Documentation - the MOST important tool

December 17, 2010

An effective industrial maintenance program for packaging, or any other advanced manufacturing operation, depends upon three things: workers with well-developed technical skills; workers with job-specific knowledge and experience; and complete and adequate documentation. It has become of concern to me that, just as we are facing a severe a lack of both skills and experience, I am now hearing that more and more corporations are losing control over the one area that they could easily control, documentation. If true, this will be yet another nail in the coffin of manufacturing.

Last month I wrote about some positive signs on the skilled worker front. There is much activity underway to develop the training programs necessary to educate and train multi-skilled packaging maintenance technicians. A yet-to-be-released report on the skill shortage in advanced manufacturing sheds more light on how great the need really is. This report shows that for the Commonwealth of PA, our schools are turning out just one trained new worker for every 48 industrial maintenance openings that will exist over the next ten years. I would guess that the numbers are similar around the country.

The data also shows that the existing maintenance workforce is demographically much older than the workforce in general. Large numbers of retirements are forecasted. This problem is exacerbated by the recent economy which has led to people in all occupations deferring their retirement due to economic uncertainty. A significantly larger than normal number of skilled workers are expected to retire when the economy begins a true recovery,

Increasing demand and extreme lack of supply will make the competition fierce for skilled workers. As bidding wars develop, many will find it to their benefit to change jobs more frequently. The net result will be that employers will no longer be able to muddle through maintenance operations by relying on employees with years of job specific experience and not much else. Lack of retention and shortage of available skills will deal a double blow to maintenance effectiveness.

This leads to the need for complete and accurate documentation. Documentation is the primary and most important tool for troubleshooting. Just as you can't take a trip to a strange place without some sort of map, you can't troubleshoot a system without good documentation. Incomplete or inappropriate documentation is bad; and inaccurate or not-up-to-date documentation is even worse.

I learned this lesson in 1975 when systems, even controls, were largely mechanical and you could see what was taking place. Today, systems are increasingly more complicated and software-based, making it harder to see and infer what is taking place. Throughout the 70's 80's and 90's, companies that I was familiar with focused on documentation requirements and processes for obtaining, maintaining, updating, and making available accurate documentation that was suitable for maintenance. But if what I am hearing is correct, today un-informed managers are allowing cost reduction programs to strip them of their most important tools for maintaining productivity.

If companies lose their skilled maintenance workers and lose a significant amount of job-specific experience, there is still the possibility to outsource maintenance. It takes longer to respond and it is expensive, but it can be done. But outsourcing maintenance depends upon being able to convey to the outside resources what it is they are to be working on, how it is configured and how it is to work. Without good documentation, this is nearly impossible. Outsourced maintenance then becomes an opportunity to recapitalize one's assets.

Documentation processes should be a part of every company's technology plan. I've visited many plants, sometimes to evaluate acquisitions, sometimes for benchmarking, sometimes for fun. I believe that a plant's maintenance effectiveness can be judged very quickly, merely by examining the condition of documentation on the factory floor. How well is your company's documentation being maintained? Do you agree it is important?

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Comments

True statement both in maintaining and in the production of new equipment qualifying to be put into service.

Posted by: L Belts on December 17, 2010

Couldn't agree more Keith. A more transient and ageing skilled workforce, combined with the continued acceleration of technology looms as a perfect storm. Making documentation a priority is a key step in weathering such a storm, but it should also be incumbent on manufacturers of such technically advanced equipment to design in better fault messaging, self diagnostics and technician supported diagnostics. The doctor always asks the patient where it hurts and technically advanced equipment can generally answer this question at least.

Posted by: Michael Green on December 17, 2010

I see it even worse than you see it, if that is possible. It is scientifically called undocumented knowledge and North America is loosing it at an uncoverable pace. The reinvention of the wheel is more prominent today than any other time. The root cause of this is management's massive false philosophy that man is evoloving and developing so much new advanced stuff that documenting is useless and fundamentals and principles are preceived as evolving and changing so that future trades are plug and play units that will eventually be replaced with mobile robots to do the maintenance. Sounds good on paper, but not the reality of the vast majority of situations. In the end we are headed towards big trouble.

