concerned that transfer their operations to China were labor is very cheap, as a result plant was closed totally.

Warm Regards

Rolly Angeles
Teacher

Guys,

Just to add, I just finish speaking in a conference here in our country (Philippines)about RCFA last tues (my time) March 27, monday (usa time)March 26, and I was the last speaker, prior to my speaking was a resource person speaking about Lean Manufacturing, where he presented a data of about 42 maintenance, and after implementation now only 5 maintenance, when ask what happen to the rest, the resource speaker told them the company retired them. I think in my own terms and understanding, if this is the selling point for lean manufacturing then it will contribute to unemployment and is a hard thing to sell most specially if the plant is unionize. A lot of questions was raised after his presentation.

My Warm Regards,

Rolly Angeles
Teacher

Rolly

That is indeed a sad story. What happened in operations? Did they retire people there as well?Unless the company is actually using less equipment to produce the products they need, I'm sure this is a very, very short-sighted decision. I'd be anxious to know the status of the company 12-18 months after the retirements.

Joe,

Lean's concept is to make people multi-skill so you can go more with less, this sounds good to Top Management but not to shop floor people.

I don't think he mentioned cutting manpower for operators, all I can recall was for the maintenance.

I believe that the principles of Lean Manufacturing will contribute to unemployment problems in a country.

Here's another crazy story, I heard of a plant implementing TPM, Autonomous Maintenance for operators, yet the operators are contractual which will be replace by a new batch for next year, once they reached Step 2 of Autonomous Maintenance, the team is totally new.

My Warm Regards,


Rolly Angeles
Teacher

I don't think overtime and reliability can be bad when you use the two together. I try to use overtime as a incentive for training. Like let the guys stay over a few hours and learn about reliability and quality issues. I don't see anything wrong with planned O.T. The problems I do see however are with maintenance being more reliable, because of the knowledge we have in reliablity! Companies seem more apt to not hire. So who's going to take the place of these experts that has years of learning, and techniques to make these equipment reiable? Most companies have a aging workforce. With high percentage of technician retiring in the next 5-7 years. So these companies better open their eyes and start thinking about someone filling their shoes. If they hire now maybe they can learn what these mechanics(technicians) have got to teach the new hires. So really alot of jobs ought to be opening in our industries. I think it will be awhile before we work ourself out of a job. And who's to say that by being more reliable we can corner the market on whatever product we sell because or maintenance cost is down.

Marine74,

We have no conflict on your issue, this thread was on cutting overtime as a means of cost reduction done by most industries. Hope you read the thread.

My Warm Regards,


Rolly Angeles
Teacher

Guys,

If I can post an opinion here I disagree with a lot of what has been said.

1. If you have a problem get a system. (process not only software)

Many of the problems that I used to experience early in my career in the industrial electrical fields have now been eliminated.

Improved designs, systematic approaches, and captured and codified knowledge have "bottled" a lot of the experience and placed it into a format that is useful.

Companies who do not focus on that are going to have a problem yes, but they will be in the minority and there will always be some avenue to assist them.

2. Resources can always be found. Even today in the commodities boom that we are experiencing. Companies just look futher thanm before.

As long as countries like India and the Phillipines continue to be low labor cost countries there will always be a drive to outsource a lot of the work there.

And... there is always the opportunity to insource experienced labor from these countries. Australia does it, the US is considering it via a guest worker program, and the majority of countries throughout the middle east and other parts of the world do it already.

Europe also has a flexible work situation as many people from the eastern bloc countries now make up a lot of the skilled workforce in the UK, France and Germany. (Ok, not so much in France)

So... capitalist business will find a way to get over these small humps. And in doing so it will transform the way we do work.

3. Overtime...

I personally have never had any problem with overtime. In fact, in countries that are low wage countries it is often the only way for people to earn a living wage. And due to the low cost it doesn't matter to the asset owners / managers.

So whats the problem? Everybody wins.

That should throw the cat among the pigeons...

Rolly,

I think that LEAN ha had a bad rap when it comes to maintenance implementations of it.

quote:

Lean's concept is to make people multi-skill so you can go more with less, this sounds good to Top Management but not to shop floor people.

While multi skilling is definitely a part of it there is a whole range of activities that focus on effectiveness, e.g. getting mroe value out of existing resources rather than more work out of less people.

Part of the problem has been the attempt to introduce LEAN into maitnenance in exactly the same way that it has been implemented into operations. THis is an erroneous approach and one that will restrict the benefits available from asset maitnenance.

We all know that asset maintenance is a different work model than that of production, so why should the same approaches work? The don't, and sometimes they are even counterproductive.

If we are going to implement ELAN into modern asset maintenance then a different approach is needed. One that is cognisent of the different work model within asset maintenance.

The bottom line here is that any process that makes people work more efficiently will almost certainly have an impact on the amount of labour required to do the same work. Otherwise what is the point?

It would be wrong to suggest otherwise.

I agree. I work at a decent-sized factory that makes miles and miles of corrugated plastic pipe, and there are four guys working the shop floor per shift, and that includes the foreman. I'm #5, the maintenance guy, but I'm only there on day shift (plus overtime).
Certainly efficiency removes jobs. My solution to the problem was to get into maintenance and specialize in automation. That way, no matter who they try to get rid of, they're still going to need _me_.