One you’ve come up with the best measurement, chosen a score card, and started measuring your efforts, it’s time to report on it.

But it depends on who the report is targeting as to what you should show and how you should present it. Whether you’re presenting metrics to your maintenance team, customers or management, there are different ways of effectively getting your message across.

Here are my top tips for effectively presenting your metrics to different audiences in your organisation.

The Maintenance Team

Before you present anything to your maintenance team, you have to make sure that every person turning a wrench or putting a metre or something or lubricating something knows what they’re being measured on. You’re going to have a revolt on your hands if you show them a scorecard and say, “I’ve been measuring you on this, and by the way you’re not too good at it.” So let them know first, it’s absolutely critical.

• Show the summary page and discuss
• Dig into the details for any score that does not meet expectations
• Explain how achieving each metric benefits them or the company
• Ensure the team understands exactly how each metric is calculated

 

I always show my maintenance team a scorecard for the PM upfront. “Here’s what I expect on a PM, and here’s the questions we ask for each work order. Here’s what I expect when I go out and watch your job. I want to make sure that you had the part staged. I want to make sure that you didn’t have to go to the storeroom to get more parts. I want to make sure when you were completed you tested it to the best of your ability.” They knew when somebody came to audit them those are the things that would be looked at, and then we told them why that was important.

Customers

• Simple one or two page summary
• Explain how these metrics will help their group

When you’re talking to the production team I would say, “If we get your PMs done on time and we get them done right, or if we test the work orders, test the jobs after we complete the work, this will reduce the amount of time that you have to call us back to do a job a second time, because we’ve tested it. When I ask you to leave 10 cases of empty bottles for beer on that conveyor for the weekend so I can do that job, I’m asking for a reason, so I can test it, I need those materials to test it, and here’s how it’s going to benefit you.”

• Ask for their feedback on what you measure

Talk to your production managers to ask for their feedback on what you’re going to measure for the customer “Where do you see us needing to work on a little bit? What can we help you on? What could we do a little bit better?” If they buy into that scorecard and they’ve helped establish some of the metrics, they’re going to support you every step of the way.

• Have back up data available

 

The Management Team

• Show only the summary data in one or two pages maximum

When I started this at Monsanto we didn’t have a CMMS, no SAP, we used spreadsheets. So when we implemented our measurements, I had to do a bit of preparation before I presented them. I told my management team “I’m going to start scoring this pyramid and you’re going to see a lot of red for at least six months. Understand that and don’t get mad at my team, otherwise I’m not going to use this scorecard and I’ll do something that looks a little bit better to make you happy,” and they understood and appreciated that. So we started with a lot of red but we gradually improved.

• Have the details available as backup

Most likely management will ask some tough questions so have some backup data available. When I was presenting to management and somebody said, “We didn’t do too well in the preventive maintenance block. How come?” I could toggle over to the spreadsheet tab and I could show them “Here’s why we didn’t score well and here’s what we’re doing to work on it.”

• Explain how improvements have benefited the company
• List planned next steps to improve

You want to make sure that you know after you do each scorecard what you’re going to do to get better by the next time this scorecard comes around. When we did our full-blown maintenance audit every two years, we would present this to the maintenance team first and then ask them to state what they were going to work on between now and the next scorecard. We gave them autonomy to set these improvements and then we’d use those to feed back to management.

 

 

This post is based on Kevin Desrosiers’ top-rated presentation at Mainstream Conference 2017. You can watch video of his full presentation “Choosing Metrics to Achieve Cost Optimisation and World Class Performance.”

About the Author 

Kevin Desrosiers is Systems Reliability Team Lead at Monsanto (USA). He has been in Engineering and Maintenance for 35 years: moving from plant engineer to maintenance supervisor to maintenance superintendent to engineering manager, and finally as a corporate strategic asset planning manager. He is a Certified Maintenance and Reliability Professional.