Roadmap to Reliability
This roadmap shall assist Shed in-charges in their onwards pursuit to reliability.
Diesel loco maintenance is an extremely demanding job challenging technical, managerial and leadership ability of Shed in charges. Though diesel Shed maintenance remains an art with an individualistic tinge varying widely from Shed to Shed but it can be broken into science virtually like Macdonald classic hamburger having identical taste and flavour around the globe.
A systematic approach to Diesel Loco maintenance shall go long way in creating a solid foundation for reliability centered maintenance. Important points in this roadmap are:
Sharing of Concern & Passion. Shed in charge must constantly exhort his team so that passion, priority and concern are shared by all his team members in absolute synchronised way explicitly. Lead the Shed, not manage it.
Training the Workforce- It is the combination of man and machine that defines effectiveness and performance of the machine. Diesel loco maintenance without fully trained and skilled workforce shall remain woefully inadequate to meet challenges of reliability. A chain is as strong as its weakest link so improving knowledge and skill base of every staff is most essential.
Sectional Recordkeeping – it must include all failure data and their analysis: component wise, system wise, age wise, make wise, root cause wise, responsibility wise, staff wise, shift wise etc. the data must be maintained in section and actively analysed by sectional staff and supervisors. Trend analysis and identification of failure pattern should be done. Central information cell should not be pretext of not doing complete analysis and recordkeeping in section.
4. Data Interpretation: Huge data are painstakingly recorded never to see light of the day. Unfortunately readings are taken perfunctorily without any interpretation & follow up action. A large number of failures could be avoided, had we reacted on trend monitoring of data. So, need of hour is to set warning triggers & react promptly. The only way, to make permanent changes, is to change the way things are measured. Measuring is not enough; interpreting the measures is the important step.
5. Do They Have a Plan: Section wise Action Plan based on last three years summarised analysis indicating root cause, service life, make must be known, prepared and understood by every sectional staff.
6. Pareto Principle (also known as the 80–20 rule) and exception reports – Shed in charge should concentrate on those 20% root causes which contribute 80% failures. Exception reports for each section should be issued fortnightly and deviations should be attended to.
7. Clear Distribution of Responsibility: Clear explicit responsibility for all Shed officials without any overlapping on field should be issued. Everyone should not be busy in doing same thing or passing the buck.
8. Identify Stage of Diesel Loco Maintenance- Sheds progress through different maintenance phases in their quest for reliability.
Sense of drift and helplessness: It is characterised by Very High incidences of Line failures and very low incidences of Shed detection.
Sense of optimism and arresting the tide: It is characterised by High incidences of line failures and very high incidences of Shed detection.
Impending line failures are converted into Shed detections by various fire fighting measures.
Sense of control, attending root causes: It is characterised by drastically reduced incidences of Line failures, high incidences of Shed detections. Action plan based on root cause analysis is implemented and condition of released components after stripping during overhauling is keenly monitored.
Sustained Improvement Phase-Auto : It is characterised by drastically reduced incidences of Line failures and Shed detections. All failure incidences are in conformity of control chart falling in predetermined range. Distress signals picked after observing components coming for overhauling are analysed and corrective measures taken on journey to nil defect.
Once current stage of maintenance is identified, Shed should plan appropriate short term and long term corrective measures.
9. Focus on essentials: Fire fighting and drives though essential for immediate relief should not cloud focussed attention on major schedule & OVH. Quality originates from major schedules and sections involved in overhauling of various components. Improving quality by auditing maintenance practices and material replacement & inspection norms of those sections should be done and periodically monitored to ensure that fundamentals (Schedule form; IB & OEM guidelines) are being followed correctly.
10. Failure investigation: Analyzing failures is a critical process in determining the physical root causes of problems. This is an area where our Shed officials have not been formally trained. Failure investigation highlights symptoms, observations but rarely touches route cause. A write up on failure investigation has been provided so that investigation Reports do not remain flippant, confined to symptoms but truly penetrate to root cause. Each failure analysis report must clearly outline measures to ensure that the failure will not recur once these short term & long term measures are in place. Failure investigation reports are opportunity to correctly judge current maintenance level, maintenance preparedness & action plan. All loco failures must be critically examined by Shed in charge. see whether report encompasses all the relevant details & pinpoints root causes & recommends an action plan. Similarly, mangers must critically review all non-schedule failure investigations as per modified failure investigation format issued.
