Robert M. Williamson, Strategic Work Systems, Inc.

Measuring and improving equipment performance is becoming a hot topic in many facilities and plants. So, what do you know about your overall equipment effectiveness? The basic measure associated with Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) has been overall equipment effectiveness (OEE). It incorporates three basic indicators of equipment performance and reliability:

• Availability or uptime (downtime: planned and unplanned)
• Performance efficiency (actual vs. design capacity)
• Rate of quality output

OEE is not an exclusive measure of how well the maintenance department works. The design and installation of equipment as well as how it is operated and maintained affect OEE. It measures both "efficiency" (doing things right) and "effectiveness" (doing the right things) with your equipment.

Here is an example on how OEE is figured for a critical piece of equipment that is running 70 percent of the time (in a 24-hr day), operating at 72 percent of design capacity (flow, cycles, units per hour), and producing quality output 99 percent of the time.

When you factor the three together (70 percent availability x 72 percent efficiency x 99 percent quality), the result is an OEE rating of 49.9 percent. The OEE rating reflects how well the equipment is loaded and doing what it is supposed to—in this case less than 50 percent. Running at 55 percent OEE meets plant requirements.

Given the OEE data we then can determine the "cost of unreliability" or poor equipment performance. For example, a 5 percent decline in OEE may have led to 500,000 units not produced in a year. At a sales price of $12 per unit the cost of unreliability is $6 million of lost sales (revenues). This helps make a strong business case for improving the care and upkeep of critical equipment.

The OEE rating for critical equipment provides a relative comparison or "report card" on equipment performance and how well our maintenance and operations improvement activities are doing. The real use of OEE comes by using the factors (availability x efficiency x quality) and actual losses to determine root cause and corrective action.

What caused the 5 percent decline in OEE in the example above? What changed? This is where the factors of OEE become more important than the percent OEE itself. By tracking and trending the factors of OEE (data) one can quickly spot whether the machine experienced more downtime (planned or unplanned), or was running at a slower pace or minor stops, or produced more defects. Improper or inefficient operation can cause lower availability (setups, tool, or part changing) as can improper maintenance (breakdowns). Root cause analysis begins by focusing on the type and extent of loss, not the OEE percentage rating.

Here are some additional ways to think about OEE in a variety of settings:

Individual machine: The performance of the machine is compared only to itself over time (historical trending).

Integrated manufacturing cell: Regardless of individual machine performance, the entire multi-machine cell must function as a single unit. OEE for the cell is a good relative performance comparison.

Discreet manufacturing: Individual machines and integrated cells must function in a variety of combinations to produce many different types and sizes of products. OEE can be misleading. However, the factors of OEE become indicators of where and what type of improvements should be made.

Process plants: A process stream must perform as a whole, similar to an integrated manufacturing cell. OEE, or "overall process effectiveness" (OPE), is a good relative performance comparison. The factors of OEE should be tracked and trended to observe changes in performance of critical equipment in the process stream.

Robert C. Baldwin, CMRP, Editor

The attitude for success is made up of many elements: confidence, curiosity, ability, passion, bias for action, energy, optimism, and more. These characteristics comprise what is referred to by some as the e-culture, because they are attributes exhibited by many leaders and workers in dot-com and new technology companies.

This total proactive attitude, embodied in the e-culture, whether applied to reliability and maintenance of plant equipment or the development of new technologies, depends on competency of the work force. It is almost impossible for people to be confident, optimistic, and productive if they don't have the skills and knowledge that go with the territory.

Unfortunately, maintenance leadership has not always been committed to ensuring that people in the organization develop needed skills and knowledge. In plant after plant, there are supervisors more interested in telling people what to do rather than working with them to ensure that they understand the job and have the skills they need to do it.

In the past, training achievement has been measured by the amount of training materials on the supervisor's office shelf. The training job was considered complete if workers were able to catch the training CDs flipped to them like Frisbees by a disinterested supervisor. Those days are over. There is no return on training without an investment of time by supervisors.

