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Reliability Magazine, September 1994 |
| $47,000,000,000 is invested nationally in industrial training. Are we getting our money?s worth? |
| A turbine in a refinery fails catastrophically. The adrenaline is flowing as efforts to recover and get back on-line are taking place. Even though turmoil appears rampant there is an air of organization. The magnitude of the failure prompts a Root Cause Failure Analysis (RCFA), primarily because the loss is high and the insurance companies and the lawyers are involved. Everyone wants a name, a culprit! They want someone to blame for the incident, so that it will appear as though the failure has been solved. The failure analysis concludes that John Doe closed a valve that subsequently wrecked the turbine. John is severely disciplined and is lucky to still be employed. |
| Though the above scenario is fictional, it could very well be reality. We can all think of instances that parallel this scenario. Now John is alienated, because he feels he is the "fall guy" for the failure. Management, the lawyers, and the insurance company are satisfied because they believe the root cause of the failure has been determined. But has it? |
| When performing RCFA it is important to determine why people do what they do. After all, John nor any other employee willing chooses to cause a failure by being unreliable. We need to go beyond just the person, and explore what about the way in which we operate allows situations like the one outlined above to occur. |
| Often, the results of a thorough RCFA demonstrates that the root cause of a failure is that individuals do not possess the skill and/or knowledge to perform their jobs safely or properly. How can this be when industry annually spends billion of dollars on training? |
| One explanation lays with why we invest in training. Too often, employees are trained to meet governmental regulations or just for the sake of saying "our employees are trained.". To optimize our training investment, the central purpose for training should be to improve operations. |
| Another reason for training?s poor return-on-investment is management?s lack of commitment to periodically evaluate and review people, procedures, and training to ensure that they are meeting the needs of the organization. When deficiencies are determined, management must develop strategies that will overcome the void. Through years of experience, we recommend the following 5-step process for training. |
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| Properly trained employees will increase Plant Reliability. Improperly trained employees, or employees trained for the wrong reasons, should be considered a lost profit opportunity. We must begin to audit our training efforts and determine if we are indeed getting our money?s worth out of our training investments. |
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For more information contact: Reliability Center, Inc. P.O. Box 1421 Hopewell, Virginia 23860 Phone: (804) 458-0645 Fax: (804) 452-2119 Website: http://www.reliability.com |
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