OUR POINT OF VIEW
The Business Case: 1 Hour Can Change Everything
OUR POINT OF VIEW
The Business Case: 1 Hour Can Change Everything
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The Business Case: 1 Hour Can Change Everything
🔥 CURRENT STATE: What’s Really Happening on Your Shop Floor
Over the years, we’ve conducted numerous diagnoses at manufacturing plants, observing both Production and Maintenance teams in action.
What we consistently see is a familiar pattern:
Maintenance doesn’t have enough time to complete all their PM, CM and unexpected breakdowns.
Crews jump from one emergency to the next. Priorities shift. Jobs are rushed. Decisions are made on the fly.
PM and CM get pushed to next month. Short-term fixes today.
When the equipment is handed back to Production, it often breaks again within hours. Frustration grows:
“Maintenance said it’s repaired—but nothing has improved.”
The cycle feeds itself:
When Maintenance requests downtime for PM, Production refuses because they can’t afford to stop.
But because PMs aren’t done, the breakdowns keep coming.
And so the crisis cycle continues:
More firefighting.
More lost output.
Higher cost.
Rising stress and sick days.
Many factories are stuck in this loop → operating in permanent firefighting mode. They’ve normalized the chaos.
“That’s just how maintenance is done.”
And when nothing improves, teams point fingers → at each other, at aging machines, or at staff shortages.
Why Is This Happening?
"Being Busy" vs "Productive"
"Being Busy" vs "Productive"
When Maintenance team is too busy wrestling with breakdowns, they have no time to think about being productive.
When supervisors are busy reacting as well, they also don’t have the time to think about root causes or to coach the technicians.
We’ve had technicians ask if they can skip PM steps just to catch up. If PM can be skipped, why schedule it?
We see a deeper problem here:
There's a leadership gap and a lack of structure to get out of this crisis cycle.
Lost Time
Lost Time
There are 7 deadly wastes (non-productive activities) hiding in the day-to-day activities:
Idle time due to poor communication
Waiting for instructions from supervisor
Waiting for support equipment
Searching for tools and spare parts
Walking between job sites
Shift start and shift end inefficiencies
No assignment scheduled
All the above are called lost time.
This is why productivity is low, despite everyone "being busy".
Wrench Time Reality
Wrench Time Reality
Wrench Time = Total time spent actively working on equipment.
Most plants report Wrench Time of just 25–35%. That’s only 2–3 hours of actual hands-on work in an 8-hour shift.
The rest? Lost to the non-productive above.
If you eliminate just 1 hour of lost time per day, productivity can increase by 13%, jumping from 25% to 38%.
That’s a 50% productivity gain just by closing obvious gaps.
It’s like trying to fill a leaky bucket.
As long as lost time is accepted as normal, nothing will change.
The cycle will keep repeating. People stay busy, but nothing gets better.
Everyone wants to do a good day's work.
To break free from the crisis cycle, teams need structure. They need leadership on the floor.
And they need a system that turns busy hours into productive ones.
That’s how you fix the leaks so you can start to fill the bucket.
🏝️ FUTURE STATE: What Your Factory Could Look Like
When You Regain Control
When You Regain Control
Imagine walking into your factory 3 months from now.
It's running systematically with a structure to improve productivity, reduce costs, and keep your operations stable.
PRODUCTION team faces fewer breakdowns and shorter downtime. Supervisors lead with clarity, know what’s happening, and anticipate problems of low productivity. Operators spot issues early, report them to supervisors, and talk with technicians to eliminate defects.
MAINTENANCE team is proactive. Jobs are kitted and staged, priorities are clear, and they focus on fixing, not chasing parts. Technicians feel less overwhelmed and more engaged.
STOREROOM has the right spare parts, critical parts ready, in right quantity, stored in good condition, know where to source them. Work together with Planner for parts kitting in advance.
One Team, One Goal
One Team, One Goal
You are going to stop the hidden leaking that's happening right under your nose.
Everyone in your factory now understands how their role supports uptime and output.
The team works as ONE. People talk. Departments coordinate. Problems are surfaced, not hidden—and solved before they grow.
People stop blaming assets and start supporting each other.
This is the foundation of a reliable, profitable factory.
THE BIG IDEA: Only Assets Make Income
Dr. John L. Ross Jr. Ph.D. CMRP, in his book "The Reliability Excellence Workbook: From Ideas to Action", wrote "Only Assets Make Income" and "Profit Is The Goal".
Pick 1 of your most critical production assets.
Now visualize that asset as a paycheck printing machine, which literally prints the salary for everyone in the company.
What happens when it breaks down?
The paycheck stops.
➡️ The frontline team is literally the guardian of income.
And yet, most are asked to protect it without training, support, or authority to lead. That’s the silent failure in most improvement efforts.
Goodyear shut down its Malaysian factory after 50 years. They called it “transformation” program, aimed at delivering $1 billion in cost reductions by 2025.
Which also means, job losses for their employees.
(Reference: https://www.thestar.com.my/business/business-news/2024/03/08/tire-maker-goodyear-to-close-manufacturing-plant-in-malaysia)
We don't really know what actually happens in that company. But when frontline efficiency doesn’t improve, factories become vulnerable to cost pressures and global competition.
The factories that survive and thrive are the ones that maximize efficiency before external pressures force their hand.
That’s why keeping assets running should be everyone's job—not just Maintenance.
But an asset doesn’t earn income just by sitting on the floor.
Yes, Maintenance maintains and restores capacity → and Operations turns that capacity into output → both working in sync.
One protects the capacity, the other fulfills it.
They both serve the same goal: to keep the asset generating income.
When everyone is aligned to protect and optimize your most critical production asset, that’s what turns potential into profit.
Your Machines Print Your Paycheck
RECLAIMING 1 HOUR PER DAY
🏭 Example Scenario: Supervisor implements changes (training, daily maintenance planning, walkabout) that reduce 1 hour of downtime/lost time per day.
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