January 3, 2024 • 37 mins
- Highlight the critical importance of a robust asset management strategy.
- Discuss maintenance scheduling, coordination, and the power of clear communication.
- Emphasize post-service rituals to ensure optimal equipment performance.
- Share personal experiences and lessons learned from overlooked maintenance.
- Advocate for dialogue among technicians, scientists, and coordinators.
- Dive deep into mastering equipment maintenance for lab resilience and efficiency.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Oscar Gonzalez (00:00):
It's almost like that little Spider-Man cartoon
where, like the threeSpider-Man's are pointing at
each other like wait, you'resupposed to do something, and
it's not a really good feelingwhen people are coming into your
space and you don't actuallyknow what is going on.
Welcome to Lean by DesignPodcast.
I'm your host, Oscar Gonzalez,alongside my co-host, Lawrence
(00:21):
Wong.
We are former MBA classmatesturned business partners with
over 25 years of combinedexperience in life sciences,
from R&D through manufacturing.
Our experiences have shed lightinto the complex, ever-changing
challenges experienced by thisindustry and many others.
We took a risk quit oursix-figure paying jobs in Boston
(00:42):
Biotech and Pharma to startSigma Lab Consulting Journey
with us as we explore therelationship between people and
workflow design, the goal Tolearn, inspire and deliver
practical tips to navigate theseever-changing challenges.
Stick with us and learn to worksmarter, not harder, and be
lean by design.
(01:08):
How would you feel if youlearned that unplanned equipment
downtime can cost companiesupwards of $260,000 per hour,
according to some estimates.
This alarming figure serves asthe backdrop for our
conversation today about theintricacies of equipment
maintenance and servicing in thelife science industries.
The dialogue goes beyond merelytroubleshooting mechanical
(01:30):
issues to explore theoverarching system of
communication, responsibilityand planning that constitute a
well-rounded approach toequipment care.
The discussion illuminates thecollaborative roles that
equipment owners and serviceteams plays, each with distinct
responsibilities, but united ina quest for operational
(01:50):
excellence.
And welcome back to anotherepisode of Lean by Design
Podcast, Oscar Gonzalez here, myco-host, and Biotech
manufacturing facilitiesextraordinaire.
(02:12):
So we get into a facility giant.
You know, when I think aboutfacilities I understand there's
a lot of facilities that caneither manufacture compounds or
drugs or what have you, and inmy mind, for some reason, I get
(02:33):
this idea of like a giantbrewery that just has giant
tanks all over the place.
That's pretty accurate.
So you know.
Either way, I think this isgoing to be good for a lot of
our listeners.
But you know, with all thatequipment, you know who's really
responsible for managing that.
How do they go through thatequipment and go OK.
(02:54):
Well, this is what we need todo, because I know very well the
inherent risk that if somethinggoes wrong, what that does to a
full production line, you know,if it's contamination, if it's
pieces broken, what that does tohave to shut down to repair, to
(03:15):
fix.
How do folks now go through allthe equipment that they have
you know that now, and some ofthese large organizations is in
the thousands and make thosepreventative measures and be
able to schedule the right workthat needs to be done in the
right place?
I mean, what do we do?
Lawrence Wong (03:36):
Yeah, so usually you'll have what they call an
asset management function, andso what that function does is
they're responsible for any ofthe maintenance and calibration
of your systems, equipmentinstruments that either fall
into like a utility category, ormaybe it's something to do with
HVAC, it might be something onthe manufacturing floor, it
(03:59):
might be something in the lab,but, depending on the type of
work, there are specific, Iwould say, service providers
that are responsible forproviding that care.
So for the purposes of you knowthe discussion, we'll just focus
on scheduling routine events,right?
So I think when you talk aboutnon routine events that are
(04:22):
unplanned, like the emergencies,there's usually not some sort
of like blanket cokey cutter wayto do things, because it really
depends on the criticality ofthe system and the severity of
the incident, right?
So, as an example, if somebodyis seriously hurt, obviously you
know you drop everything andyou go address that immediately.
Versus, hey, we have a slowdrip and it's like okay, well,
(04:44):
how bad is it?
And then what is leaking?
If it's like the toilet, thenmaybe we don't address that
immediately and we go do otherthings.
Right?
So it depends on the the acercriticality and the severity of
the failure.
So when we talk aboutmaintenance scheduling and asset
management, I want to startwith addressing about how things
(05:06):
shouldn't be done, and so, ohthis is a lot of most companies
are going to operate out of acomputerized maintenance
management system, and so allthat is is it's a it's sort of
like a ticketing process whereevery month you'll have, you
know, a set list of work ordersthat you have to address.
(05:28):
So those work orders might rangein doing maintenance on a pump,
right where you have to replacea seal, and might be
calibrating a temperaturetransmitter that's a part of a
freezer, and so all of theseroutine events they usually, you
know, they usually do at theend of the month, and they'll
come up maybe a couple daysbefore the next month.
(05:52):
But you'll get a list of thingsthat need to get done for the
next month, and so what happensis the planner will either have
a meeting or you'll send anemail out and say, hey, I need a
bunch of availability for yourequipment so I can work on it.
And so if you're the owner ofit.
you'll come back with a bunch ofdates or you'll say this time
(06:12):
works for me, this time doesn'twork for me.
And then that bundle of timeand dates gets forwarded to the
service provider.
And so then they'll look attheir workforce and say this
either works or doesn't work.
And so this happens a couplemore times until somebody waits
at the last minute to schedulethe work and it's due in a
(06:33):
couple days, and so that's justfor one job.
You can imagine that, if youhave hundreds of work orders,
how infuriating this is, becauseyou waste so much time just
with emails and meetings andgetting dates and times.
And so you know what do you doas a planner to improve this
(06:54):
process and make it a little bitless painful?
It begins with settingexpectations and the
communicating with thestakeholders, right, and so I'm
not.
I'm not talking about from jobto job, but overall strategy.
So suppose you have a lab groupthat has a very front-loaded
(07:15):
schedule in the morning, right?
So they do most of theirexperiments in the morning.
In that case, the afternoonsare probably the best time to do
the maintenance, becausethere's less activity going on.
Another scenario might be hey,this job impacts your most
critical instrument and soyou're not going to have this
available for you while we workon it.
It probably makes more sense toassign the most experienced
(07:39):
technicians to services so youcan get it back to the owner in
time, right, you don't want tobe assigning a bunch of rookies
to services thing, because ifsomething goes wrong then
there's a lot more impact thatmight that will create on your
schedule.
Oscar Gonzalez (07:54):
Are these internal people that we're
talking about here, or from thevendor?
Lawrence Wong (07:59):
It depends.