Training takes commitment on the part of plant leaders. They must lead by example, constantly upgrading their own level of knowledge, as well as by supporting the work force by providing an environment for learning and taking an active interest in the skills improvement of every worker. There are two articles in this issue that may help. "Doing the Right Training Right" (page 20) deals with training needs assessment. "Internet Workshops" (page 36) shows how a company is leveraging technology to spread knowledge through its work force.

As one technology industry leader said recently, "At the end of the day our employees may be the only sustainable competitive advantage we have." MT

TThe past decade has shown a significant increase in the use of thermography as a predictive maintenance tool. In part, this is due to the development of focal plane array (FPA) imagers that reduce the possibility of error, are more reliable, and are much less cumbersome than previous cameras.

Using an FPA imager, a trained thermographer can identify problems that may result in unexpected catastrophic failure, loss of electricity, or electrically induced fires. The benefits of this testing have become so well known that most insurance carriers now require thermal scans at least twice per year.

As a thermographer for a predictive maintenance service company, I have served a variety of industries. While the majority of problems, such as loose or corroded connections, overheated bearings, eroding insulation, structural breakdowns, etc., are common throughout many industries, there are exceptions that are more prevalent to specific manufacturing processes.

Cross-industry training has been valuable for identifying unsuspected anomalies that could remain hidden to a less-experienced thermographer. Two examples I have encountered recently include a rarely discovered or discussed problem known as inductive heating and a unique application on a crane.

Inductive heating
During a thermal scanning of electrical cable trays for overheated phase wires, an iron support brace was identified as "glowing" due to the extreme temperature. Glowing describes an object thermally emitting high levels of energy. Further investigation showed that the brace was erroneously mounted in between phases and directly below a transformer on the floor above. When the transformer was in operation, it produced a magnetic field inducing a current flow through the high-resistance iron support brace.

Since the brace was merely for cable support, the problem was easily remedied by moving the brace to a different location away from the phases. In doing so, the iron brace was reduced to a safe ambient temperature and the problem was eliminated.

However, had this brace not been removed from in between the phases, several problems may have resulted. Ultimately, the high temperatures created would have raised electrical costs, melted the insulation, shorted the phase to ground, and/or destroyed the transformer. Each potential failure has significant financial consequences, but perhaps most important, any direct contact by an unsuspecting electrician may have resulted in serious burn injury even though there was no electrical connection.

Crane feeder rails
While thermal scanning of cranes is not a new practice in predictive maintenance, there appears to be little attention or documentation toward crane feeder rails. Most thermographers can attest to finding anomalies on the crane motors, bearings, and even the wheels, but seldom are thermal scans performed on the rails. These rails are the power supply for the cranes, usually comprise three sections, and are butted together with a shoe (a rail splice) to form one continuous rail. To supply power to the actual rail, electrical connections are tied to the rail throughout its length.

Two problems were found and repaired. The first involved a loose mechanical connection on the rail splice; more specifically, the shoe holding the rails together was loose. The second problem was found in several instances in the rail tie-in, which is the connection between the rail and the power source. Vibration in the rails over time caused wires to separate and insulation to break down. Ultimately, this caused high resistance and resulted in higher power consumption through heat dissipation.

Had either of these problems gone undetected, the crane would likely have failed unexpectedly, making equipment repairs and/or the transfer of product virtually impossible. In many large manufacturing companies, the facilities department relies on large overhead cranes to move product from one location to another or to repair or replace very large parts and equipment. If a crane fails, product is not shipped and repairs are not performed, and this translates directly into lost time and money. Also, since cranes move over the heads of the work force, the proper operation of this equipment is paramount to ensure safety. Failure of this equipment during use could potentially result in disaster.

