MRO and RCM is about maintenance strategies, and like most group project, it takes more than just knowing about the strategies. It needs careful planning, organising and coordinated effort of all participants to implement, execute and sustain it, for it to be successful and that is: achieving a cost efficient way of managing reliability and keeping asset running with minimum downtime.
Everybody will agree that the most important element that decide the strength, success or failure of most company is its people. People are identified for various task and are assigned with specific role either based on the skillset they possessed through former education, training and past working experience, or be placed under specific training program to acquire the knowledge needed to perform the role.
Organisation Chart also include management structure which specify who does what and who reports to whom so that operation are coordinated. It defines each branch, division, section, employee responsibility, role, accountability, and authority. In this essence, structure gives people a sense of belonging and awareness of what is expected of them.
Formally, Organisation chart are structured with core business as reference. Then support services were built around the core business to take care of other business not directly contributing to core efficiency to allow the core team to focus and not be distracted by other businesses.
In MRO business, Maintenance team deals with the core business, and in order for them to focus, there are various teams or division setup. The Finance team to govern and assist in financial matter. Safety team to govern safety and assist in safety matter. Procurement team will govern the procuring system and assist in procurement matter. Training team to plan and execute training program, Facility team to assist in facility issue and Quality team to enhance or control product quality.
With all the side issues taken care of, the Maintenance team will then be able to deal with maintenance issues wholeheartedly, which include ensuring maintenance strategies and plan are implemented and executed accordingly.
When I first joined SMRT in 1990, our role were specific. As a Technical Officer (equivalent to current Assistant Engineer), we are field supervisor who organised, assigned and monitored the daily work and progress for our team of technicians, based on a schedule that was worked out according to a simplified method-time estimation carried out earlier.
We provide feedback on inventories requirement, and anomaly that require higher level decision. For building and facilities issues, we contact building M&E team, and they will attend to them. We report to a Senior Technical Officer, who did the planning and would inspect the work occasionally, review the work scope, activities and verify inventories needs and facilitate through procurement channel and management meeting. Budget planning and detailed long term plan are carried out by Engineer and Manager.
For procurement matter, for spares needed by scheduled overhaul, we listed all the required item and the overhaul commencement date, and submit them to the procurement office. Seeking suppliers and discussion potential suppliers is taken care of between our logistics section and Supply department.
But over the years, because of economizing to stay profitable, there were frequent tightening in maintenance budget which include frugality of manpower employment.
During which, role and responsibility were subjected to argument, defying the organisation chart, and based on articulation of manager or leader, sometimes in the context of convenience and synergy, sometimes collaboration and sometimes by influence of authority. In another word, due to managerial practices and leader behaviour, some group or employee may end up holding multiple roles, especially so for those under a manager who is compromising, less eloquent or inarticulate.
The practice caused a reversal in role of core business and its supporting partners. The various sections that were supposed to be providing support had in fact became a distraction needing intensive attentions and support from the core team in order to function. Maintenance field supervisors were frequently occupied by works other than maintenance business, which are often accompanied with ever increasing paper works created by supporting partner to offload their accountability.
There is no doubt that Maintenance team possess the highest headcount, which is often the basis of having to absorb more roles. But then, the headcount were catered according to justification for maintenance work. The budget do not allow justification to cater for redundancy. The practice had since became a norm, task transferred became permanent. Hence, the maintenance team has to multi-task. Besides dealing with maintenance issue, they were responsible with other tasks such as:
In the past, for inventories, all that need from the maintenance supervisor is submitting a purchase requisition request, and the rest is done between the logistics and purchasing department. But in the revised practice: except for sending RFQ and issuing of PO, his involvement include sourcing for prospective supplier, evaluating of quotations, keeping track of the purchase progress until delivery.
Maintenance supervisor also have to cover training for their staff. On site, on-the job training is not an issue, the trouble is with class room and theoretical training. It needs times and resource to prepare for topics and training materials
There is no doubt that Safety is the responsibility of each and every employee, and individual is accountable for their own area, and that integrating safety measure and supervision in maintenance operation is a good way to develop a good safety culture. We understand that Safety department roles is to assist the management in monitoring the implementation, developing of safety strategies, promote safety culture through forum, seminars and safety drives. They also conduct inspection and accident investigation to determine if rules and procedures for safe operation were followed etc.