So your calibration, dependingon the type of equipment, might
be internal or might be external.
I find that if you are dealingwith external partners are
usually a little bit moreaccommodating than your internal
partners, just because when youbring things in house, there's
just a lot more responsibilityand a Lot more equipment that
(08:24):
they have to take ownership of,like as they're servicing them
right, whereas a serviceprovider it's like you know,
this specific make-and-model isserviced by like one company,
versus you know this internalteam that has to service, like,
hundreds of different types ofequipment and instruments.
Oscar Gonzalez (08:42):
And do you see the level of complexity changing
?
So it's usually these morespecialized, complex items are
not handled by the Folks thatare working in the organization.
Is that?
Is that a fair statement tomake?
Lawrence Wong (08:55):
Yeah.
So I would say for the most partyou're, the more complicated
the instruments are, the lesslikely it is to be owned by an
internal team, just because alot of these vendors have
proprietary software or youmight have to have a certain
level of access to Alter some ofthe configurations within the
instrument to be able to docertain testing.
(09:16):
Now, I believe the opposite maybe true for the maintenance part
of it, where if you have a verycomplicated water system
Throughout the building, that'susually not fabricated by one
vendor.
It's usually what we call astick bill system, and so that
usually means it's it's a amixture of all different
components from differentvendors, like you may have a Me
(09:37):
from somebody else and you mighthave a valve made from somebody
else, so in that case thosecomponents tend to be like
individually they're not ascomplicated, but the system as a
whole is complicated, right?
So if you can think of a watersystem, when you have to replace
things like gaskets or o-rings,you have to drain the entire
system, and so you're not gonnahave a vendor that does that
(10:00):
work.
It's gonna be the internal teamthat's familiar with the
automation sequences and likehow to go about locking things
out and draining the system, sothat gets a little bit more
complicated, like you have toprep, you have to, you have to
essentially do all the prep workprior to anyone coming in to
fix or replace a certain pieceexactly and and not to say that
(10:20):
you don't have to do that forinstruments.
You still have to do that insome cases, right?
So a good example is, if youhave some sort of like the
caustic tank, you know that hasa very, I would say, dangerous
or potential Potentiallydangerous solution, you might
want to outsource that to maybea clean harbors or some other
company that's more familiarwith handling those types of
(10:42):
solutions.
From a scheduling perspective,you'll usually have like a like
a high-level scheduler thatassigns like time slots to when
things are are gonna be servicedand then, Once that happens,
there's an assignment thathappens, right.
So the work order record willhave somebody that's assigned to
it and that means that there'san individual who is the lead
for that job.
(11:03):
And that's not to say that youknow it's just one person
working on the job.
It's just that they are theperson responsible for
communicating any delays and andsort of leading the execution
of the job.
They're the project manager,but they're also the ones that
are executing the job as well,right, like they're using
certain tools and standards tokind of execute on whatever the
(11:24):
job scope is.
Now, when you look at stuff thatis maintained externally by
like a service provider.
That may be through a vendorsor supply that's outside the
company.
I've seen it handled a numberof ways.
It usually comes down to likewhoever owns the contract, and
that may be the actual equipmentowner, or it may be the
(11:46):
facilities team that owns thecontract, but whoever is owning
the contract is responsible foroverseeing those resources that
are coming in to service theequipment and it.
There's a bunch of liabilitythat happens If that's not
structured correctly, right?
So if you don't own thecontract but you're giving the
(12:07):
responsibility to somebody else,they may not be familiar with
the terms of the contract.
So I've seen this happen wherefacilities will own a contract
and then they'll say to like thelab owner hey, like you know,
we pay for the contract and youcan schedule so and so to come
in and work on the same ofunexpected findings or delays is
Extremely important, right?
(12:28):
Nobody wants to hear that thesystem or the equipment being
handed back to them it's gonnabe delayed a couple hours
because you have all theseexperiments and all these
production activities that arescheduled around.
Are you completing your job ontime?
And so I've seen instanceswhere People get close to the
end of the job and they go ohyeah, we need to replace the
seal, but we won't have it for acouple days and it's like why
(12:48):
don't you tell me that earlier?
Because I have a group ofpeople that are.
Oscar Gonzalez (12:51):
Waiting to show.
Lawrence Wong (12:52):
I don't even show up to do half exactly right and
and that that does a couplethings.
One, it and not only putspressure on your schedule for
completing those activities thatyou had planned, but it also
creates this like Sour taste inthe equipment owners mouth,
right where they're like whydidn't you like, why didn't you
(13:14):
tell me this earlier?
Because now I have otherresponsibilities that I have to
tend to because of this delay.
Right, and I'm not saying thatright, these things don't occur,
but the more upfront andtransparent and earlier that you
can tell somebody, the moretime they have to plan for an
alternative strategy.
If you're waiting till the veryend, chances are your Equipment
(13:35):
owner is not gonna be veryhappy with you and all the other
jobs that you have planned forthat system right.
Oscar Gonzalez (13:43):
You're listening to lean by design podcast and
we'll be right back after aquick break.
Do you suspect your lifesciences company could do things
more efficiently?
Maybe you're seeing costlyworkflow issues or maybe the
work feels more difficult toperform than necessary,
affecting team or out.
If any of this resonates, reachout to the team at Sigma lab
(14:03):
consulting for a freeconsultation On how we can
develop and launch a customsolution fit for your team.
Our consultants will build acustom workflow solution for
your team to reach peakefficiency.
Find out more atwwwSigmaLabConsultingcom.
Lawrence Wong (14:24):
Once you've completed the job.
What are the other things thatpeople tend to miss is Ensuring
the system is returned to normal.
When you return it, thatdoesn't mean supposed to test it
, right?
Yeah, you're supposed to testit.
That doesn't mean pack up allyour things and leave and then
send a phone call and go yeah,everything's all set it's.
You should be Doing a quickwalkthrough with the owner and
(14:45):
doing like a quick check to makesure everything is back to
normal and there's no problemsbefore you walk away, because
I've seen times where who ownsthat?
Oscar Gonzalez (14:55):
Who owns that?
Should I basically tellsomebody that comes in like hey,
hey, like, are you gonna showme or talk me through what you
did and show me that this isstill working?
Is that?
Or should we feel that whoevercomes in to run that servicing,
that should be part of theirprocess?
Lawrence Wong (15:12):
it should be whoever is coming in to do the
servicing, to Communicate withwhoever the owner is.
Is there anything that we cando to test the system to make
sure it works, because there area number of pre-use checks that
you can do on any benchtop, youknow instrument there might be
like a what we would call like aleak test that we do on certain
tanks, or maybe you know pipingto make sure there's no leaks.
