Podcast: The one meeting every plant can’t afford to miss

Joe Kuhn, CMRP, former plant manager, engineer, and global reliability consultant, is now president of Lean Driven Reliability LLC. He is the author of the book “Zero to Hero: How to Jumpstart Your Reliability Journey Given Today’s Business Challenges” and the creator of the Joe Kuhn YouTube Channel, which offers content on starting your reliability journey and achieving financial independence. In our monthly podcast miniseries, Ask a Plant Manager, Joe considers a commonplace scenario facing the industry and offers his advice, as well as actions that you can take to get on track tomorrow. This episode offers insight into how to get your team to support communication, accountability, and asking for help when they need it.

Below is the transcript of the podcast:

PS: So you and I generally come up with these questions that we talk about here, I think we've done a pretty good job of covering a wide variety of topics and keying into the different aspects of your experience as a plant manager. So we try to focus on broad leadership issues, as well as, very specific step-by-step advice to whatever problem we've highlighted.

On a side note, if any of you out there have any burning questions for Joe, don't hesitate to email them, we'd love to hear from any of you, so please do.

Last week, we went big picture, we talked about some of the ways that maintenance managers fail. And so this month, we're going to focus again, very specific, and very simply on one action that Joe thinks all plants should implement. Now, we've talked a lot about on this series about observation. That's the first step to everything, you’ve got to go and see, right, Joe? So first and foremost, observe your observe your operation, observe where you can make improvements. So beyond observation, Joe, what is one action you would implement at any plant?

JK: Yeah, great question. And you are tying my hands a lot, Anna, with these questions. Because it always starts with knowing the waste in your plant. But no matter what waste I see in a plant, any plant that I've managed or that I've coached people in, I would start a yesterday, today, and tomorrow meeting (YTT). Some of you may call this just a morning meeting or your daily management system. But, starting one in maintenance, I think, is critical. It's a critical tool for me.

Let me describe what that is. This is a meeting where the key stakeholders get together, the maintenance manager, whoever is on day shift, supervisors, maybe a technician, maybe a couple planners, maybe your entire technician team, if you've got seven or eight technicians. Okay, so what are yesterday today and tomorrow meeting?

It’s just like it's sounds: we talk about yesterday. Okay, yesterday, we were supposed to get three PMs done and maybe an outage on a piece of equipment. How did it go? Yes, we got all three PMs done. We had no problems, or we only got two of them done. This was a problem. Here's how we're going to make that up next week. So, basically holding the organization accountable for what we said we were going to do yesterday.

Okay, today. Today, we're talking about, we're supposed to get three PMs done today. And we got this outage on a crane or we are replacing a brakes. Okay. Does anybody see any problem with us getting that done today? Do we lack the resources? Did somebody call in sick? Do we not have the brake pads already identified and at the scene? What problems do we foresee? It could be production; they can't give up the crane. Okay, what can we do about that? Maybe, we delay it until tomorrow. Maybe the maintenance manager needs to call the production manager and say, hey, we're ready to go on this. We think we can get this done in two hours. So talk about today. Tomorrow, the same thing. Okay, we've got these five PMs scheduled for tomorrow. We have no outages. Does anybody need any help? Any concerns, need more resources, need more people, need more coordination, whatever it is to be successful tomorrow.

Okay, very simple meeting. You track some KPIs. Like I said, maybe we were trying to get 90% PM compliance for this month. How are we doing today? We were planning on getting to how are we tracking this month? Our week, you may say we're at 82% this week, and we have to hit these every one of them for last eight days to get to 90%. So we're tracking those KPIs.

Maybe you want to be 100% on your PMs on your lubrication. So how are we tracking against that? So what KPIs do you have? Keep them in front of people. Talk about yesterday, really, it's about accountability. It's about alignment, and it's about asking for help and not having excuses. Not having excuses. Okay, so yesterday today, tomorrow meeting would be something I'd put in every single plant recommended to every single plant for their reliability journey.

PS: And you think it's important to do that meeting every day, five days a week, or hat's your call?

JK: I would say, I can't say for everyone, I can say I've been in 41 locations, and I implemented it at all 41 of them. So every single one I've seen in my 37 years in the industry, without exception.

PS: The YTT meeting, you guys heard it today. I think it's important also to make sure you're understanding the why behind this meeting, and you said it's about accountability. It's about alignment. You said asking for help, and communication between all your teams is most important.

JK: It might sometimes be, hey, we don't have this piece of equipment, or, you know, we don't have an overhead crane available, we're going to have to do it this other way. That may take longer, okay. Maybe we can get the one-ton overhead crane for you? It's about what problems do you see? Giving an excuse the next day needs to be the norm we kill. We need to ask for help in advance, what concerns do you have, and it could be a safety concern, I'm not exactly sure how to lock and tag this equipment. Last time we struggled through that and took an extra hour. Hey, okay, we're going to get the safety engineer down. We're going to bring the technician that knows how to do that to write out that procedure. We're going to get that done. That's the obstacle we're not going to have. So instead of given excuses afterwards, we're going to predict problems in advance. Great meeting. It's a great meeting. I could not imagine running a maintenance department without it.

PS: Right, and that's an easy, quick plan that, somebody can start implementing on Monday. That's great. So, I hope I speak for all of our listeners, and we just want to thank you as always for your advice, Joe.

JK: Alright. It's great to be here. I'm looking forward to next month's question.

About the Podcast
Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast offers news and information for the people who make, store and move things and those who manage and maintain the facilities where that work gets done. Manufacturers from chemical producers to automakers to machine shops can listen for critical insights into the technologies, economic conditions and best practices that can influence how to best run facilities to reach operational excellence.