11. Leverage the knowledge and skill: Sheds are virtual storehouse of knowledge and skill but they remain storehouse only. Task before Shed in charge is to transfer knowledge and skill from best in the field and bridge the knowledge and skill differential between best and average staff. Knowledge creation and management should be pursued, where relevant information should be available virtually on tap.
12. Raise the Bar Progressively: we must not remain static in our acceptance and work level. We must attempt and graduate to higher acceptance level for all measurable parameters be it IR value, vibration limit, exhaust gas temperature etc. periodically we must raise the bar and preferably every year tighten up the rejection limit.
13. Book of Knowledge and Training: Strangely, similar to last mile connectivity issue, person nearer to job remains woefully ignorant of correct practices and cheerfully ill prepared to implement them. This issue needs to be tackled by preparing sectional book of knowledge and imparting daily peer based training by each shed. Regular Knowledge & skill based categorization to identify area of weakness and imparting focused training is the most important step of maintenance strategy. Tacit knowledge, fragmented knowhow scattered all over must be culled, compiled and disseminated to all maintainers; to bridge the wide chasm in knowledge level.
14. Proper feedback to POH shop& firm is invaluable; Only complaint will not serve the purpose. So focus on suggestions rather than on complaints. PUs should be clearly told specific acts of omissions and commissions. Put yourself in their shoes and visualise, what reports/feedbacks are required for improving the quality.
15. Periodical Preventive Maintenance Schedules should be leveraged to predict or anticipate maintenance problems by continual monitoring of conditions to identify problems before they threaten loco operation or safety. The oil and other consumables (lube oil, governor oil, gear oil ,suspension bearing oil, lubricant, HSD, water, carbon brush) consumption rate, day wise, trip wise, month wise and quarter wise should be calculated .The consumption rate data should be logged to track long-term variations in consumption rates and its trend analysis. It will help sheds in identifying incipient problems and in implementing solutions before serious engine degradation occurs. Engine condition monitoring of parameters as exhaust gas temperature, fuel and oil pressures, and vibration to detect adverse trends in engine performance and execute maintenance to avoid serious failures should be done in every schedule.
16. Continuously Benchmarking & looking around for solutions & best practices of leading sheds must be ingrained in maintenance planning. Develop a shed which will transform from reactive to proactive maintenance. Pro-active maintenance has now been acknowledged worldwide as the single most important means of achieving savings unsurpassed by conventional maintenance teaching.
17. Mapping and Development of Human Resources: Cognitive psychology of people engaged in maintenance tells us exactly how the mind works when it comes to maintenance. Cognitive psychology is the branch of psychology that studies mental process including how people think, perceive, remember & learn. Cognitive psychologists (Benjamin Bloom et all) developed a classification of levels of intellectual behaviour associated with learning. Stages are: Knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesise, evaluation & creativity. Every staff must be mapped where he stands in this learning pyramid & we must take him to next level progressively.
18. Lessons Learnt: Experience gained/lessons learnt from past failures must be incorporated in maintenance strategy. Constantly upgrade schedule form, maintenance practices/testing procedures by learning from past failures.
There is a silver lining to every failure. For it is only through costly experience and errors that managers can develop effective intuitive judgement. "Good judgement is usually the result of experience. And experience is frequently the result of bad judgement". And, not unlike sticking one's hand into the fire, what we learn from our mistakes is often more indelible.
Why do we fail to learn from loco failures? There are at least two reasons. First, we rarely try. Generally, mistakes are hidden rather than reported and evaluated, if not treated as nuisance calling for fire fighting. Second and often missed, the important lessons to be learned are rarely conveniently packaged for easy picking, rather they often need to be dug out from deep within the properly made failure report/analysis.
