When you run an industrial plant, you should always be ready to deal with various situations that come on your way. One of them is a failure. In many cases, failure does not arise because you do not have a good plant of system, but because of small things such as lack of commitment from some employees. The wisdom of being able to learn from failure is very important. In this post, we take a closer look at how you can learn from industrial failure and roar your business to its best performance again.
Avoid the Blame Game and Find the Cause of Failure
Once a failure or problem has occurred in an industrial system, the first line of defense is blaming others. Most managers point an accusing finger at junior staff. However, you need to carry a more comprehensive diagnostic to understand why the failure occurred. For example, if the failure occurred at the end of a production shift, it could be as a result of fatigue.
As a manager, the goal should be making it easy for every staff to report failure so that action is taken promptly. If you are in the mining niche, you should train staff to identify and report failure right away. This could be a small fault in a system or major issue that can cause a shutdown.
Train Staff to Strictly Follow Procedures
In many cases, failure happens because your staff failed to do something on time or did it wrongly. Therefore, you can avoid failure or cut them down with a huge margin by training staff on how to do things correctly. This should go together with motivating your staff.
As you train staff about handling machines and following the right procedures, let them get a feeling of ownership. This means that they will go an extra mile to do things correctly and prevent failure. Note that motivation is not just about the remuneration. You should assure them of retention at the job and growth in their careers.
Create a Learning Culture
In industrial systems such as manufacturing plants, the ability to learn from failure can help make your organization stronger. In this type of industry, the focus should not just be about the failure that hits your plant. Instead, you should use other failures and learn from them.
Plan for demonstrations and drills on why other plants failed and how to avoid similar situations. In every department, supervisors should focus on ensuring that all procedures are followed to prevent failure. It is also prudent to adopt an automated monitoring system that can help to identify problems and even shut the system down before reaching the point of damage. For example, if a boiler in your plant is set to operate at 200 degrees Celsius, a monitoring system that notes when the temperature is exceeded and shuts down the system should be installed.
When you install an industrial system, you need to acknowledge that plant failures can occur. But, you should be adequately prepared to roar back using the above strategies.
