When I joined the Raychem Energy Division, we had to design and build the machines that made the product. The product was heat shrink tubing and one of the machines we needed to design was called an “expander”. I was hired as the Plant Engineer, which meant that I was responsible for the engineers who designed the machines, the machinists who made the components, the machine builders that assembled the machines and the maintenance crew that maintained the machines once in service. One of these expanders was very expensive to build. A fully loaded expander would cost about $1.5 million dollars to build. We had four expanders in use in the plant. The oldest of the expanders was called expander 9. The logic of the numbering system wasn’t obviously apparent because we were in the process of building expander 4. I have no idea where the numbers came from. These were very complex machines and broke down often. The maintenance crew was “old school” and mostly wandered the shop waiting for someone to call for their assistance and their favorite tools were a hammer and a screw driver. There was no formal maintenance program and no records for the machines existed.
The conventional wisdom in the plant was that expander 9 was on its last legs and needed to be replaced. There was actually an approved requisition for a replacement for expander 9 with a budget of $1.5 million. Being new to the plant and not having the experience and history with the machines, I asked that any work performed by the maintenance department be documented with a work order. This was easier said than done because the maintenance crew didn’t support the effort. They quickly figured out that I could not only track the work performed on the machines with work orders, but the work orders also showed how much work was done (or not done) by each maintenance mechanics. Over a period of several months the work order system became part of the routine and useful information was gleaned from the database that was being built. As we started to see recurring breakdowns we were able to strategize permanent fixes and order the right spare parts as the history told us what we needed to have on hand.
The most remarkable thing we learned was that expander 9 was not only more reliable than everyone thought, it was in fact the most reliable expander we owned. The old cliché about “perception is reality” comes to mind. When another machine, that was much less reliable, broke down it didn’t get much attention, but every time that expander 9 broke down, everybody knew about it. The myth was constantly being reinforced to the point where managers signed off on a $1.5mil replacement.
It is amazing how quickly perceptions can change with credible and enlightening data. After presenting the data on expander 9, its reputation was immediately restored, the plans to replace it went away, and everyone stopped talking about how bad it was.
Yes, this really happened. Here is a picture of an expansion machine and some heat shrink products.
Image source: best-b2b.comImage source: heatshrinkchina.com
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