19. Make Cultural Shift: Each shed must plan to make cultural shift. Moving from repair focussed culture to reliability focussed culture. Repair focussed sheds are focussed on fixing the problems, fire fighting, managing failures, believe failures are inevitable, doing high level of rework and are deluged with failures, while the reliability focussed sheds concentrate on improving maintenance practices, predicting, planning & scheduling, focus on eliminating defects & believe on continuous improvements & prove that failures are exceptional. Low level of rework, high reliability & long term action plans are hall marks of such culture.
20. Positive Environment: We must focus on the values that sectional maintenance staff can generate given positive, supportive, collaborative & empowering environment in which to perform. Mobilising the valuable human assets to their full performance potential is roadmap to reliability. Culture of positivity, no negative talk, calmness & assistance should be built up.
21. Nurturing of Good Ideas, sectional targets of innovations and encouraging people to think before perfunctorily starting work, do wonders and improvements start pouring in, creating an attitude and environment of “yes; we can”. The attitude becomes infectious and spurs people to move beyond their comfort level.
22. Doing the Right Work at Right Time has no substitute so this mantra must be implemented during major schedules and sectional overhauls.
23. Trend Analysis: For each type of component failures, it is important to identify the trend, the method in madness, is it age related or random failures taking place immediately after overhauling. Analysis on all probable possibilities must be carried out to see bigger picture.
24. Avoid Slip Backs and Relapses: failures have tendency to frequently revisit, if root causes are not eliminated and earlier measures taken are not incorporated in maintenance schedules. So periodical auditing of maintenance practices in each section and keeping a hawk’s eye on non schedule failure trend is essential.
25. Additional Value Input in Maintenance: There is an interesting Chinese definition of "Insanity". "When we do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result!" In diesel loco maintenance if we do not do something extra that additional value input in maintenance then we shall remain stationary at same level of reliability. Expecting improvement in reliability without doing something specific is insanity. Doing nothing and perhaps hoping that the problem will go away does not happen in diesel loco maintenance.
26. The use of suitable storage environment & protective packaging should make the need for anti deterioration maintenance while spare parts are in store exception. Large number of components failures can be traced back due to damage inflicted during storage, handling, and transportation more often due to lack of appreciation.
27. Succession planning to train successors must be clearly made for each section in advance. Knowledge and skill must be broad based for smooth uninterrupted maintenance free from monopolistic pangs and sudden vacuum in each section.
28. Make Diesel Shed a Learning Organization: All officers and supervisors should become facilitator and help everyone to learn from one another. Employees all over the world have been saying that –“you have paid for my hands when you could have my brain as well for nothing”. The persons who are near to the job and have been doing the job for number of years are our store house of knowledge. We need to learn from both their knowledge and their failures or limitations. Let’s make our sheds learning organizations and unleash huge intellectual capital available with us.
29. Tell Tale Sign Compendium: Tell tale sign compendium section wise must be created and staff should be trained accordingly. Visual signs on components tell their tale in their own language, we must equip and train the maintenance team to acknowledge and decipher these tell tale signs prophesying like oracles of Delphi.
We should recognize and develop good ideas, it is not important to try to be clever and come up with all the answers, but it is desirable to form technical competency to evaluate answers. Getting every employee’s mind into the game is huge part of Shed in charge job. He should be sponge, absorbing and questioning every good idea. The first step is being open to the best of what everyone has to offer. The second is transferring the knowledge pool across the shed and the third is to stretch their mind where they can improve their ideas further.
Shed in charge must challenge their team members to open their minds to envision how they can improve reliability by looking at situations from a different perspective. Reliability is a never ending journey. It is not a destination. It is state of mind, a commitment to tread on relentlessly on road-map charted. Each failure should be treated as an opportunity to do course correction. It is an invaluable feedback available to us to set our house in order, to modify existing maintenance practice and take appropriate actions so that these failures never recur again. Pride in workmanship, valuing the role of crew and focusing on the end user must be kept in mind. Maintenance is an investment not a Cost & key to meet transportation task of Railways.
In his classic philosophical novel “ Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Enquiry into the Values” author Robert M. Pirsig States that to truly experience quality, one must both embrace & apply it as best fits the requirements of the situation. Journey of reliability is a journey of faith, passion & perseverance. It should not be treated as dull & tedious drudgery but an enjoyable pursuit by agents of change. Apostates have to turn into Apostles of change.
