I was on the floor when an operator ran by me with a bucket. I followed him to the lithographic printing press where I watched him dump the bucket of chemicals into a chiller by hand. I asked why. He said he was having trouble setting his color. This was how they dealt with it. The top downtime in the factory was color setting time, the top quality defect was color variation, and the top waste was color setting waste. We had the Pareto charts. Everyone in ops knows the 80/20

I was new to the factory. The day I showed up I found out the plant was in danger of being closed. Division published a plan for "plant consolidation"... and we were the bottom performer. They didn't mention that in the interview. My department had four maintenance techs. One on each shift. 24/7 coverage. And they were good. They knew their trades. We always had someone there for emergencies, but we never had enough people there to compete with emergencies. Every schedul

A core function approach to eliminating maintenance reactivity. Walk into almost any industrial facility and ask the maintenance manager how things are going. You will hear some version of the same answer: "We're getting killed and everyone is mad at us.”
 It's typically not a laziness or staffing problem. It's usually an organizational issue and sometimes a matter of technical knowledge. But it's fixable.
 Running maintenance is like driving through a forest. It's easier

Your inbox isn't just a mess, it's an indictment for how broken your processes are. I talk to leaders routinely who get 150-200 emails a day. If your process software owns routing, approvals, assignments, status, and escalations... what are you doing? It's like taking the parts you need to assemble something useful and mixing them in a big bowl with large quantities of similar looking useless junk. And then obligating yourself to look at everything in the bowl while you try

Every plant issue you're battling traces back to the same root cause. Process inadherence. That is to say, your people aren't following your processes. I know that sounds reductive. Stay with me. This is a good argument. I promise. Every problem you have is either a deviation from a process or a defect in a process. That's it. Full stop. But that's 2 causes, right? No, not really. Here's the uncomfortable truth most plant leaders already know but won't say out loud: Leadershi