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EAM System Design and Use Insights from Out of the Crisis by W. Edwards Deming

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• Chapter 1, Chain Reaction: Quality, Productivity, Lower Costs, Capture the Market

Abstract:

Today is the start of the tenth time I study W. Edwards Deming’s famous book, Out of the Crisis. I first read the book around 2004, 2005. The insights it gave me back then about quality, productivity, lower costs changed my life and my career for the better. The last couple of times when reading the book, I thought it would contribute real value to Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) if I explained the insights Deming’s experiences, concepts, and advice in Out of the Crisis gave to me over the years about EAM System design and use. The approach for this series of articles is to read a chapter and then explain my top three understandings of Deming’s writings when applied to Enterprise Asset Management systems. Any misinterpretations and errors in what I perceive Deming meant are my own.

• Chapter 2, Principles for Transformation of Western Management

Abstract:

When Deming released Out of the Crisis in 1982, he wanted Western style of management, which was adversarial and misunderstood the meaning of quality, to change to the quality management approach of the transformed industries of Japan which he helped to create. Learning from his experiences in over three decades of involvement with Japanese operations, he proposed 14 Points for companies in the West to adopt to make the transformation. The 14 Points gave every organization, be it a product or service enterprise, large or small, a “theory of management for improvement of quality, productivity, and competitive position.” Western enterprise now had a defined theory of management to test and learn how to transform their organisation to get world class quality, productivity, and sales.

• Chapter 3, Diseases and Obstacles

Abstract:

Changing Western style of Management and adopting the 14 Points from Chapter 2 to transform and rebuild an organisation for high quality and productivity will face the deadly diseases and obstacles. Deming identified seven deadly diseases and sixteen obstacles to organizational change inherent in Western management systems. They apply to all radical institutional change, including improving maintenance and EAM systems and processes to be more effective and efficient.

• Enterprise Asset Management, EAM: What It Really Is

Abstract:

The typical definition of Enterprise Asset Management is horribly incomplete. They usually point out correctly that EAM is an organization’s system related to its physical assets. To date none explain that an EAM system incorporates all its, and the organization’s, past, along with their futures. Sometimes an EAM definition considers the impact of an EAM system on customers and consumers, but it is unlikely it includes doing market and consumer research to inform the organization what its EAM future needs to address to keep their customers contented. The late quality guru, W. Edwards Deming, rightly taught that a holistic business system design includes the impact on clients and their future, and how the customer’s future will impact the organization’s own systems. An excellent, inclusive Enterprise Asset Management definition would embrace all holistic and temporal requirements.

• Zero Cost Start to Operational Excellence Quality and Performance

Abstract:

The following eight steps start an organization toward operational excellence and are free to do. If your organization seeks operational excellence quality and performance begin with them. They give you the right lead to world class operating results and productivity. They are in keeping with the recommendations W. Edwards Deming wrote about in his book “Out of the Crisis’ for attaining operational excellence.

 

1. Start by doing nothing but to plot all KPI’s and PIs collected in the operation on individual run charts. Are they stable?

2. Plot each run chart’s distribution. Are the curves tightly over the required performance?

3. Investigate the history of the unsatisfactory distributions to learn why they are not to intended requirements.

4. Meet everyone involved, one-on-one, for as long as it takes, and ask what they think are their roles and duties as explained in the operational definitions that are their responsibility.

5. Review all deficient operational definitions and with input of the users’ research and correct them so they will produce the required distributions.

6. Train and practice the relevant people to properly do the improved operational definitions.

7. Plot run charts and their distributions from doing the updated operational definitions.

8. Start back an No. 1 and repeat the steps where the results are still not to requirements.

• Chapter 4, When? How Long? (to get world class EAM System performance)

Abstract:

In ‘Out of the Crisis’ Deming warned that organizations using Western style of management doomed themselves. They needed to drop the short-sighted ‘next quarter dividend imperative’ driving management thinking and strategy. Instead, replace it with long-term plans and actions for securing the future by innovating what consumers wanted. He wrote, “The only possible answer (for long-term survival) lies in better design, better quality, and greater productivity.” Deming forecast up to 10-years to establish the necessary knowledge and skills base, and it could take over 30-years to reach world class performance. In all that time the Japanese would not stand still, they would forge ahead every year of those 30-years. If you want world class EAM system performance, your company does not have 30-years to make it happen—it does not have 10-years either!

• Chapter 5, Questions to Help Managers (to get Holistic Enterprise Asset Management and EAM Systems)

Abstract:

Chapter 5 in ‘Out of the Crisis’ contains dozens upon dozens of important questions W. Edwards Deming believed managers of product and service organizations needed to properly address for a company to flourish in its environment. They challenge managers to see their organization as a holistic system of people, physical assets, and processes where interactions and effects in one part influence decisions and actions in many other of its parts. The questions from Chapter 5 listed in this article also apply to building holistic enterprise asset management and EAM systems.

• Chapter 6, Quality and the Consumer (explains what is quality? Defines quality and gives quality meaning)

Abstract:

‘Study the needs of the customer and provide what will give them a better living in future’ is W. Edwards Deming’s paraphrased advice in Out of the Crisis, Chapter 6. Consumers know what they need to achieve, and they will buy an affordable product or service which they think will deliver their expectations. Once they become a customer, they decide for themselves through its use if the purchase was quality, or it was not. Thus, customers are the only people that can define quality and judge its satisfaction. They are the ones who give quality meaning because they know if the thing did, or did not do, the job well enough. Only they can truthfully answer the question: What is quality? And if they are not happy, they do not come back.