Thermography is one of the few predictive maintenance tools that provide immediate payback and results. Unlike vibration and oil analysis, extensive data need not be reviewed, nor compared to previous results to determine a potential problem. A trained and knowledgeable thermographer has the ability to scan both mechanical and electrical components and provide immediate feedback on areas of concern. As the technology continues to improve and as thermographers document and publicize their results, the applications in this field will be limitless. It is only a matter of time before all manufacturing facilities require thermographic scanning as part of their predictive maintenance programs. MT

Mark A. Csaszar is a Level III thermographer with ITR Inc., 817 W. Broad St., Bethlehem, PA 18018; (610) 867-0101

Operations uses MRP II, or a similar process, and software to plan and schedule work. Maintenance has a process also; it's called work management. Its tool is the computerized maintenance management system (CMMS). But many organizations fail to see the similarity of these two business processes. They don't realize that they can manage maintenance in much the same way as they manage production. Most of these organizations also fail to understand that they must manage maintenance in order to manage reliability. And further, they must understand the repository of maintenance work called the backlog in order to manage maintenance.

The maintenance backlog is a key component to managing maintenance. It is a valuable source of information about the work management process, information that can be used to make decisions for today and for the future. Many organizations have conducted downsizing or reorganizing activities without understanding their work management process or their workload (i.e., backlog). As a result, organizations frequently find themselves short-handed, over-worked, and ineffective. When asked if the right maintenance work is being completed at the right time with the right resources, management is unable to provide an answer, even though it has a powerful CMMS at its disposal.

Managing the backlog requires that work be identified properly and prioritized by maintenance and operations together. Lowest-cost reliability can be achieved only when the right work is planned, scheduled, and executed in the proper order. The backlog provides an effective way to organize and quantify the workload. For this reason, backlogged maintenance work is not only desirable, but necessary, just as a backlog of production work is necessary for effective production planning.

Backlog management is a logistical challenge easily mastered when fundamental maintenance philosophies are defined, understood, and adhered to by the organization. Organizations that recognize the value of backlog management, thereby actively and successfully managing it, will go a long way toward achieving lowest-cost reliability.

The work management process
The work management process consists of a number of key steps: work identification, work planning, work scheduling, work accomplishment, work documentation, and work analysis and measurement, as outlined in the accompanying chart. Each of these steps must be well managed if the right work is to be done at the right time and with the right resources. Organizations that have worked to improve these steps in their process have positioned themselves well for achieving lowest-cost reliability.

The keystone activity for the first four steps of the work management process is backlog management. With disciplined and effective backlog management, organizations can position themselves to manage proactively, thereby mitigating resource problems weeks in advance, not just days or, worse still, hours before the work is to begin.

Reliability comes at two levels: Equipment and human. Through an effective work management process, human reliability is achieved. That is to say that the process is defined and followed, that teamwork among departments exists, people are held accountable, and there is a continuous effort to solve problems. From human reliability flows equipment reliability. When everyone is upholding his end of the bargain (human reliability is high) then equipment reliability problems diminish due to avoidance (problems aren't allowed to occur) and problem solving (those that do occur are solved at their root cause).

Backlog management then contributes to lowest-cost reliability by ensuring the right work is getting done at the right time and with the right resources. In the case of preventive maintenance work, backlog management contributes to problem avoidance. For repair work, it contributes to problem solving.

Key concepts
First, let's begin with a definition of backlog: Backlog is all jobs, regardless of status, that have been identified, but are not yet complete. Thus, a job enters the backlog following work order approval and is removed only after the work is complete or it is deleted, for whatever reason.

This definition of backlog includes repair work as well as preventive tasks. It includes work in the formal work order system as well as the lists kept in control rooms or, worse yet, in people's heads. It includes routine, daily work as well as work to be done during an overhaul or turnaround. It includes maintenance work as well as capital project work that will utilize plant craftspeople. Backlog is all uncompleted maintenance work. Thus, for effective management purposes, all of this work should be captured in one place, ideally a CMMS—a powerful relational database tool that allows maintenance work data to be organized in the best manner to meet the organization's needs.