(15:34):
I've seen a bunch of timeswhere somebody will walk away,
they put water in it and they gooh it's leaking and it's like
now we got to open up anotherwork order and now I have to
allocate more resources to fixit.
It's like I gotta call them backright if if you would have just
stood there for an extra fiveminutes, you would have, you
know, prevented the amount ofWork order and documentation
that is is needed to kind ofaddress the issue.
(15:56):
So, yeah, please remember toreturn the system back to normal
, because nobody wants to Put inanother work order just because
they allocated you time to fixit anyway, because you're
creating more work, right?
Oscar Gonzalez (16:11):
Right, right, right.
It's like coming and changing,you know, your printer cartridge
thing, taking it out, stickingit in there, closing it and
going Art, it's done.
Well, you know why don't youtake a test page to make sure
that it's actually printing ink?
Yes, you know, it's obviously amore complex space that we're
discussing here, but it Makescomplete sense to me.
You know, you take your car tothe dealership.
(16:31):
What happens?
They fix it, they take it for adrive, then they come back.
Yep, we're good, they don't fixit and go alright, you know,
take off.
And then you take off and youhear this squeak, squeak, squeak
, squeak.
You're like, okay, they didn'tdo anything.
Lawrence Wong (16:44):
Yeah, and if they are doing that like that's red
flag number one is you shouldprobably go somewhere else,
because that you want to havethose quality checks in place to
make sure that you're not inany sort of you know one Danger
to yourself.
Right, because there aresystems that are dangerous, and
turning it over and turning iton immediately, there are a lot
of risks associated with that.
(17:05):
But there's also a businessimpact, right, like nobody wants
to have additional delays whenwe've already set a time, you
know this allocation ofresources to perform maintenance
, and so, right, you know my.
My last point is really anyfeedback that you have During
the execution of the work ordershould be documented so that you
(17:28):
can make any incrementalimprovements to the job duration
, the scope, the training, maybethe parts that you need to
stock, and, and without havingthat feedback logged, nobody has
any idea of how to makeanything better, and this is why
it's so important to keep these, you know, I would say, but
(17:49):
it's both qualitative andquantitative feedback.
So you have, like these jobdurations and, like I would say,
hours and and Money spent on awork order, but you also have
feedback from like, hey, thattechnician thought that maybe
the equipment wasn't handed overProperly and the area wasn't
clean and you know.
There are just small littlethings that we could improve on
(18:12):
over time, but without themputting that in the work log,
nobody has any idea on how toimprove those things.
Oscar Gonzalez (18:18):
I mean, just think about the equipment and
the information.
And you know what happens when,when you go, when you take it
to, like the you know, take yourcar to the garage, that that
you always take it to they pullup your specs, they pull up oh,
these are all the instances thatwe had Etc, etc.
Etc.
You know, I can imagine that itit's very valuable to have that
(18:38):
information, not only for For,like, new people coming in to
say, hey, you're gonna be thenew owner of these systems.
Here's the logs that we've hadfor the previous returns and
they might look in there and go,wow, do you guys realize, like,
in the last three years You'vereplaced this component three
times and that's supposed tolast ten years.
You know, that's it.
That's something that is likeokay.
(19:00):
So how how do we now affectthat so that the downtime
shrinks and and?
And this is again one of thoseexamples of just Seeing
something and saying something,you know, not just going oh yeah
, they're a place that everythree years, is that normal?
Or every year Is that normal?
Is that something that'ssupposed to happen?
If not, maybe we ended up witha lemon, or maybe they changed
(19:24):
the design of the gasket thatthey're now putting on this
piece and it's more brittle, orunderstanding those pieces of
equipment and having thatdocumentation is super critical
to really continuing on makingsure that the facilities and the
(19:44):
equipment has very littledowntime, because I can just
imagine from the perspective ofoperations for that particular
group.
No one wants that stuff to bedown where they can't use it.
I've been at an organizationbefore where we had basically
two very highly used pieces ofequipment.
(20:07):
One went down.
The other one was a three yearsolder version, so we weren't
getting the same resolution thatwe had on the equipment piece
that went down.
I don't know where we were withyearly updates or yearly.
You go get your oil change, yougo get your tires rotated, you
go get your tires filled in.
(20:27):
This is the kind of stuff thatyou need to do when you're
dealing with equipment.
You need to take care of thatequipment if you expect it to
actually last.
The reason why they give youthese long durations of
lifespans for these pieces ofequipment and why it's very
closely captured in the 10K oforganizations where are the
(20:49):
assets?
How have things depreciated, etcetera, et cetera.
The only way that they're goingto last that long is if you
actually take care of it, andthe only way that you're going
to ensure consistency in theproduct, in the testing, in the
mechanisms, is to keep thesesystems up and running.
I came from a place in academiawhere equipment was well, it's
(21:11):
pretty good, ok, well, I hopewe're not planning on trying to
get grant money with data thatis not very accurate, because
none of our pipettes have beenserviced in four years and some
of those really and it's a verysimple thing.
But a very common instrument isthat pipette.
And let me tell you thedifferences that you see in that
pipette they're not always dueto the types of tips that you
(21:35):
have in there.
A lot of times it is thatcalibration.
There's some grease that needsto be applied, there's some
those things.
They're going up and down.
Oh, my thing squeaks.
Yeah, it's no big deal and thenit gets stuck and then you
start sucking things into yourequipment.
Now you can't even use it.
Yeah, it's like, oh, yeah, I'vehad this noise going on in my
(21:55):
car and then, all of a sudden,pow, you're stranded in the
middle of the interstate.
Lawrence Wong (21:59):
Right, and I think, from a scheduler
perspective too, and I'm sayingthat the ownership completely
falls on them, but having anunderstanding of how critical
these pieces of equipment are tonot just the owner, but also
understanding the impact of thework that the maintenance is
providing.
So what is?
(22:21):
Why are you calibrating this?
What is the value of it?
Once everybody is on the samepage, then they understand that
this activity is crucial for youto leverage any data on for
your experiments or anythingthat is in the process that
relies on that measurement.
You can say that it's accurateand it's precise because of
(22:42):
those calibration activities.
But if people don't value thoseactivities and see that as a
value add, then they're notgoing to take it as seriously
and you're going to push offmaintenance.
You're going to say it's notimportant, you're going to find
ways to justify why you don'tneed it and you're going to
start cutting corners and allthat's going to result in is
compromise, data and yourprocess that you can't rely on
(23:06):
Absolutely, absolutely.
We'll be right back after aquick break.
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Are you struggling withproductivity and think it's due
to inefficiency in youroperations?
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impossible.
Sigma Lab Consulting can helpyou define and prioritize the
(23:28):
issues that are negativelyimpacting your team.
