Don't Just Fix It Improve It

I just read Winston Ledet's new book, Don't Just Fix It, Improve It. The book is a very easy read because it is told as a story. It is also a good reminder of why you can't just focus on planning and scheduling. My experience matches the storyline of the book. The really good performers eliminate the defects before they ever turn into work orders. Small problems are seldom left to turn into big failures and big problems rarely happen. Winston hits the nail on the head when he demonstrates through the story that improvement efforts which just focus on driving the right maintenance work practices bog the organization down with too much work and seldom succeed. Only after building in the "defect elimination" culture and reducing the defects coming into the system can the organization achieve the best practice benchmarks. The small problems don't clog the CMMS system and the work processes can focus on the big things. Small problems get taken care of immediately at the source. Thanks Winston for this reminder about what to focus on.