Think of the backlog as the fuel supply for the work management process. Just like the fuel for a power plant, it must be managed and cared for. Managing the backlog means using the backlog daily as a tool to make decisions—decisions about what to plan, what to schedule, how many craftspeople are needed, when to take equipment out of service, when to use contractors, when to schedule vacations, etc. Caring for the backlog means ensuring that every job is accurate—accuracy of job information, job plans and labor estimates, status coding and routing. Caring for the backlog also means promptly removing jobs when they are completed.

Now think of the backlog as the backbone of the joint prioritization process noted in the accompanying flowchart. Joint prioritization is the continual evaluation and resequencing of work needs. This process begins following job approval (work identification) and ends at job completion (work accomplishment). Joint prioritization is performed by operations and maintenance, resulting in mutual agreement on the right work, at the right time, and with the right resources. The backlog is the source of all job information used during joint prioritization and must be updated to reflect the decisions that are made to ensure its integrity.

The backlog is not the domain of just the maintenance department. Operations is instrumental in feeding the backlog with new work requests. Next, operations should be intimately involved in establishing the order that jobs will be planned and should have equal say in how they are scheduled. Finally, operations determines when the work performed is acceptable and the job is finished. Increasingly, operations also is involved in the accomplishment of work when it performs preventive maintenance and minor maintenance tasks itself. Thus, the operations department that believes that submitting a work order is the last time it is involved with the job, is doing the organization and the work management process a grave disservice. As operations becomes increasingly more involved, the backlog becomes a part of its daily routine, since it has a vested interest in what gets done and when.

Organizing the backlog
How well an organization manages its backlog demonstrates the effectiveness with which it applies its resources to the highest priority work. But to effectively manage the backlog, the organization first must organize the backlog by breaking it into useful pieces.

The first level of organization addresses the urgency of the job. This is accomplished through the use of a priority coding system. The primary purpose of a priority code is to segregate the emergency work from everything else. This is similar to the triage process used in the treatment of people in a hospital emergency room. True emergencies get immediate attention and thus dont spend much time in the backlog, if at all.

Think about what this means. The first concern of course is that the organization with a lot of emergencies is being highly reactive. This breeds inefficiency and waste. But also consider that work that never shows up in the backlog is work that can't be measured and thus can't be managed. When emergency work is kept to just a few percentage points, this concern is minimal; if it is allowed to grow, the backlog becomes an invalid predictor of future resource needs because of the high variability of emergency work. The more stable the workload, the more predictable the resource needs.

A basic priority coding system may look like this:

• Priority 1. Emergency, to be started immediately, with little to no formal planning
• Priority 2. High priority, work to begin within 24-48 hr, to be determined after planning
• Priority 3. Low priority, to be completed as resources become available, must be planned

It is important to remind ourselves that when a priority code is assigned to a work order, it is done without the benefit of viewing all the work in the backlog. It is a decision based solely on the perceived importance of the job in relative isolation from all other work. Therefore, we use the priority code to organize incoming jobs into two basic buckets, emergencies and nonemergencies, but it serves little value beyond this. As discussed previously, joint prioritization is the preferred process that ultimately determines when a job will get accomplished. Joint prioritization is a key component of backlog management. Work order priority codes alone cannot accomplish this; it takes people (not computers) viewing the entire backlog to achieve joint prioritization.

The next level of organization breaks the jobs into work types. The primary purpose of this categorization is to divide the work into buckets that will support tactical decisions around using internal craft resources vs contractors. Every organization should have a strategy regarding the use of contractors. Here are the most common types of work around which strategy may differ from one job to the next:

• Corrective: Day-to-day work (includes emergency work). Corrective work can be accomplished as routine maintenance or in an outage.
• Proactive: Preventive maintenance (PM) and predictive maintenance (PdM). Proactive work is typically accomplished as nonoutage work.
• Turnaround or overhaul: Major recurring work (another form of PM/PdM) requiring an outage.
• Project or capital: Typically work requiring installation of new equipment or modification to current production equipment. More likely to be construction in nature rather than repair and may require an outage.