This roadmap shall assist Shed in-charges in their onwards pursuit to reliability.
Diesel loco maintenance is an extremely demanding job challenging technical, managerial and leadership ability of Shed in charges. Though diesel Shed maintenance remains an art with an individualistic tinge varying widely from Shed to Shed but it can be broken into science virtually like Macdonald classic hamburger having identical taste and flavour around the globe.
A systematic approach to Diesel Loco maintenance shall go long way in creating a solid foundation for reliability centered maintenance. Important points in this roadmap are:
Sharing of Concern & Passion. Shed in charge must constantly exhort his team so that passion, priority and concern are shared by all his team members in absolute synchronised way explicitly. Lead the Shed, not manage it.
Training the Workforce- It is the combination of man and machine that defines effectiveness and performance of the machine. Diesel loco maintenance without fully trained and skilled workforce shall remain woefully inadequate to meet challenges of reliability. A chain is as strong as its weakest link so improving knowledge and skill base of every staff is most essential.
Sectional Recordkeeping – it must include all failure data and their analysis: component wise, system wise, age wise, make wise, root cause wise, responsibility wise, staff wise, shift wise etc. the data must be maintained in section and actively analysed by sectional staff and supervisors. Trend analysis and identification of failure pattern should be done. Central information cell should not be pretext of not doing complete analysis and recordkeeping in section.
4. Data Interpretation: Huge data are painstakingly recorded never to see light of the day. Unfortunately readings are taken perfunctorily without any interpretation & follow up action. A large number of failures could be avoided, had we reacted on trend monitoring of data. So, need of hour is to set warning triggers & react promptly. The only way, to make permanent changes, is to change the way things are measured. Measuring is not enough; interpreting the measures is the important step.
5. Do They Have a Plan: Section wise Action Plan based on last three years summarised analysis indicating root cause, service life, make must be known, prepared and understood by every sectional staff.
6. Pareto Principle (also known as the 80–20 rule) and exception reports – Shed in charge should concentrate on those 20% root causes which contribute 80% failures. Exception reports for each section should be issued fortnightly and deviations should be attended to.
7. Clear Distribution of Responsibility: Clear explicit responsibility for all Shed officials without any overlapping on field should be issued. Everyone should not be busy in doing same thing or passing the buck.
8. Identify Stage of Diesel Loco Maintenance- Sheds progress through different maintenance phases in their quest for reliability.
Sense of drift and helplessness: It is characterised by Very High incidences of Line failures and very low incidences of Shed detection.
Sense of optimism and arresting the tide: It is characterised by High incidences of line failures and very high incidences of Shed detection.
Impending line failures are converted into Shed detections by various fire fighting measures.
Sense of control, attending root causes: It is characterised by drastically reduced incidences of Line failures, high incidences of Shed detections. Action plan based on root cause analysis is implemented and condition of released components after stripping during overhauling is keenly monitored.
Sustained Improvement Phase-Auto : It is characterised by drastically reduced incidences of Line failures and Shed detections. All failure incidences are in conformity of control chart falling in predetermined range. Distress signals picked after observing components coming for overhauling are analysed and corrective measures taken on journey to nil defect.
Once current stage of maintenance is identified, Shed should plan appropriate short term and long term corrective measures.
9. Focus on essentials: Fire fighting and drives though essential for immediate relief should not cloud focussed attention on major schedule & OVH. Quality originates from major schedules and sections involved in overhauling of various components. Improving quality by auditing maintenance practices and material replacement & inspection norms of those sections should be done and periodically monitored to ensure that fundamentals (Schedule form; IB & OEM guidelines) are being followed correctly.
10. Failure investigation: Analyzing failures is a critical process in determining the physical root causes of problems. This is an area where our Shed officials have not been formally trained. Failure investigation highlights symptoms, observations but rarely touches route cause. A write up on failure investigation has been provided so that investigation Reports do not remain flippant, confined to symptoms but truly penetrate to root cause. Each failure analysis report must clearly outline measures to ensure that the failure will not recur once these short term & long term measures are in place. Failure investigation reports are opportunity to correctly judge current maintenance level, maintenance preparedness & action plan. All loco failures must be critically examined by Shed in charge. see whether report encompasses all the relevant details & pinpoints root causes & recommends an action plan. Similarly, mangers must critically review all non-schedule failure investigations as per modified failure investigation format issued.
