Russ Mokrouz, a Principal Consultant with GenesisSolutions, has been exposed to maintenance operations in a unique way since his early years.  The son of a USSR supersonic bomber pilot and brother to a Ukrainian fighter pilot, he was frequently on an airfield to observe day-to-day activities of aircraft maintenance and operations. Starting off on his path at the Ukrainian Air Force Academy studying aeronautical engineering, he then was selected to complete his studies at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, CO.

A career transition to consulting services with GenesisSolutions brought another level of appreciation for implementing technology solutions in support of maintenance business processes improvements. For the past 7 years Russ has been working closely with various customer groups including maintenance supervisors, technicians, inventory personnel, IT, and senior management allowing him to build a broad spectrum of knowledge and expertise necessary to lead complex multi-site EAM / CMMS / CCMS implementations. Pharmaceutical and power industries remained the main focus for Russ over the years. Russ has a diversified skillset ranging from process re-engineering, system configuration and validation, to electronic report writing and the development of automated workflow; as well as user training and technical support. This all adds up to an astute ability to understand our customer’s expectations and to deliver quality solutions.

Russ’ personal goals are to provide a computerized system solution that brings the most value to our customers. Value is measured in time saved on streamlined processes, ease of use, electronic work management, and seamless reporting within the system framework. Aviation aspirations remain a significant part of Russ’ life as he often soars in an aerobatic glider over the green fields of Pennsylvania to the heights of the Arizona mountains.

Change Management - A Starting Point by Tom Terfehr  

The mantra in all of our workplaces today is: improve the way we do things. The reasons explained in Chinese, Dutch, Tagalog, English or Spanish are the same: More output with less cost. To get that done means change - organizational change and personal change. So, if change is part of our everyday lives it makes sense to understand how change works and how to make it work for us.

The following tool to understand and manage change has stood the test of time. It was first introduced by Michael Beers more than two decades ago and variations have been used in industry, government and education to guide change management.

Probability of Effective Change = (D*M*P) - (C)  

Where:  

D = Degree of satisfaction with the status quo

M = Model (picture, vision of changed future)

P = The implementation process

C = Cost (organizational & personal) as measured by time, effort, resources required, etc.  

The point is that change can be managed.  Let’s take each element of the change process and see how:

“D” - Degree of satisfaction with the status quo - for any change to happen there must be a reason. The stronger the reason the higher the probability is for successful change. That reason could be an outside force such as a new product or service from a competitor, a new or different customer need or a recession that costs a large percentage of our business in one year. The reason could also be an inside force such as a new manager with different ideas, poor quality that is costing money in claims or equipment downtime that impacts customers. The point is: to manage change, you need to find a reason to improve things (the Why) that makes sense to the people who will need to change and then explain it…sometimes over and over again.

“M” - Model or picture, vision of the future - The evidence is clear that people first need to understand the new way of doing things before we can make a decision to change from what we are doing now. So to manage change the “new way” needs to be explained. The benefits should be part of that explanation. Benefits come in the form of less pain (e.g. lost customer orders, regulatory warnings & fines, claims, etc.) or more pleasant things (e.g. higher equipment uptime, on-time shipments, no regulatory incidents, etc.). The point is: to manage change, explain a better way (the What) that makes sense to the people who will need to change and then explain it…again, sometimes over and over again.

“P” - the Implementation Process - Changing to a new way of doing things means that we need a roadmap. One helpful way to create the map is the “start, stop, continue” approach which involves three questions: What do we start doing (that we are not doing now)? What do we stop doing? And, very importantly, what do we continue doing? Change always means building on successes - taking core organizational and people strengths and building on them. The point is: to manage change, explain ways to improve things (the How) that makes sense to the people who will need to change and then explain it…over and over again.

“C” - Cost to change - Every change has a cost. The key question is: Does the gain exceed the pain (cost) of the change?  Cost comes in the form of simple things like inconvenience, learning new ways of working or more complicated things such as retraining for a new job, learning to use a new computer system, changing locations to keep a job, etc. There are ways to reduce the cost of change such as training, working in teams to help one another and using expert resources to shorten the learning curve. The point is: to manage change, understand the costs and figure out ways to minimize them that makes sense to the people who will need to change and then explain it…over and over again.

To restate, change can be managed. The approach outlined here is leading edge “change management.” GenesisSolutions has used this approach around the world (language and location do not matter - process does) to help our customers improve reliability, implement new CMMS software, redesign maintenance work management processes, change maintenance organizational structures, complete a corporate merger…and more.

To learn more about our Change Management practical application, please contact Tom Terfehr at tterfehr@genesissolutions.com.

April 2010 Upcoming Events

Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) Seminar

When: 04/14/10

                                                         The primary purpose of the Southern California Maximo Users’ Group (SCMUG) is to provide an open forum for the discussion of technical and business issues involved with the employment of the Maximo product line of Maintenance, Production, Fleet and Asset Management Systems. The SCMUG values the personal and professional opinions of all types of Maximo users, from the Operational and Technical Management through the end users of the data systems.

