The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Maintenance Organizations - HABIT 1

Habit 1 – Be Proactive

Being proactive is the ability to control one's own environment, rather than have it control you. It’s Self determination. It’s choice. It’s the power to decide your response to stimulus, conditions, and circumstances. The title of the first habit, and our frequent use of the same term in the maintenance and reliability field, is what originally drew my attention to the correlation between Dr. Covey’s 7 Habits and successful maintenance organizations.

Reactive maintenance organizations have a tendency to jump or react when a piece of equipment fails. Proactive organizations respond based on a predetermined strategy. Habit 1 means you are in the driver’s seat and you can decide which of these actions to take.

Take Charge: In a ranked list of companies in any industry, there is one at the top and one at the bottom. Your organization is likely somewhere in-between. Companies move up that list when they realize that doing things the way they have always been done continually yields the same results. Organizations have the power to make the necessary changes to move up the ranks by choosing to take initiative.

We Are Responsible: Being responsible is often viewed as being the person who should accept the blame when something goes wrong. But there is more to it than that. Rather than getting the blame, let’s do all the necessary things to ensure that things don’t go wrong. In other words, create the steps for success.

Step down the Path of the Effective Organization: The organizations at the top of that list we mentioned have made these realizations. They’ve decided what works in their organization, and they have learned the habits of doing it effectively.

Rule Your Equipment: When you are proactive you rule your equipment, it doesn’t rule you. Successful organizations have found the best way to do this is by deciding to move up the F/PF (Failure/Potential Failure) Curve. That move is accomplished primarily through the use of predictive methodologies (PdM) and quantifiable PMs.

Decide to Make a Plan: Then, do it. Successful organizations design and build highly effective maintenance departments. You have the power!

Check back next Tuesday for Habit 2!