We partner with stakeholders toredesign workflows so you can
work more efficiently.
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So I want to bring one lastpoint, and it's about if you
(23:49):
want to improve scheduling,whether it's external or
internal, you have to have aworking relationship with the
owner of the equipment, but alsothe service team.
I've seen too many teams becompletely reliant on the system
owner and just have themdictate how things should go.
(24:09):
There are other people involvedin this and it's the actual
people that are servicing theequipment and the instrument.
You have to consider that aswell, because things happen and
you need to be able to havethose communication channels
open.
If there's an improvement thatthey see that the system order
doesn't see, they should be madeaware of it.
(24:29):
And it goes the other wayaround too If a technician is
working on a piece of equipmentand the system order has noticed
maybe some abnormal findings inthe last couple of days from
when they were running it.
You should tell the technicianto be careful.
This thing maybe there's somesort of dangerous part of the
(24:53):
job that maybe you didn'tconsider.
One of those things might behey, this valve is leaking or
this thing is really hot next toit, or something like that.
Oscar Gonzalez (25:04):
I was going to say it got hot, or it started to
smell like something burning,or it smells like metal.
All of a sudden somethingscraping itself.
Lawrence Wong (25:12):
Right, because at the end of the day, nobody
wants to come into work andleave with knowing that the job
was done in a poor way andnobody wants to leave hurt.
Everybody wants to come in anddo a good job and to go home
safely.
So keeping those things in mindand making sure that all
parties involved are aware ofwhat's going on will drastically
(25:35):
improve how you not onlyschedule your routine work, but
it makes it easier to work onthose emergencies.
Right, because you don't wantto be building a relationship
with somebody on these very hightension, high pressure jobs.
You want to slowly build thatrelationship over time on these
simple routine activities so youcan have that dialogue and
(25:58):
build and build, and build andbuild.
And so when you face thischallenge together, you're not
questioning whether or not thatperson's capable of handling it,
because you've had thisrelationship with them over time
.
Oscar Gonzalez (26:11):
Right.
It also gives you that secondlook at something you know,
regardless of where the processimprovement is, it's imperative
to really develop thatrelationship with people that
own the process or own theproduct or the equipment owner
and those that intend to reallyapply a fix to it.
(26:34):
You know, sometimes it's thesame person, but oftentimes you
do have to engage with externalpeople.
I mean, if I'm improving my ownprocess, then it's my own
process for something that I'mdoing.
But oftentimes these thingsthat we're working on, the
reason why we're working on themis because they affect multiple
people and if we don't have therelationships where we can feel
compelled to, you know, givethem information hey, this just
(26:58):
happened last week or hey, thishappened, you know, at some
other time.
And you know, at least havingsomebody there that has the
expertise to really drill downinto that piece of equipment and
have somebody that's there that, as the product owner, you're
also speaking for everyone elsethat uses it.
You're speaking for everyoneelse.
You are the beacon, theconnecting piece between the
(27:21):
service contract owner, you knowvendor and the organization
who's using it.
What's happened?
What have they noticed?
You know.
So it's important to reallyunderstand that, because no one
wants.
Like you said, no one wants togo to work in biotech or science
that has challenges, becausethere's so much we don't
(27:42):
understand.
No one wants to go into thereand spend hours getting
something ready and then using apiece of equipment to find out
that something happened and wecould have that was preventable.
You know, preventablemaintenance.
It's insane how often thosethings, those errors, do occur.
You know I've had many timeswhere I've had.
(28:03):
You know, my protocol is sixhours of preparation and then,
boom, at the very end I find outthat the pieces of equipment
have been down for two days.
No communication, noannouncement, not even a piece
of paper on there.
It's just unplugged.
Why is this unplugged?
Oh, it hasn't been working.
No one thought to say anythingto anybody about this.
(28:24):
You know, we have become such asociety, I think, in the
professional landscape, where wejust wait for people to give us
information.
We don't seek information andwe don't push information.
You know, whether or not it'sin the space of equipment
(28:46):
maintenance or in the space ofrunning projects, you have to
learn to engage in a push-pullrelationship with all of your
stakeholders.
Not any one person is going tobe able to connect to dots from
end to end.
In any process that involvesmultiple stakeholders 1000%
there's always something thatsomebody else is doing into that
(29:09):
workflow that you have no ideaabout.
Lawrence Wong (29:12):
Yeah, and you may know that it exists but you
don't understand the nuances ofit.
Oscar Gonzalez (29:15):
You have to have those relationships.
Lawrence Wong (29:17):
Yeah, and do you?
I mean, you brought up theSpider-Man meme before about,
like the three Spider-Man's likepointing at each other.
Yeah, you don't want that tohappen.
If there's a fire going on andthere's a true emergency, and
you don't want to be pointingfingers at different people, oh,
that's your problem, that's notmine.
And you want to be having threeSpider-Men like saving the city
(29:39):
, right, like all three workingtogether knowing, hey, you take
that portion.
Oscar Gonzalez (29:43):
I'll take care of this.
This one's going to go notifyeverybody, this one's going to
get a report going.
Blah, blah, blah.
I'll stop the bleeding, exactly, figuratively speaking.
Yeah, yeah, and that's critical.
Use your stakeholders, buildthat team.
Build that team and it's noteven necessarily a physical, you
(30:03):
know, I guess you could say aformal team Build those
connections.
Those people are the team thatyou could count on, that you
could talk to.
That will give you thatinformation, will give you new
information.
Lawrence Wong (30:18):
Yeah, and this is a very similar theme to our
previous episode is these, these, I would say, gaps or maybe
bottlenecks that you see in yourscheduling process?
They are opportunities foranyone in those you know within
that team to take ownership ofdriving those changes and to
(30:43):
make it a little easier on thenext job and the job after to be
able to schedule these keyactivities across the board, and
it's not just your system buteverybody else's system and it
it just gives you theopportunity to take
responsibility for other higherlevel planning activities or
maybe projects.
Oscar Gonzalez (31:05):
I agree.
I could not agree more.
It's a lot of opportunity there, a lot of coordination, but all
it takes is to get started.
I think some people are alittle afraid of just like I
don't know where to start, Idon't know who's involved, I
don't want to step on toes, youknow.
And the old added it's not myrole.
(31:28):
I think we need to startgetting out of that mentality
and, you know, not being in arole versus hey, yeah, you know,
let me, let me help you point,let me help point you in the
right direction.
Or let me let's take care ofthis.
I can show you what this lookslike so that next time, if you
run into it, you can solve thatAgain.
(31:50):
Just what we talked about in thelast, in the last podcast
episode educate folks.
Don't just necessarily dothings for them or do things
that you know.