11. Leverage the knowledge and skill: Sheds are virtual storehouse of knowledge and skill but they remain storehouse only. Task before Shed in charge is to transfer knowledge and skill from best in the field and bridge the knowledge and skill differential between best and average staff. Knowledge creation and management should be pursued, where relevant information should be available virtually on tap.
12. Raise the Bar Progressively: we must not remain static in our acceptance and work level. We must attempt and graduate to higher acceptance level for all measurable parameters be it IR value, vibration limit, exhaust gas temperature etc. periodically we must raise the bar and preferably every year tighten up the rejection limit.
13. Book of Knowledge and Training: Strangely, similar to last mile connectivity issue, person nearer to job remains woefully ignorant of correct practices and cheerfully ill prepared to implement them. This issue needs to be tackled by preparing sectional book of knowledge and imparting daily peer based training by each shed. Regular Knowledge & skill based categorization to identify area of weakness and imparting focused training is the most important step of maintenance strategy. Tacit knowledge, fragmented knowhow scattered all over must be culled, compiled and disseminated to all maintainers; to bridge the wide chasm in knowledge level.
14. Proper feedback to POH shop& firm is invaluable; Only complaint will not serve the purpose. So focus on suggestions rather than on complaints. PUs should be clearly told specific acts of omissions and commissions. Put yourself in their shoes and visualise, what reports/feedbacks are required for improving the quality.
15. Periodical Preventive Maintenance Schedules should be leveraged to predict or anticipate maintenance problems by continual monitoring of conditions to identify problems before they threaten loco operation or safety. The oil and other consumables (lube oil, governor oil, gear oil ,suspension bearing oil, lubricant, HSD, water, carbon brush) consumption rate, day wise, trip wise, month wise and quarter wise should be calculated .The consumption rate data should be logged to track long-term variations in consumption rates and its trend analysis. It will help sheds in identifying incipient problems and in implementing solutions before serious engine degradation occurs. Engine condition monitoring of parameters as exhaust gas temperature, fuel and oil pressures, and vibration to detect adverse trends in engine performance and execute maintenance to avoid serious failures should be done in every schedule.
16. Continuously Benchmarking & looking around for solutions & best practices of leading sheds must be ingrained in maintenance planning. Develop a shed which will transform from reactive to proactive maintenance. Pro-active maintenance has now been acknowledged worldwide as the single most important means of achieving savings unsurpassed by conventional maintenance teaching.
17. Mapping and Development of Human Resources: Cognitive psychology of people engaged in maintenance tells us exactly how the mind works when it comes to maintenance. Cognitive psychology is the branch of psychology that studies mental process including how people think, perceive, remember & learn. Cognitive psychologists (Benjamin Bloom et all) developed a classification of levels of intellectual behaviour associated with learning. Stages are: Knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesise, evaluation & creativity. Every staff must be mapped where he stands in this learning pyramid & we must take him to next level progressively.
18. Lessons Learnt: Experience gained/lessons learnt from past failures must be incorporated in maintenance strategy. Constantly upgrade schedule form, maintenance practices/testing procedures by learning from past failures.
There is a silver lining to every failure. For it is only through costly experience and errors that managers can develop effective intuitive judgement. "Good judgement is usually the result of experience. And experience is frequently the result of bad judgement". And, not unlike sticking one's hand into the fire, what we learn from our mistakes is often more indelible.
Why do we fail to learn from loco failures? There are at least two reasons. First, we rarely try. Generally, mistakes are hidden rather than reported and evaluated, if not treated as nuisance calling for fire fighting. Second and often missed, the important lessons to be learned are rarely conveniently packaged for easy picking, rather they often need to be dug out from deep within the properly made failure report/analysis.
