TECHNICAL NOTE - IMPLEMENTING RCM DARYL MATHER

Reliability Success.com 1 of 2 10-RCM-004

1 Telling the Story It is never enough merely to do good work.

In a perfect world you would work hard and everyone would notice. They would reward your efforts, support your initiatives and promote your campaigns for improvement.

But in the real world, everyone is just too busy. Your bosses have their own issues to deal with, their own pressures to respond to, and their own initiatives they are struggling to get support with.

If you don’t tell them about what has happened, they are unlikely to find out by themselves.

Many of the managers I work with regularly are people facing down huge amounts of pressure. Budget pressure, performance pressure, issues of team cohesion and effectiveness, employee development…the list goes on. All related to the allocation of capital.

They need to know that it is going to play out well for them, the department, and the company.

1.1 Set the scene

One of the most effective implementation tools is the after analysis presentation. It forces the entire project to stay focused on those issues that are important to the company.

The effect of this is to ensure that RCM Analysts:

- Consider corporate goals when selecting assets,

- focus on results even while they are in the analysis stage, and

- make sure they accurately track the forecast versus actual benefits and understand why there are differences.

It also forces them to take personal responsibility for the work underway. If their presentation flops, and support is not forthcoming, then they have selected the wrong assets, presented to the wrong person, or misjudged what the company wants.

It is important for the facilitator / analyst to understand that this is not the moment for them to shine – it is the moment for the work to shine.

A few things that have helped me:

- Keep it brief, 20 minutes maximum talking time

- Use their words, something we will deal with in another Tech Note

- Present to the highest person you have access to. People who can throw their weight behind the work, and who can personally guarantee funding and resource requirements are best.

- Make sure the presentation is done by the lowest ranking member of the team. The person with nothing to prove or justify. This is a very powerful symbol to senior leadership.

TECHNICAL NOTE - IMPLEMENTING RCM DARYL MATHER

Reliability Success.com 2 of 2 10-RCM-004

1.2 Elements of the presentation

Over the years I have seen what works and what doesn’t in these presentations, and I have found that the following Agenda works exceptionally well.

1. Who are we?

a. A short run down of the experience and credibility of the team members.

b. You need to make it clear that your team have the political and technical right to discuss this issue with senior management.

2. Which asset and why?

a. Which asset system did you choose and why did you choose it?

b. This should follow the Value Quadranti principles for selecting assets and determining benefits.

c. Be very clear on the magnitude of the potential impact in cash or risk terms.

3. What did we do?

a. Charts, graphs and tables to show the amount of work that was carried out.

i. Favourites of past Analysts tend to be:

1. Number of failure modes

2. Actual versus proposed maintenance type mixes

3. Days /hours of analysis time.

4. What did we achieve?

a. Be bold. State the benefits case and be very specific about how you achieved it.

b. Wimping out here will doom the RCM effort. If you chose an asset because there was $2 million in potential benefits from fixing it, then you need to be clear about how much of that you are claiming.

c. Reducing the benefits to conservative levels, referring only to cost avoidance or risk mitigation will probably miss the mark in terms of generating greater support.

5. What’s next?

a. What are the next steps and what additional support do you require to meet those additional steps.

The approach outlined above has been extraordinarily successful for me in building momentum during RCM program implementations. I recommend you use it to train all RCM Analysts and facilitators, and that get into the discipline of presenting results after every analysis. (At least in the early stages)

Good luck with your end of analysis presentations.

i The Value Quadrant© is a tool to help organizations determine the key impacts they wish to achieve from any corporate or departmental improvement initiative.