Somebody asks you hey, can youdo this?
They're asking you because theyknow you are capable of doing
it.
They may not know how to do it.
Form that team, form thosestakeholders.
Educate people.
Give information.
(32:11):
Don't just take it.
We love to just takeinformation and we hate to take
the two seconds to give it.
Lawrence Wong (32:18):
Right, yeah, absolutely.
Oscar Gonzalez (32:22):
So, lawrence, been a fantastic conversation.
I am.
You know you got my wheelsspinning.
You got my wheels spinning andyou know there's been more than
one occasion and just for me,from the laboratory side, seeing
things that just all of asudden this is down, this is
down.
You know, I've been part oforganizations where their
operations managers do afantastic job of notifying
(32:45):
people when the fix is coming,who's involved, when it's going
to be fixed, and then that ithas been fixed.
And I think it's really thattransparency that we talked
about and really, you know,involving all of the
stakeholders, because you don'tactually know how much that
piece of equipment or machineryetc needs to be used in the next
(33:05):
couple of days.
There may be some bigexperiments that you're not
accounting for.
I need to make sure that you'regiving people the right amount
of time if they need to connectwith another sister organization
or, oh, I know they haveanother one on the sixth floor
I'll see what they're schedulingso I can go upstairs and use
that piece of equipment whilethis one's being fixed.
You know it's all thistransparency, education, you
(33:28):
know that's really key to.
You know, working smarter.
Lawrence Wong (33:32):
Yeah, I think you know you're absolutely right.
And whether you're in a labsetting or a manufacturing
setting, the planner acts as aproject manager, not only for
managing the work that is beingperformed you know, from a
service context but also fromthe point of view of you're
orchestrating the relationshipsbetween these different groups
(33:53):
and having to complete themaintenance on time, you know,
within the specified durationand ensuring the system gets
turned over, you know, back tonormal state.
So a lot of similarities,whether you know you're in
either setting, and it justshares a lot of parallels with
managing projects as well.
Oscar Gonzalez (34:15):
Yeah, and I'm going to keep using that example
of a car no one is more upsetwhen you go in for an oil change
and they tell you that yourtires are flat.
Yeah, I've heard so many timesoh, I go in there for this and
they tell me that how upsetwould you be if you went in for
(34:36):
an oil change and they didn'ttell you any of that?
That's when that's a problem.
Lawrence Wong (34:41):
Yeah, yeah.
Oscar Gonzalez (34:46):
Lawrence, thanks again and to those listening,
we appreciate you following andbe sure to share.
Hit the like button, share thepodcast out there.
We're going to keep coming outwith new episodes, really
bringing you guys a lot ofexperience from Lawrence and for
myself what we're seeing in theindustry and how we can improve
(35:06):
the processes to really makescience and biotech more
efficient and more lean.
Lawrence Wong (35:13):
Yeah, awesome.
And as always, you know, worksmarter before you work harder,
that's right.
Oscar Gonzalez (35:27):
We had some critical learnings in today's
discussions.
Firstly, the importance ofclearly dividing
responsibilities, which cannotbe overstated.
Knowing who is accountable forwhich aspect of equipment
maintenance, whether it's theend users or the servicing teams
truly sets the groundwork foreffective action.
This helps us avoid any overlapor gaps that could lead to
(35:47):
inefficiencies or even failures.
When we discuss proactivemaintenance, the concept here is
simple but powerful.
An ounce of prevention is wortha pound of cure.
Scheduling, regular checkupsand maintenance activities can
save a significant amount oftime, effort and resources
compared to the reactiveapproaches that only deal with
issues as they arise.
(36:08):
Regarding communications, thisinvolves more than just giving
orders or sending emails.
It's about fosteringinterdisciplinary dialogue
between different departments,maintenance teams and vendors.
Without clear communications,even the most well-planned
maintenance activities can cometo a standstill, leading to
avoidable delays and expenses.
(36:29):
You can't forget aboutdocumentation.
It seems tedious, but keepingmeticulous records of equipment
history, repairs and inspectionscreates a valuable repository
of information.
It not only helps duringtroubleshooting, but also makes
it easier for future maintenanceof activities to be carried out
more efficiently.
Lastly but not least, aholistic approach to equipment
(36:52):
care is essential.
We're not just talking aboutnuts and bolts here.
We're discussing theintegration of processes,
peoples and technology.
When these elements workcohesively, it sets the stage
for operational excellence.
It transcends individual tasksor departments.
Thanks for listening.
(37:13):
Don't forget to leave us areview, like and share on
Spotify, apple and GooglePodcasts or wherever you get
your podcasts, and if you'reinterested in being on the show
or becoming a sponsor, send us amessage at Lean by Design, at
SigmaLabConsultingcom.
It's almost like that little Spider-Man cartoon
where, like the threeSpider-Man's are pointing at
each other like wait, you'resupposed to do something, and
it's not a really good feelingwhen people are coming into your
space and you don't actuallyknow what is going on.
Welcome to Lean by DesignPodcast.
I'm your host, Oscar Gonzalez,alongside my co-host, Lawrence
(00:21):
Wong.
We are former MBA classmatesturned business partners with
over 25 years of combinedexperience in life sciences,
from R&D through manufacturing.
Our experiences have shed lightinto the complex, ever-changing
challenges experienced by thisindustry and many others.
We took a risk quit oursix-figure paying jobs in Boston
(00:42):
Biotech and Pharma to startSigma Lab Consulting Journey
with us as we explore therelationship between people and
workflow design, the goal Tolearn, inspire and deliver
practical tips to navigate theseever-changing challenges.
Stick with us and learn to worksmarter, not harder, and be
lean by design.
(01:08):
How would you feel if youlearned that unplanned equipment
downtime can cost companiesupwards of $260,000 per hour,
according to some estimates.
This alarming figure serves asthe backdrop for our
conversation today about theintricacies of equipment
maintenance and servicing in thelife science industries.
The dialogue goes beyond merelytroubleshooting mechanical
(01:30):
issues to explore theoverarching system of
communication, responsibilityand planning that constitute a
well-rounded approach toequipment care.
The discussion illuminates thecollaborative roles that
equipment owners and serviceteams plays, each with distinct
responsibilities, but united ina quest for operational
(01:50):
excellence.
And welcome back to anotherepisode of Lean by Design
Podcast, Oscar Gonzalez here, myco-host, and Biotech
manufacturing facilitiesextraordinaire.
(02:12):
So we get into a facility giant.
You know, when I think aboutfacilities I understand there's
a lot of facilities that caneither manufacture compounds or
drugs or what have you, and inmy mind, for some reason, I get
(02:33):
this idea of like a giantbrewery that just has giant
tanks all over the place.
