Machinery Lubrication magazine published by Noria Corporation
Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/229047
Lubrication Programs BACK PAGE BASICS LOREN GREEN | NORIA CORPORATION How to CHANGE YOUR Lubrication CULTURE EFFORT/ORGANIZATIONAL RESISTANCE In many of the training courses Noria provides, we discuss how a culture change is required in most cases to achieve a world-class lubrication program. This is by far the most difficult part of the process. The assessment is easy. A technical consultant walks through your plant or facility and looks for opportunities. Most often the low-hanging fruit is obvious and simply overlooked by plant personnel because it has become part of the standard scenery. With a fresh set of eyes specifically looking for these opportunities, they are generally not too difficult to find. Frequently, the facilities being assessed are operating in an "unconscious incompetence" stage, as shown in the diagram below. This simply means that the workforce is doing the wrong things and isn't even aware that they are wrong. After training or an assessment is conducted, the facility moves to the second stage. Personnel at the plant are no longer ignorant of the right way to do business. Eyes have been opened, and innocence has been lost. Now they can pursue the optimum reference state (ORS) of lubrication excellence. This is where things get difficult. Knowing the right things to do and actually doing them are obviously not the same thing. This is known as the knowing-doing gap. So now that you know what is right and wrong, how do you get that "culture shock" to take place? During my career in the U.S. Navy, I was told repeatedly that an organization takes on the traits of its leadership. In other words, what the boss wants, generally the boss gets. If it is important to the boss, it is going to be important to the rest of the organization as well. Therefore, the easiest way to achieve a culture change is to get the boss onboard. Sometimes it is not always easy. You may have to be the champion of change and fight in the trenches alone. The following tips can help you affect the change you are seeking. First, use the Pareto principle or the 80/20 rule. You may have been taught the 80/20 rule in terms of 20 percent of the workers do 80 percent of the work, but at Noria we apply it to contamination. Twenty percent of the causes of failure are responsible for 80 percent of the occurrences of failure. By and large the greatest percentage of damage to equipment is due to particulate contamination. So if particles are the largest source of contamination, this prioritizes how you should Conscious Competence invest your time and efforts. Particles can get into machines in Drivers: Culture Shock a few ways. They may be built in, • Crisis ingressed or generated. The cost of Drivers: • Profitability • Measurement • Aspiration excluding contaminants is less than • Peer Pressure 10 percent of what it will cost you • Sustained Management once they are allowed to ingress into Support Loss of Conscious • Success your fluid (see http://www.machinIncompetence Innocence er ylubrication.com/Read/28574/ justifying-cost-of-excluding-a-gramof-dirt-). If you want to get your boss onboard, you will need to put this in Unconscious Unconscious terms of cost savings. There are several Ignorance Incompetence Competence is Bliss case studies that show the cost beneOld Business as Usual New Business as Usual fits of filtration, breathers, keeping shaft seals in good shape, etc. These TIME 62 | November - December 2013 | www.machinerylubrication.com