Page 18 - MetalForming Magazine October 2022 - FABTECH

Tooling by Design
management will call upon the same list of directors, managers and tech- nicians that successfully extinguish fires, not those who search the market for new opportunities and ways to improve the business or create new, untapped value. In fact, people who take initiative on new ideas, particu- larly ones not focused on the day’s fire, seldom are noticed. Even worse, man- agement may view this type of proac- tive effort as a liability, and chastise employees for not focusing on the most pressing challenges.
Some companies hire outside super- visors specifically due to their leader- ship abilities, despite their gaps in industry-specific knowledge. Unfortu- nately, these supervisors also become fire fighters if management practices are not altered to encourage them to lead, or they are indoctrinated with “how we do things here.”
Little will change unless manage- ment provides support for the resulting outcome, whether it’s success, failure or a change in direction. The knowl- edge gained from a strategic attempt that did not achieve the expected out- come should be viewed as a success.
Finding Root Cause
The first step in finding root cause: Develop an accurate problem state- ment, and the problem is not that you're too busy. Viewing being busy as the problem delivers no solution—you always will be too busy.
Here’s a problem: behaving like a firefighter instead of a fire marshal— constantly rushing from one fire to the next and never slowing down or mak- ing time to install smoke detectors.
This leads us to the biggest problem: You're really good at fighting fires.
Interested in learning more about die maintenance? Consider attending (live or virtually) PMA’s Die Mainte- nance and Troubleshooting seminar in Cleveland, OH, on October 19-20, 2022. Contact Marianne Sichi (msichi@pma.org) to register or for more information.
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