Posted by: Paul Zepf on December 17, 2010

In my experience, every time that the effort was taken to actually produce good documentation, it was just a matter of months before the payback was realized. Sometimes it would be other techs that would revel in the pleasure of having good docs, or sometimes I would get to enjoy that pleasure myself. And of course we would all get to curse each time we had to work on something with little or no technical info.
Certainly as the more inexperienced work crews come online in the coming years, this aspect will become even more important. As we educate those coming up through the ranks, we'd better make sure that documentation is an essential part of the program.

Posted by: Gerald Beaudoin on December 17, 2010

a simple log & card on a machine can make miracles

Posted by: Denis (JED) on December 17, 2010

I agree that documentation is VERY important but it's user-friendly documentation that makes a difference. I am sure you have seen documentation that is just too hard to decipher so it goes unused. The other problem I see is that there is a storage issue. Since many maintenance people don't have a good place to store documentation (or someone to do that) at times trying to find what they need is too time-consuming. That's where we get the mistakes or quick fixes that may end up causing more problems. So yes good documentation that is user-friendly and easily assessable is critical. We found that storing it in the crib and having people check it out made a big difference. I also see more JIT info is becoming available on the HMI screens.

Posted by: Nancy Cobb on December 18, 2010

The OEMs are tippicaly way short on the amount of documentation they send with equipment, and the parts diagrams and list seam to be generic to the company and not specific to a machine. When inquirys are made the OEM has trouble determining what the replacement part number is.
Jerrell

Posted by: Jerrell Conway on December 20, 2010

You have hit the nail on the head as it were.

Posted by: James Soucey on December 20, 2010

I agree with the idea of this problem having a negative effect on manufacturing and the modern managers who cut cost in this area or who are removed from the documents. I know of a story told by a service representative that describes the firing of a maintenance technician who failed to use the electrical schematic in the control cabinet when installing a replacement for a very expensive motor drive incorrectly. I am very aware of this subject as a basic skill for anyone who wants to be sucessful when working with technology. I think the subject should be part of an entrance test and used as an excersize to try to troubleshoot with little or no documentation. Good job and let's find solutions!

Posted by: Kevin Lipsky on January 3, 2011

Lets not be so quick to beat up on OEMs. How many folk have received operating manuals that just end up in engineering files, and never get copied to the maint. department shelves? And, don't forget how the OEM was bent-over by the purchasing department for lower cost...and offered to remove the operator manual, and received a YES answer from purchasing. End-to-end responsibility folks....

Posted by: Jeff Brandt on January 8, 2011

Definitely good documentation is an essential part of any good piece of equipment no matter what it is but let us not forget training. More and more companies are falling short of spending their budget on training and then the operations and maintenance personnel are left scrambling to make due with what they have which in the end affects their OEE.

Posted by: Tony Pita on January 25, 2011

A machine is like our body, serving tirelessly and being maintenance person,your role is like doctor.Recording,reviewing & taking corrective measures to keep it running without interruption ie machine to maintenance person is what human is to doctor.
Therefore documentation is must.

Posted by: sudhir on January 25, 2011

Whatever happened to the engineering notebooks and maintenance logs that used to be common in the industry? It seems like everything is either in electronic format or nonexistent now. Even the large integration/machine building company I currently work for has gone to submitting everything electronically unless required otherwise. So instead of looking for a set of binders customers are having to fish for a CD or find something on their network that may have been misfiled...

Posted by: Automatika on February 4, 2011

About Keith Campbell

Leaders learn from the past while looking to the future - and bring both to bear on the here and now. This is the philosophy that has steered Keith Campbell's 30+ years in manufacturing. It has worked for him in operations, maintenance, engineering, R&D, education, consulting and professional organizations--and now he's putting it to work for you--taking you to the edge of his thoughts on packaging operations.

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Documentation - the MOST important tool

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