Martin: Selam aleykum Haris
Haris: Aleykoum Selam, how are you?
Martin: Good, good! We were sitting on a wall, like in the old days and discussing the mystery of why Lubrication has never really been part of the whole Condition Based Maintenance, but I guess we need to move on a bit here because … yeah, I think we need to come back on it at some point … but: The LUBExpert strategy process, I am curious, where do you see that process starting?
Haris: Well, process starts very early, at the moment when … Once you see the problems properly, that’s the real beginning, and when you have a right mindset, with right decision and support from the management … then you should be starting with a right team.
Martin: Yeah, I mean, brilliant, because I mean, I have my ideas about what right team would be in Lubrication terms, but what do you consider to be the right team?
Haris: Primarily, people who want, not people who must. When I say that, I am referring to fact that sometimes people get assigned to the job just because they are there, or nobody else wants to pay any attention to creating a right team, or nobody else wants to do it. But this part is highly important. Good team can make miracles, bad team can destroy even a best project. Assigning someone to the job that he must do, while he has no real interest or, let’s be honest, passion to do it right is a huge mistake. Right team is a group of people who are equally passionate about what they are about to learn and do. This is a topic for entire book, and we are only here for an ice cream and coffee 😊 Knowledge is, of course, very important, but before we even come to the knowledge and education stage, you need to have people who want to absorb that knowledge and feel it as their career. You can train and educate anyone if he wants to be trained. If he doesn’t … you will make him crazy, and he will make you crazy as well. So, I made words for that, that actually don’t exist in English: Wanters against Musters – guys who want against guys who must, and Wanters always win. How do you see the right team?
Martin: Oh absolutely, I would agree fundamentally that first we need to raise a profile of Lubrication technician and stop trivializing a role. I think we talked about this before, that a term “grease monkey” is such trivialization, and that your mechanical technician is best placed to be your Lubrication technician because they understand how machine works, they’ve seen how machine fails through poor Lubrication, so they are the right kind of people but that would be like sending someone to Siberia as we used to say. I don’t know if that’s politically correct any more, but people often saw it as a demotion, being made a Lube Tech. But what we want it to be seen as is a promotion, if you like … and extension of mechanical technician’s role, precision lubrication. You know, I fully agree with you as to the fact that you got to have somebody who wants to be that person, not somebody who feels they must be, just to keep their job. So, we have the right team than, we agree that’s how we get the right team, we have the right team – what next?
Haris: You tell me what is next, what do you do with a team 😊 Shall I count to three again and we say our opinion? One, two, three:
Martin: I was just going to suggest that! One, two, three:
Martin & Haris: Training!!
Martin: Absolutely! Training session customized to each team’s needs. Delivering enough knowledge and experience so each team can build strategy, adjust it and keep improving it. And after training… support. Not only training to learn how to push buttons, but training to implement success… you know, something on those lines. It’s not just about using the hardware but actually understanding why, and how to get the best from it.
Haris: We are at the same wavelength! Education, really, is a lifestyle. In case of LUBExpert strategy, primary module is three days, three intensive days, and no matter how intensive they are, they are still three days, just to make team capable to start implementing. After that, training changes name to support, and after few months it becomes a – friendship!
Martin: Yes, you are absolutely right there, and you mentioned word friendship, because I know I stay in touch with lot of people I’ve trained and it does become kind of friendship, doesn’t it?
Haris: Sooner or later it becomes friendship, definitely.
Martin: Ok, now, so we got the team initially trained – what’s the next step than in your mind?
Haris: Get to know the patient! Get to know the assets, but really. Really get to know the assets. Perform FMEA, understand failure modes of assets, look at the RCA to understand where and how often Lubrication comes up as a root cause, look at the criticality and choose candidates for the program and set priorities. Once that is defined… we start building it as a database in our software. Little bit of homework is very important.
Martin: Very important, I agree 100%. If we don’t understand our assets, we don’t understand their failure modes, we don’t understand their criticality, we don’t understand their failure history. You know, that’s something I mentioned just now about taking on that mechanical technician to be your lubrication technician because they are often best placed to know the patient. But we got to avoid is the “one size fits all” approach, that’s wrong in so many ways. Everybody is an individual and therefore everything, implementation, needs to be structured around those individuals and those teams.
Haris: Exactly… and there is so much similarity with medicine. We need to treat each patient differently.
Martin: Funny you should say medicine, cause having just had my first jab 😊 So that’s why you say Dr. Grease guy!
Haris: Yes… Dr. Grease guy or Mr. Grease guy is foundation of asset health, because quality of your primary medical care is measure of good health care system.
Martin: Yes, I guess… agh, grhh..having had my first jab khh, khh, AstraZeneca jab, I am going to have to go and get my meds from the nurse 😊 Sorry about that, we’ll have to leave it here than. Next week?
Haris: So, I see you next Monday!
