Training for All Staff
Training is a significant factor in meeting the challenge of change. At Spurlock, new equipment, new processes, new employees, and new policies required everyone to participate in training.
An experienced operator reflected, “New scrubbers and two new units in the last five years meant operators were taking the controls of new assets that even the experienced operators hadn’t touched.” A manager asked himself, as a test, “If I was the only one here and something went wrong, would I know what to do?” During times of significant change, even experienced personnel occasionally work outside their comfort zones.
Currently, the training department’s focus is on operations. With the assistance of a training consultant, two training coordinators are developing simulator training materials, formalizing operator checklists, administering testing programs, maintaining operator progression charts, updating standard operating procedures, and training and auditing the new energy control program.
Computerized Maintenance Management System
An effectively used CMMS is a key tool for implementing and sustaining WPO efforts. Valid, timely data are needed for feedback on the process and for problem solving. EKPC corporate management is standardizing business software across all EKPC business units. The new system’s rollouts are scheduled to take place during the summer of 2010 at six locations. The supported functions included planning, supply chain, scheduling, and measurement.
Measure and Modify
Managers want to know how the WPO is working and what they can do to remove obstacles to improvement. For years, supervisors cited work interruptions, manpower shortages, and coordination missteps as being the problems that prevented work from getting done as quickly or as well as they hoped. Those obstacles remain, but the behavior modification is that now supervisors are supposed to document them, not just talk about them. This is a huge change that causes concern among supervisors, who wonder, “Will we be held responsible for events out of our control? What happens to me if I’m at fault?”
Measurement usually prompts such worries. To counter that concern, work process measures were introduced to managers and supervisors as tools to gauge WPO health, identify issues, and recognize progress. To reinforce measures as tools for continuous improvement, EKPC’s Senior Vice President of Power Production Craig Johnson said, “Having WPO means the finger of blame is not pointed at people, but at processes.” He wants EKPC sites to focus on refining and honing the right side (the efficiency) elements of the work process management model (Figure 2) in 2010 and focus on refining the left side (the effectiveness) elements in 2011.
Supervisors are positioned to be problem solvers if they use schedules effectively to answer questions like, “How well can I predict tomorrow’s work and next week’s work? What events impact this schedule’s results?” Formal scheduling provides methods to quantify schedule impacts by type, frequency, and hours. This information, in turn, becomes the business case for making changes and resolving issues. The process of schedule compliance compares hours and assignments scheduled versus what is actually accomplished; impacts are identified by variance codes. Schedule compliance measures are derived from the schedules supervisors complete throughout the week.
A variety of work process measures (leading indicators) and key performance indicators (lagging indicators) are reported. Collecting and reporting accurate, complete measurement data is a trial-and-error process as planners and supervisors improve the timeliness and accuracy of CMMS inputs and as new processes not yet measured are implemented.
The WPO steering committee’s future plans include physical measurement boards in work areas and meeting with employees for measurement question and answer sessions.
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