Beyond work types, the backlog should be broken down by status codes and routing codes. Status codes define what the condition of the job is, such as approved, planned, scheduled, in-work, and hold. Routing codes define who currently has responsibility for the jobs by department or possibly a persons name. Further still, the backlog should be organized by the primary craft group that will be working the job and by the department that "owns" the equipment. Flagging a job as work requiring an outage (lost production) or as safety work, or any other useful designation, is dependent on the organizations need for viewing and managing the backlog.

Proper organization of the backlog permits it to be viewed by many different people in many different ways to meet their daily responsibilities in performing their jobs. In this manner, there are overlapping responsibilities for the backlog. Operations views the backlog from its perspective of operating units or equipment, while maintenance views it from the perspective of the craft group performing the work. When set up properly, this matrixed approach to backlog organization ensures that no jobs "fall through the cracks" and get forgotten.

Maintaining the backlog
If organizing the backlog is setting up the structure and codes to help an organization manage the workload, then maintaining the backlog refers to the constant activity of updating data within that structure to ensure that the information derived from it is accurate. This is key, for if everyone in the organization doesnt work toward this end, then the backlog as a decision-making tool becomes suspect and once again will fall into disuse.

Maintaining the backlog is not the responsibility of one person or group; it is everyones responsibility. It should not be viewed as a task that is separate from each persons daily routine. The backlog is a tremendously powerful tool that will maintain itself if people wholeheartedly incorporate it into their daily job functions. To ensure that the backlog is maintained properly, every step (particularly the first four steps: identification through accomplishment) of the work management process should address the roles and responsibilities, by job position, for using and maintaining the backlog.

Purging the backlog
Periodically, despite the constant efforts of everyone that uses the backlog, it will be necessary to perform a thorough review of all jobs in the backlog to ensure its accuracy. Jobs that will never be worked, were completed some time ago, or are duplicates should be removed.

Purging requires that all departments participate in a review process in which jobs are identified for removal, consensus is reached on the candidate jobs, and action is taken to remove them. Purging is typically a semiannual activity. Each department reviews the backlog for candidates for removal and comes to a meeting prepared to discuss why the jobs are no longer needed. This premeeting work is essential or the review meetings will become so long and cumbersome that no one will want to participate. When this happens, the integrity of the backlog becomes questionable once again.

Measuring the backlog
The backlog serves an obvious purpose in the daily functioning of the work management process. For this reason alone, it should be maintained properly. However, the backlog serves a second purpose as a decision-making tool for management so it may prepare for the future. This need is as big if not bigger than the daily need. To accomplish this, the backlog must be measured in a meaningful way, by estimated labor hours.

Key to measuring the backlog is the understanding that accurate labor estimates are a necessity. Accuracy may be a misnomer, for what is truly important is that the planning process produce consistent estimates; these then can be factored to reflect reality, thus achieving accuracy. The work scheduling process levies a similar requirement on planning; to build accurate schedules requires accurate labor estimates. So why are labor estimates so important in measuring the backlog? Because the key resource that determines when a job will get done is almost always manpower.

There are many indicators that can be derived from the backlog, but one of the most useful is input/output. This measurement is one of throughput; it is much more meaningful than just looking at the size (or weeks) of backlog.

Critical to this measurement is the need to measure the output of work on the same scale as the input of work. This may sound obvious, but the tendency is to measure estimated labor hours going in and actual labor hours coming out. This "apples to oranges" approach invalidates the measurement. The simplest solution is to measure estimated hours in and estimated hours out.

Throughput should be calculated for each work type (i.e., staffing strategy) and, logically, by every craft group. The difference between input and output represents the throughput of that type of work for that craft group. When input consistently exceeds output, this may be an indication of a craft group that is understaffed, and vice versa when output exceeds input. Factoring in conditions such as seasonal events, planned outages, vacations, etc., the manager can gauge whether the trend is temporary or a situation that needs to be permanently addressed. Thus, we have the basis for making decisions about future resource needs, developing a staffing strategy that is consistent with the overall plant objectives of increasing reliability and availability.