However, there should be a limit in utilizing Maintenance team resource for additional roles outside maintenance operation, for examples pulling away maintenance staff to conduct periodic inspection and expecting them attend regular meet and submit report to the safety officer frequently. (There was even a period where maintenance executive were rostered to screen through CCTV footages at the Operation Control Central and to check on or sort of audit security guard house after office hours, sometimes past midnight, at various depot. Luckily for whatever reason, this was discontinued after a year or so.)
By the way, based on role theory perspective, while the understanding may be Safety First, the demands by output statistics, management instructions, deadline pressures, KPI and reward systems suggest that meeting maintenance target as number one priority. In this aspect, role conflicts bound to occur. Decision by maintenance supervisor is likely to skew toward accommodating some risk in order to meet the perceived priority. In such cases, it would be better to have appropriate Governance than to hold investigation and point fingers after things go a strayed.
For example, task like work at height safety permit issuing, risk assessment and supervising safety setup and process of high risk task, rules equivalent to those guarding the Arm’s length Transaction in Financial procedure should be applied, appropriate Safety expert should take over conflicting safety role from Maintenance team in case where critical roles clash and overlap, this will remove the opportunity for them to accommodate risk in order to meet Maintenance target.
Multiple roles affect individuals differently. Most employee if not all, will accept the roles even if they are sure it is not within their scope. Some because ego gratification, some for harmony, some for praises and perceived prospect of rewards and some due to fear of consequences of not complying with order or being accused for insubordination.
However, there are potential backlash associated with the multiple roles when individuals are not able to fulfil all the roles as expected whether due to time, resource constraints or ability. They will experience excessive stress.
Although moderate levels of stress can stimulate creativity and encourage effort, and is inevitable in the course of work. But fatigue and excessive stress might inhibit creativity and drain energy. It may cause anxiety, lead to lack of heartfelt commitment, dissatisfaction, resulting in cheating, or taking short cut which eventually will adversely affect production quality.
Generally, employees are concerned about their roles and work goals because their rewards are based on the accomplishment of the work goals and fulfilment of role. If Organizational structure becomes irrelevant, and roles and responsibilities became ambiguous, it will be like vanishing goal posts, you simply can’t score. The expectation, and elements that gave the sense of job security and satisfaction will no longer be salient. If each employee’s role and responsibilities are clearly structured and as clear as defined, there are higher chances of collaboration and working together with different groups will easier. It makes for better teamwork as each is aware of what is expected of them. This will also reduce misunderstandings and disputes, especially in task execution and accountability.
When new management take over, what most of them did was to reshuffle the organisation structure, maybe change some HOD, transfer or merge some roles and responsibility, create new teams of support, but whatever in practice remains, there is rarely any effective action of rooting back to the fundamental.
The previous SMRT CEO Desmond seems spot on about deep seated cultural problem, and the needs of going back to basic. But the action stopped after reprimanding those caught cheating and taking short cut, and their in-charge. Just concluded that they are lazy. There was no investigation or study to understand the underlying reasons on why they did that (i.e. took such risk). This is akin to successfully skimming the cause of the particular problem from the surface, while the root remains hidden.
I am not implying that he had faulted, but the complexity of management in real-life situation where people, environment and expectations are ever changing is always challenging. Will HOD and those in higher management risk looking incompetent by telling the CEO that he has problem in his area? Can a CEO really hear the truth from the ground or field staff? Based on my personal experience, what he get from the ground is likely orchestrated or being filtered by the layers of management staff in between. After all, staff know that appraisal and reward is based on agreement between direct reporting officer and branch head recommendation. Along the hierarchy, some may have interest that they want protected.
This is just my personal view and maybe perceived ideal, simply put; I believe going back to the basic (fundamental) is a good idea. There should be a fundamental reference, even if changes is required.