That's pretty accurate.
So you know.
Either way, I think this isgoing to be good for a lot of
our listeners.
But you know, with all thatequipment, you know who's really
responsible for managing that.
How do they go through thatequipment and go OK.
(02:54):
Well, this is what we need todo, because I know very well the
inherent risk that if somethinggoes wrong, what that does to a
full production line, you know,if it's contamination, if it's
pieces broken, what that does tohave to shut down to repair, to
(03:15):
fix.
How do folks now go through allthe equipment that they have
you know that now, and some ofthese large organizations is in
the thousands and make thosepreventative measures and be
able to schedule the right workthat needs to be done in the
right place?
I mean, what do we do?
Lawrence Wong (03:36):
Yeah, so usually you'll have what they call an
asset management function, andso what that function does is
they're responsible for any ofthe maintenance and calibration
of your systems, equipmentinstruments that either fall
into like a utility category, ormaybe it's something to do with
HVAC, it might be something onthe manufacturing floor, it
(03:59):
might be something in the lab,but, depending on the type of
work, there are specific, Iwould say, service providers
that are responsible forproviding that care.
So for the purposes of you knowthe discussion, we'll just focus
on scheduling routine events,right?
So I think when you talk aboutnon routine events that are
(04:22):
unplanned, like the emergencies,there's usually not some sort
of like blanket cokey cutter wayto do things, because it really
depends on the criticality ofthe system and the severity of
the incident, right?
So, as an example, if somebodyis seriously hurt, obviously you
know you drop everything andyou go address that immediately.
Versus, hey, we have a slowdrip and it's like okay, well,
(04:44):
how bad is it?
And then what is leaking?
If it's like the toilet, thenmaybe we don't address that
immediately and we go do otherthings.
Right?
So it depends on the the acercriticality and the severity of
the failure.
So when we talk aboutmaintenance scheduling and asset
management, I want to startwith addressing about how things
(05:06):
shouldn't be done, and so, ohthis is a lot of most companies
are going to operate out of acomputerized maintenance
management system, and so allthat is is it's a it's sort of
like a ticketing process whereevery month you'll have, you
know, a set list of work ordersthat you have to address.
(05:28):
So those work orders might rangein doing maintenance on a pump,
right where you have to replacea seal, and might be
calibrating a temperaturetransmitter that's a part of a
freezer, and so all of theseroutine events they usually, you
know, they usually do at theend of the month, and they'll
come up maybe a couple daysbefore the next month.
(05:52):
But you'll get a list of thingsthat need to get done for the
next month, and so what happensis the planner will either have
a meeting or you'll send anemail out and say, hey, I need a
bunch of availability for yourequipment so I can work on it.
And so if you're the owner ofit.
you'll come back with a bunch ofdates or you'll say this time
(06:12):
works for me, this time doesn'twork for me.
And then that bundle of timeand dates gets forwarded to the
service provider.
And so then they'll look attheir workforce and say this
either works or doesn't work.
And so this happens a couplemore times until somebody waits
at the last minute to schedulethe work and it's due in a
(06:33):
couple days, and so that's justfor one job.
You can imagine that, if youhave hundreds of work orders,
how infuriating this is, becauseyou waste so much time just
with emails and meetings andgetting dates and times.
And so you know what do you doas a planner to improve this
(06:54):
process and make it a little bitless painful?
It begins with settingexpectations and the
communicating with thestakeholders, right, and so I'm
not.
I'm not talking about from jobto job, but overall strategy.
So suppose you have a lab groupthat has a very front-loaded
(07:15):
schedule in the morning, right?
So they do most of theirexperiments in the morning.
In that case, the afternoonsare probably the best time to do
the maintenance, becausethere's less activity going on.
Another scenario might be hey,this job impacts your most
critical instrument and soyou're not going to have this
available for you while we workon it.
It probably makes more sense toassign the most experienced
(07:39):
technicians to services so youcan get it back to the owner in
time, right, you don't want tobe assigning a bunch of rookies
to services thing, because ifsomething goes wrong then
there's a lot more impact thatmight that will create on your
schedule.
Oscar Gonzalez (07:54):
Are these internal people that we're
talking about here, or from thevendor?
Lawrence Wong (07:59):
It depends.
So your calibration, dependingon the type of equipment, might
be internal or might be external.
I find that if you are dealingwith external partners are
usually a little bit moreaccommodating than your internal
partners, just because when youbring things in house, there's
just a lot more responsibilityand a Lot more equipment that
(08:24):
they have to take ownership of,like as they're servicing them
right, whereas a serviceprovider it's like you know,
this specific make-and-model isserviced by like one company,
versus you know this internalteam that has to service, like,
hundreds of different types ofequipment and instruments.
Oscar Gonzalez (08:42):
And do you see the level of complexity changing
?
So it's usually these morespecialized, complex items are
not handled by the Folks thatare working in the organization.
Is that?
Is that a fair statement tomake?
Lawrence Wong (08:55):
Yeah.
So I would say for the most partyou're, the more complicated
the instruments are, the lesslikely it is to be owned by an
internal team, just because alot of these vendors have
proprietary software or youmight have to have a certain
level of access to Alter some ofthe configurations within the
instrument to be able to docertain testing.
(09:16):
Now, I believe the opposite maybe true for the maintenance part
of it, where if you have a verycomplicated water system
Throughout the building, that'susually not fabricated by one
vendor.
It's usually what we call astick bill system, and so that
usually means it's it's a amixture of all different
components from differentvendors, like you may have a Me
(09:37):
from somebody else and you mighthave a valve made from somebody
else, so in that case thosecomponents tend to be like
individually they're not ascomplicated, but the system as a
whole is complicated, right?
So if you can think of a watersystem, when you have to replace
things like gaskets or o-rings,you have to drain the entire
system, and so you're not gonnahave a vendor that does that
(10:00):
work.
It's gonna be the internal teamthat's familiar with the
automation sequences and likehow to go about locking things
out and draining the system, sothat gets a little bit more
complicated, like you have toprep, you have to, you have to
essentially do all the prep workprior to anyone coming in to
fix or replace a certain pieceexactly and and not to say that
(10:20):
you don't have to do that forinstruments.
You still have to do that insome cases, right?
So a good example is, if youhave some sort of like the
caustic tank, you know that hasa very, I would say, dangerous
or potential Potentiallydangerous solution, you might
want to outsource that to maybea clean harbors or some other
company that's more familiarwith handling those types of
(10:42):
solutions.
From a scheduling perspective,you'll usually have like a like
a high-level scheduler thatassigns like time slots to when
things are are gonna be servicedand then, Once that happens,
there's an assignment thathappens, right.