The culture
The concept of backlog management sounds simple, but getting it implemented is the challenge. Implementation is always the challenge in any new process because it is the work culture of the organization that requires the most effort to change, not the mechanics of doing work. Remember that backlog management is the backbone to the first four steps (work identification through work accomplishment) of the work management process. Therefore, all four steps must be improved to make backlog management effective, and those four steps involve 100 percent of the organizations work force. Teamwork and the discipline to follow the work management process are critical ingredients to successful backlog management.

Backlog management requires organizational commitment. The steps in the overall work management process are only as good as the execution. If an organization is to achieve lowest-cost reliability, then it must be able to manage the backlog in a manner that ensures its accuracy and its value. This may be a significant cultural change for organizations that are accustomed to "fire fighting" as their approach to managing maintenance work.

Every organization that performs maintenance work has a backlog. Many mistakenly believe that having a backlog of maintenance work is bad and conceal the work by calling it something else or by spreading it out among several systems. Backlog is good, provided it is actively managed and used to prepare the organization for the future. The future can be tomorrow or next month, but regardless of which, backlog management contributes to lowest-cost reliability by allowing the organization to select the right work to be done at the right time and with the right resources.

Management requires discipline
Backlog management requires the organization to use the tool at its disposal (i.e., the CMMS), but first it must make an investment in getting accurate data into the tool to improve the quality of the decisions derived from it. Achieving and maintaining data accuracy is the cultural challenge for the organization. A well-defined and understood work management process, with specific roles and responsibilities for everyone involved, will help overcome this challenge.

The organization must approach backlog management with the same rigor that it tackles production planning. The two business processes are interrelated. The cost of poor reliability is not just the annual maintenance expenses; it also includes the lost opportunity costs of not being able to produce. In a competitive marketplace this can be the difference between economic survival or not. MT

Steve Burrowes is project manager at Reliability Management Group, 151 W. Burnsville Pkwy., Suite 224, Minneapolis, MN 55337; (612) 882-8122

How much do you really care about the training your employees receive? After all, training is expensive and it takes important supervisors and workers out of the plant site, reducing the overall productivity of the work force. Training is rarely important (except for safety), and rarely contributes a significant return on your investment in time, money, and people. In some cases you may even have to "un-teach" some of those new skills just so you can keep things moving the way they always have. After all, training is not one of those production and maintenance problems that keeps plant managers awake at night.

If you believe all that, you are living in the dark ages.

What you don't know can hurt you!
HSB Reliability Technologies has analyzed hundreds of manufacturing facilities over the years. One of our findings is that 40 to 60 percent of all maintenance work, whether in cement plants, steel mills, or oil refineries, did not need to happen (Focusing on Preventable Maintenance, MT 10/95, p 23). Of those "preventable maintenance" actions within the purview of the production and maintenance department, 30 to 60 percent could be attributed to human performance deficiencies, meaning a lack of, or improper, training, insufficient training, or inadequate human factors engineering (job aids, incentives, and environment). Further analysis discovered that when expressed in terms of hours worked or cost, the work that should not or need not have been done exceeds necessary work in some cases by a margin of 3 to 1. This is a significant expense, all for the lack of a few hours of instruction.

No matter how you slice the pie, unnecessary or preventable maintenance caused by training deficiencies is expensive, both in terms of labor and material and, even more significantly, in the lost opportunity cost of employees not given the knowledge and skills they need to fully function to the best of their ability. So now that we know how important training is to improved equipment and process reliability, how do we know what training to do? How do we set up our training to provide the outcomes we want? How do we determine if training is even the right expenditure of time and funds to insure we get the results we want?

Human performance enhancement
Performance enhancement or technology is a systems engineering approach using behavioral science techniques to analyze, design, and deliver activities which promote human performance in achieving the business goals of an organization. Performance enhancement is not just training, or organizational development, or human resources management. It is a synergistic process that seeks to optimize human reliability using a wide variety of tools. Human reliability is the total of all the effort that each individual contributes to decrease the variability of a process.