19. Make Cultural Shift: Each shed must plan to make cultural shift. Moving from repair focussed culture to reliability focussed culture. Repair focussed sheds are focussed on fixing the problems, fire fighting, managing failures, believe failures are inevitable, doing high level of rework and are deluged with failures, while the reliability focussed sheds concentrate on improving maintenance practices, predicting, planning & scheduling, focus on eliminating defects & believe on continuous improvements & prove that failures are exceptional. Low level of rework, high reliability & long term action plans are hall marks of such culture.
20. Positive Environment: We must focus on the values that sectional maintenance staff can generate given positive, supportive, collaborative & empowering environment in which to perform. Mobilising the valuable human assets to their full performance potential is roadmap to reliability. Culture of positivity, no negative talk, calmness & assistance should be built up.
21. Nurturing of Good Ideas, sectional targets of innovations and encouraging people to think before perfunctorily starting work, do wonders and improvements start pouring in, creating an attitude and environment of “yes; we can”. The attitude becomes infectious and spurs people to move beyond their comfort level.
22. Doing the Right Work at Right Time has no substitute so this mantra must be implemented during major schedules and sectional overhauls.
23. Trend Analysis: For each type of component failures, it is important to identify the trend, the method in madness, is it age related or random failures taking place immediately after overhauling. Analysis on all probable possibilities must be carried out to see bigger picture.
24. Avoid Slip Backs and Relapses: failures have tendency to frequently revisit, if root causes are not eliminated and earlier measures taken are not incorporated in maintenance schedules. So periodical auditing of maintenance practices in each section and keeping a hawk’s eye on non schedule failure trend is essential.
25. Additional Value Input in Maintenance: There is an interesting Chinese definition of "Insanity". "When we do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result!" In diesel loco maintenance if we do not do something extra that additional value input in maintenance then we shall remain stationary at same level of reliability. Expecting improvement in reliability without doing something specific is insanity. Doing nothing and perhaps hoping that the problem will go away does not happen in diesel loco maintenance.
26. The use of suitable storage environment & protective packaging should make the need for anti deterioration maintenance while spare parts are in store exception. Large number of components failures can be traced back due to damage inflicted during storage, handling, and transportation more often due to lack of appreciation.
27. Succession planning to train successors must be clearly made for each section in advance. Knowledge and skill must be broad based for smooth uninterrupted maintenance free from monopolistic pangs and sudden vacuum in each section.
28. Make Diesel Shed a Learning Organization: All officers and supervisors should become facilitator and help everyone to learn from one another. Employees all over the world have been saying that –“you have paid for my hands when you could have my brain as well for nothing”. The persons who are near to the job and have been doing the job for number of years are our store house of knowledge. We need to learn from both their knowledge and their failures or limitations. Let’s make our sheds learning organizations and unleash huge intellectual capital available with us.
29. Tell Tale Sign Compendium: Tell tale sign compendium section wise must be created and staff should be trained accordingly. Visual signs on components tell their tale in their own language, we must equip and train the maintenance team to acknowledge and decipher these tell tale signs prophesying like oracles of Delphi.
We should recognize and develop good ideas, it is not important to try to be clever and come up with all the answers, but it is desirable to form technical competency to evaluate answers. Getting every employee’s mind into the game is huge part of Shed in charge job. He should be sponge, absorbing and questioning every good idea. The first step is being open to the best of what everyone has to offer. The second is transferring the knowledge pool across the shed and the third is to stretch their mind where they can improve their ideas further.
Shed in charge must challenge their team members to open their minds to envision how they can improve reliability by looking at situations from a different perspective. Reliability is a never ending journey. It is not a destination. It is state of mind, a commitment to tread on relentlessly on road-map charted. Each failure should be treated as an opportunity to do course correction. It is an invaluable feedback available to us to set our house in order, to modify existing maintenance practice and take appropriate actions so that these failures never recur again. Pride in workmanship, valuing the role of crew and focusing on the end user must be kept in mind. Maintenance is an investment not a Cost & key to meet transportation task of Railways.
In his classic philosophical novel “ Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Enquiry into the Values” author Robert M. Pirsig States that to truly experience quality, one must both embrace & apply it as best fits the requirements of the situation. Journey of reliability is a journey of faith, passion & perseverance. It should not be treated as dull & tedious drudgery but an enjoyable pursuit by agents of change. Apostates have to turn into Apostles of change.
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