So the work order record willhave somebody that's assigned to
it and that means that there'san individual who is the lead
for that job.
(11:03):
And that's not to say that youknow it's just one person
working on the job.
It's just that they are theperson responsible for
communicating any delays and andsort of leading the execution
of the job.
They're the project manager,but they're also the ones that
are executing the job as well,right, like they're using
certain tools and standards tokind of execute on whatever the
(11:24):
job scope is.
Now, when you look at stuff thatis maintained externally by
like a service provider.
That may be through a vendorsor supply that's outside the
company.
I've seen it handled a numberof ways.
It usually comes down to likewhoever owns the contract, and
that may be the actual equipmentowner, or it may be the
(11:46):
facilities team that owns thecontract, but whoever is owning
the contract is responsible foroverseeing those resources that
are coming in to service theequipment and it.
There's a bunch of liabilitythat happens If that's not
structured correctly, right?
So if you don't own thecontract but you're giving the
(12:07):
responsibility to somebody else,they may not be familiar with
the terms of the contract.
So I've seen this happen wherefacilities will own a contract
and then they'll say to like thelab owner hey, like you know,
we pay for the contract and youcan schedule so and so to come
in and work on the same ofunexpected findings or delays is
Extremely important, right?
(12:28):
Nobody wants to hear that thesystem or the equipment being
handed back to them it's gonnabe delayed a couple hours
because you have all theseexperiments and all these
production activities that arescheduled around.
Are you completing your job ontime?
And so I've seen instanceswhere People get close to the
end of the job and they go ohyeah, we need to replace the
seal, but we won't have it for acouple days and it's like why
(12:48):
don't you tell me that earlier?
Because I have a group ofpeople that are.
Oscar Gonzalez (12:51):
Waiting to show.
Lawrence Wong (12:52):
I don't even show up to do half exactly right and
and that that does a couplethings.
One, it and not only putspressure on your schedule for
completing those activities thatyou had planned, but it also
creates this like Sour taste inthe equipment owners mouth,
right where they're like whydidn't you like, why didn't you
(13:14):
tell me this earlier?
Because now I have otherresponsibilities that I have to
tend to because of this delay.
Right, and I'm not saying thatright, these things don't occur,
but the more upfront andtransparent and earlier that you
can tell somebody, the moretime they have to plan for an
alternative strategy.
If you're waiting till the veryend, chances are your Equipment
(13:35):
owner is not gonna be veryhappy with you and all the other
jobs that you have planned forthat system right.
Oscar Gonzalez (13:43):
You're listening to lean by design podcast and
we'll be right back after aquick break.
Do you suspect your lifesciences company could do things
more efficiently?
Maybe you're seeing costlyworkflow issues or maybe the
work feels more difficult toperform than necessary,
affecting team or out.
If any of this resonates, reachout to the team at Sigma lab
(14:03):
consulting for a freeconsultation On how we can
develop and launch a customsolution fit for your team.
Our consultants will build acustom workflow solution for
your team to reach peakefficiency.
Find out more atwwwSigmaLabConsultingcom.
Lawrence Wong (14:24):
Once you've completed the job.
What are the other things thatpeople tend to miss is Ensuring
the system is returned to normal.
When you return it, thatdoesn't mean supposed to test it
, right?
Yeah, you're supposed to testit.
That doesn't mean pack up allyour things and leave and then
send a phone call and go yeah,everything's all set it's.
You should be Doing a quickwalkthrough with the owner and
(14:45):
doing like a quick check to makesure everything is back to
normal and there's no problemsbefore you walk away, because
I've seen times where who ownsthat?
Oscar Gonzalez (14:55):
Who owns that?
Should I basically tellsomebody that comes in like hey,
hey, like, are you gonna showme or talk me through what you
did and show me that this isstill working?
Is that?
Or should we feel that whoevercomes in to run that servicing,
that should be part of theirprocess?
Lawrence Wong (15:12):
it should be whoever is coming in to do the
servicing, to Communicate withwhoever the owner is.
Is there anything that we cando to test the system to make
sure it works, because there area number of pre-use checks that
you can do on any benchtop, youknow instrument there might be
like a what we would call like aleak test that we do on certain
tanks, or maybe you know pipingto make sure there's no leaks.
(15:34):
I've seen a bunch of timeswhere somebody will walk away,
they put water in it and they gooh it's leaking and it's like
now we got to open up anotherwork order and now I have to
allocate more resources to fixit.
It's like I gotta call them backright if if you would have just
stood there for an extra fiveminutes, you would have, you
know, prevented the amount ofWork order and documentation
that is is needed to kind ofaddress the issue.
(15:56):
So, yeah, please remember toreturn the system back to normal
, because nobody wants to Put inanother work order just because
they allocated you time to fixit anyway, because you're
creating more work, right?
Oscar Gonzalez (16:11):
Right, right, right.
It's like coming and changing,you know, your printer cartridge
thing, taking it out, stickingit in there, closing it and
going Art, it's done.
Well, you know why don't youtake a test page to make sure
that it's actually printing ink?
Yes, you know, it's obviously amore complex space that we're
discussing here, but it Makescomplete sense to me.
You know, you take your car tothe dealership.
(16:31):
What happens?
They fix it, they take it for adrive, then they come back.
Yep, we're good, they don't fixit and go alright, you know,
take off.
And then you take off and youhear this squeak, squeak, squeak
, squeak.
You're like, okay, they didn'tdo anything.
Lawrence Wong (16:44):
Yeah, and if they are doing that like that's red
flag number one is you shouldprobably go somewhere else,
because that you want to havethose quality checks in place to
make sure that you're not inany sort of you know one Danger
to yourself.
Right, because there aresystems that are dangerous, and
turning it over and turning iton immediately, there are a lot
of risks associated with that.
(17:05):
But there's also a businessimpact, right, like nobody wants
to have additional delays whenwe've already set a time, you
know this allocation ofresources to perform maintenance
, and so, right, you know my.
My last point is really anyfeedback that you have During
the execution of the work ordershould be documented so that you
(17:28):
can make any incrementalimprovements to the job duration
, the scope, the training, maybethe parts that you need to
stock, and, and without havingthat feedback logged, nobody has
any idea of how to makeanything better, and this is why
it's so important to keep these, you know, I would say, but
(17:49):
it's both qualitative andquantitative feedback.
So you have, like these jobdurations and, like I would say,
hours and and Money spent on awork order, but you also have
feedback from like, hey, thattechnician thought that maybe
the equipment wasn't handed overProperly and the area wasn't
clean and you know.
There are just small littlethings that we could improve on
(18:12):
over time, but without themputting that in the work log,
nobody has any idea on how toimprove those things.