For example, using a job aid or standard operating procedure reduces the chances that a pump will be started wrong, or a seal installed backwards. The job aid also helps to reduce the experience gap between master and apprentice craftspeople. Training operators and craftspeople to use those procedures further decreases human variability, thus helping to eliminate preventable maintenance. By keying reward and incentive systems to procedure usage, you further heighten the desired performance. At each step you are defining and assisting the "people part" of the process. The bottom line is that equipment reliability and overall productivity are improved by leveraging your employees' knowledge, skill, and behavior.

In the accompanying "Performance Enhancement Model," various solution systems are shown. This type of analysis is also called "gap" analysis because you start by determining the "gap" between the actual performance being demonstrated and the optimal performance that you desire. Once you know where you are and where you want to go you can determine what it will take to close that performance gap.

Next ask why that gap exists. Has there been a change in technology? Has there been an organization or motivational change that has affected how people perform? If it is not a knowledge or skill problem, then training is not the answer. Don't waste time or money trying to drive a screw with a hammer.

Once you know what has caused the gap then you can select the appropriate training or non-training strategies to correct the problem.

But don't stop there. In every process or engineering system there is a feedback loop that allows you to measure if the step you took was effective. A human performance system is no different. You must measure whether the performance intervention was appropriate and that the gap has been closed or the problem solved.

Training for performance
Having determined that training is required to improve the performance of your maintenance staff, where do you go now? Start with a Training Needs Analysis (TNA). The TNA helps you determine what kind of performance you're after and dovetails with the performance enhancement model to provide training-specific outcomes that are required for a specific employee, craft, or responsibility. See "Training Needs Analysis or Assessment" section.

Once you have completed your TNA, you need to convert your findings into actions, to move beyond "touchy-feely" training to instruction that delivers bottom-line performance results.

Start training program development by gathering basic information: the training mission, core program goals, and operational or maintenance requirements. This will clarify the business outcomes and tie your training to a specific problem. This gives your training a target or goal right from the start and keeps it in alignment with the organization's vision. Remember, a training program that makes you feel good about yourself is nice until you walk out the door and get back to the plant. What counts in the plant is not "warm fuzzy's" but cold, hard knowledge and skills that can be wielded in daily business battles. Here are some examples of bottom-line skills:

• Produce measurable gains (state what goal you want to achieve) in production productivity by improving changeover procedures to decrease time.
• Decrease downtime due to maintenance by reducing the cycle time of maintenance through improved planning.
• What you are after is training that produces results, that increases performance, that leaves in its wake a stronger, more robust individual or team than the one that walked into the classroom. It's all about action, about the "rubber meeting the road," about implementing learned behavior that produces tangible rewards. To foster this bottom-line behavior, incorporate an action orientation in the training's learning methods:
• Provide learners the opportunity to detail what they will do differently back at the job site. Help them develop an action plan.
• Tailor the activities within the course of instruction to be skill-building activities that practice the desired performance. If you're teaching maintenance planning, plan a real job with constructive feedback from not only the instructor, but also the entire class.
• Trainers, facilitators, or coaches should develop engaging and realistic simulations that allow learners to be involved in the behavior to be modeled.
• Whenever possible (and safe) use practical content drawn from real life. Try to avoid theory and examples that do not relate to the industry or problem at hand.
• Use activities and methods with a bias toward action. Get people moving with exercises that stimulate all learning modalities (audio, visual, and kinesthetic). Develop with the trainer and the employee's supervisor measures that demonstrate personal results and a bottom-line contribution, not just how happy they felt following the seminar or workshop.

Performance enhancement is giving your people the resources they need to succeed, not just handing them tool belts and saying go fix it. MT

Richard W. Lowell is the director of educational services for HSB Reliability Technologies, a maintenance management consulting firm with offices in Houston, TX, and Alexandria, VA. He has worked extensively in process and discrete manufacturing industries and the military as a trainer and performance consultant. He can be reached at 800 Rockmead Dr., Kingwood, TX 77339; (281) 358-1477