GenesisSolutions will be attending this event.

Matt Midas, a Senior Customer Operations Executive with GenesisSolutions, is celebrating his 20^th anniversary working within the maintenance industry.  He began his engineering career in the US Navy after graduating in 1987 from the US Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, NY.  Prior to graduation, he sailed on several different US flag merchant vessels as an engineering student.  Matt joined the Navy upon graduation where he served for 3 years aboard the USS Jesse L Brown, FF1087, as the Boilers Officer, Main Propulsion Assistant and acting Chief Engineer.  Matt was responsible for all maintenance, engineering and safety programs while aboard the Jesse L Brown and qualified as EOOW, CICWO and OOD. 

In 1991, Matt left the Navy and started working at the Charleston Naval Shipyard where he quickly qualified as a nuclear engineer in the maintenance, repair and overhaul division.  He identified ways to improve many of the procedures associated with repair and overhaul of S5W and S6G nuclear propulsion plants, all of which reduced the total time required to perform the tasks resulting in reduced costs and exposure to radiation.

Matt left the shipyard and took a position with ServiceMaster where he managed maintenance and operations for 186 facilities in Washington, DC and was responsible for implementing several asset management systems to manage data.  Matt understands the value of accurate data and well defined procedures to ensure the right things are done at the right time with the right resources.  Having worked for PSDI and MRO Software from 1997 to 2005, Matt also understands how asset management systems should be used to help executives make the best business decisions based on accurate data.  He has been helping GenesisSolutions’ customers define and implement solutions to improve their enterprise asset management systems with great success for the past five years.

Matt holds an MBA from Loyola College of Maryland and resides in Clarksville, MD with his wife of twenty-one years, Sue, and their four children.  Matt can be found on the soccer field almost every weekend with his kids or fly fishing during the offseason.

Applying Performance & Process Metrics to Influence Behavior

Cultural changes during the upgrade or deployment of asset and maintenance management programs can easily be accelerated by the careful and thoughtful use of metrics that keep management and supervision engaged in their own performance and ability to meet new business process requirements.  Performance matrices that use data from Asset and Maintenance Management software provide an accurate perspective of how well individuals can meet new business program objectives and follow business processes.   The metrics for first line supervision have the most direct influence on the successful acceptance of change and should be developed with the aid of the supervisors.  Some examples of these metrics would be work schedule compliance, amount of unplanned & unscheduled work, timely changes to work status, and direct labor for high value work on high value assets.

Since the first line supervisor (foreman) is the key to the successful implementation of an asset maintenance management system by directing all work that is accomplished, the following are some metrics that can be used to keep supervisors aware of how they are performing:

• Labor distribution by work order priority  - a measure that determines if high value work is being performed,  this is man-hours of work craft supervised.
• Labor distribution by work type  - a measure of how and where the supervisor is utilizing staff to perform work such as corrective, preventive, predictive or modification and if there is a balanced approach to meeting requirements that add benefit to the operational commitments.  This is measured in man-hours by work type.
• Schedule Compliance - a measure of how well the supervisor manages his staff to meet scheduled work which is recognized as the most productive work that can be performed.  This is a percentage of labor hours scheduled to labor hours worked in the time period.
• Direct Labor - this is a measure of worker productivity as measured by the labor hours of value added work, which work that has a higher priority on higher value assets as a ratio to total man-hours managed by the supervisor.

There are other important metrics that can and should be applied to successfully influence change.  If you would like to learn more about the benefits and value of challenging management and supervision with real time data contact Bill Olsen at bolsen@genesissolutions.com

April 2010 Upcoming EAM & Maximo Events 

Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) Seminar

GenesisSolutions will be hosting a complimentary EAM Seminar on Tuesday, April 13, 2010 in Houston, TX. This event will include topics and discussion focusing on:  

• Asset Reliability
• EAM Life Cycle Maturity
• Maintenance Strategy & Process
• Systems & Technology

Location: Marriott North at Greenspoint

Time: 7:30am - 5:00pm

Registration Details: info@genesissolutions.com

Southern California Maximo User Group (SCMUG)

GenesisSolutions will be participating at the SCMUG April 14, 2010 in Los Angeles, CA, hosted by UCLA.

More information available at: http://www.scmug.net

Pacific Northwest Maximo Users (PANMU)

GenesisSolutions will be attending and presenting at the upcoming PANMU meeting April 15, 2010 in Seattle, WA, hosted by IBM. Our presentation: “Putting CMMS Work History Data to Work”, delivered at last months IBM Pulse 2010 conference, will be receiving an encore performance.

More information available at: http://www.panmu.org/

When: 10/21/09

The primary purpose of the Southern California MAXIMO Users’ Group (SCMUG) is to provide an open forum for the discussion of technical and business issues involved with the employment of the MAXIMO product line of maintenance, production, fleet and asset management systems. The SCMUG values the personal and professional opinions of all types of MAXIMO users, from the Operational and Technical Management through the end users of the data systems.

Meetings are twice yearly.