Machinery Lubrication magazine published by Noria Corporation
Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1522439
44 Machinery Lubrication Annual Edition | www . machinerylubrication.com "People want to know their work is valued, and what better role could someone have that makes a real difference in a company's profitability than in maintenance or reliability?" The New Normal The term "the new normal" has been used countless times over the last several years. In the workplace, this has included analyzing many business principles and changing organiza- tions to allow such things as working from home, having a social impact on your work and focusing on mental health. ese items are good, and some industries have more latitude to make changes than others. In our realm, the new normal is still very much business as usual. Components fail, production lines go down and reactive maintenance is still the norm in too many facilities. is leads to an environment where workers can become desensitized to failures and begin to accept that little can be done to address them, let alone improve the daily grind by breaking this cycle. This is further compounded by the lack of skilled professionals being able to backfill openings that, in some cases, have gone unfilled for years. Recently, I was in a facility that has been trying to hire multiple mechanics and operators just to get their staffing levels up to pre-2020 levels. It is the same song, different verse in many plants where head- count reductions or vacant openings have left the remaining employees doing more with less. Over the past several decades, there has been a "leaning" down of organizations where headcount has been replaced with efficiency and tools to make the workforce more effective. is is a good effort but still requires skilled professionals to operate and sustain the facility. WORKPLACE CULTURE First Seen in Machinery Lubrication, November 2023 Wes Cash | Noria Corporation A N N U A L E D I T I O N