A Contrarian View: Decision Makers Need More Than Generalities

By Heinz P. Bloch, P.E.

Consultant-conceived generalities rarely add anything to our knowledge. In fact, it has been said the value of generalizations often ranges between low and zero. More than once we’ve seen realistic maintenance and reliability professionals raise eyebrows to such consultant-conceived generalities as “optimize your asset-management system.” The real pros are apt to remember a well-established fast food chain’s fitting advertising slogan: “Where’s the beef?”

Serious practitioners of improved reliability cannot act on generalities. To do so is a waste of both time and money. Advances in equipment reliability inevitably boil down to implementing details. These details must first be understood and then explained by competent, experienced individuals.

Suppose, for example, your plant subscribes to the idea that a single vendor, manufacturer “A,” supplies a particular component for all process pumps at your large multi-national petrochemical facility. This type of single sourcing, I believe, is a big mistake. Indeed, I know of no best-of-class company that subscribes to a sweeping single-source approach.

Vendor “B,” which manufactures an advanced, high-performance or downtime-avoiding component, seems to have been banished from your plant by a couple of unenlightened managers. While these managers think Vendor B is selfishly aiming to replace your present single-source supplier, this company merely wants a chance to explain its technologically advanced product. Vendor B understands the conversation’s “seed-words” will fall either on fertile or unproductive soil. In short, Vendor B initially desires to become one of your informants, a technology resource.

Suppose Vendor B supplies a product that makes considerable economic sense in 3% of your process pumps. Using that product would extend the mean-time-between-repairs of 60 of your 2000 pumps three-fold—and save your operations a solid million repair-cost dollars each year. But Vendor B has no intention of you abandoning Vendor A. Rather, he wants to showcase a component that is more efficient and appeals to two or three of your top competitors. Unfortunately, those unenlightened mangers have let it be known that you buy only from Vendor A. Consequently, Vendor B has no incentive to visit your site, and, as a result, your facility is deprived of using this company as one of its mentors.

So Vendor A is firmly entrenched—and continues to give you substantial discounts on the many hundreds of old-style components you consume each year. You lose, and you lose big.

Young engineers are fed anecdotes and succumb to inbreeding. The consultant who does nothing but “generalize” impresses managers with reams of supply-chain statistics that have absolutely no relevance to the issue at hand. In the end, the generalizing consultant prospers, Vendor A is fat and happy, and Vendor B takes his business to your competitors.

This scenario is real. It happens because the brightest ideas often don’t make it to a top manager’s desk. Detail-oriented consultants may only have access to employees whose function is to fix what is broken—and who have no say in what needs to be done to prevent things from breaking in the first place.

Management consultant Phillip Crosby wrote in “Absolutes of Quality Management” that the system for causing quality is “prevention, not appraisal.” Involving competent vendors and making them your technology resources will be a big step toward turning appraisal into prevention. Conversely, trying to keep better vendors away from your door is counterproductive. Sadly, only the consultant-conceived generalizations (generally) make it all the way to the top. That is what’s really lamentable. MT

heinzbloch@gmail.com