Oscar Gonzalez (18:18):
I mean, just think about the equipment and
the information.
And you know what happens when,when you go, when you take it
to, like the you know, take yourcar to the garage, that that
you always take it to they pullup your specs, they pull up oh,
these are all the instances thatwe had Etc, etc.
Etc.
You know, I can imagine that itit's very valuable to have that
(18:38):
information, not only for For,like, new people coming in to
say, hey, you're gonna be thenew owner of these systems.
Here's the logs that we've hadfor the previous returns and
they might look in there and go,wow, do you guys realize, like,
in the last three years You'vereplaced this component three
times and that's supposed tolast ten years.
You know, that's it.
That's something that is likeokay.
(19:00):
So how how do we now affectthat so that the downtime
shrinks and and?
And this is again one of thoseexamples of just Seeing
something and saying something,you know, not just going oh yeah
, they're a place that everythree years, is that normal?
Or every year Is that normal?
Is that something that'ssupposed to happen?
If not, maybe we ended up witha lemon, or maybe they changed
(19:24):
the design of the gasket thatthey're now putting on this
piece and it's more brittle, orunderstanding those pieces of
equipment and having thatdocumentation is super critical
to really continuing on makingsure that the facilities and the
(19:44):
equipment has very littledowntime, because I can just
imagine from the perspective ofoperations for that particular
group.
No one wants that stuff to bedown where they can't use it.
I've been at an organizationbefore where we had basically
two very highly used pieces ofequipment.
(20:07):
One went down.
The other one was a three yearsolder version, so we weren't
getting the same resolution thatwe had on the equipment piece
that went down.
I don't know where we were withyearly updates or yearly.
You go get your oil change, yougo get your tires rotated, you
go get your tires filled in.
(20:27):
This is the kind of stuff thatyou need to do when you're
dealing with equipment.
You need to take care of thatequipment if you expect it to
actually last.
The reason why they give youthese long durations of
lifespans for these pieces ofequipment and why it's very
closely captured in the 10K oforganizations where are the
(20:49):
assets?
How have things depreciated, etcetera, et cetera.
The only way that they're goingto last that long is if you
actually take care of it, andthe only way that you're going
to ensure consistency in theproduct, in the testing, in the
mechanisms, is to keep thesesystems up and running.
I came from a place in academiawhere equipment was well, it's
(21:11):
pretty good, ok, well, I hopewe're not planning on trying to
get grant money with data thatis not very accurate, because
none of our pipettes have beenserviced in four years and some
of those really and it's a verysimple thing.
But a very common instrument isthat pipette.
And let me tell you thedifferences that you see in that
pipette they're not always dueto the types of tips that you
(21:35):
have in there.
A lot of times it is thatcalibration.
There's some grease that needsto be applied, there's some
those things.
They're going up and down.
Oh, my thing squeaks.
Yeah, it's no big deal and thenit gets stuck and then you
start sucking things into yourequipment.
Now you can't even use it.
Yeah, it's like, oh, yeah, I'vehad this noise going on in my
(21:55):
car and then, all of a sudden,pow, you're stranded in the
middle of the interstate.
Lawrence Wong (21:59):
Right, and I think, from a scheduler
perspective too, and I'm sayingthat the ownership completely
falls on them, but having anunderstanding of how critical
these pieces of equipment are tonot just the owner, but also
understanding the impact of thework that the maintenance is
providing.
So what is?
(22:21):
Why are you calibrating this?
What is the value of it?
Once everybody is on the samepage, then they understand that
this activity is crucial for youto leverage any data on for
your experiments or anythingthat is in the process that
relies on that measurement.
You can say that it's accurateand it's precise because of
(22:42):
those calibration activities.
But if people don't value thoseactivities and see that as a
value add, then they're notgoing to take it as seriously
and you're going to push offmaintenance.
You're going to say it's notimportant, you're going to find
ways to justify why you don'tneed it and you're going to
start cutting corners and allthat's going to result in is
compromise, data and yourprocess that you can't rely on
(23:06):
Absolutely, absolutely.
We'll be right back after aquick break.
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Are you struggling withproductivity and think it's due
to inefficiency in youroperations?
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(23:28):
issues that are negativelyimpacting your team.
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So I want to bring one lastpoint, and it's about if you
(23:49):
want to improve scheduling,whether it's external or
internal, you have to have aworking relationship with the
owner of the equipment, but alsothe service team.
I've seen too many teams becompletely reliant on the system
owner and just have themdictate how things should go.
(24:09):
There are other people involvedin this and it's the actual
people that are servicing theequipment and the instrument.
You have to consider that aswell, because things happen and
you need to be able to havethose communication channels
open.
If there's an improvement thatthey see that the system order
doesn't see, they should be madeaware of it.
(24:29):
And it goes the other wayaround too If a technician is
working on a piece of equipmentand the system order has noticed
maybe some abnormal findings inthe last couple of days from
when they were running it.
You should tell the technicianto be careful.
This thing maybe there's somesort of dangerous part of the
(24:53):
job that maybe you didn'tconsider.
One of those things might behey, this valve is leaking or
this thing is really hot next toit, or something like that.
Oscar Gonzalez (25:04):
I was going to say it got hot, or it started to
smell like something burning,or it smells like metal.
All of a sudden somethingscraping itself.
Lawrence Wong (25:12):
Right, because at the end of the day, nobody
wants to come into work andleave with knowing that the job
was done in a poor way andnobody wants to leave hurt.
Everybody wants to come in anddo a good job and to go home
safely.
So keeping those things in mindand making sure that all
parties involved are aware ofwhat's going on will drastically
(25:35):
improve how you not onlyschedule your routine work, but
it makes it easier to work onthose emergencies.
Right, because you don't wantto be building a relationship
with somebody on these very hightension, high pressure jobs.
You want to slowly build thatrelationship over time on these
simple routine activities so youcan have that dialogue and
(25:58):
build and build, and build andbuild.
And so when you face thischallenge together, you're not
questioning whether or not thatperson's capable of handling it,
because you've had thisrelationship with them over time
.
Oscar Gonzalez (26:11):
Right.
It also gives you that secondlook at something you know,
regardless of where the processimprovement is, it's imperative
to really develop thatrelationship with people that
own the process or own theproduct or the equipment owner
and those that intend to reallyapply a fix to it.
(26:34):
You know, sometimes it's thesame person, but oftentimes you
do have to engage with externalpeople.
I mean, if I'm improving my ownprocess, then it's my own
process for something that I'mdoing.
But oftentimes these thingsthat we're working on, the
reason why we're working on themis because they affect multiple
people and if we don't have therelationships where we can feel
compelled to, you know, givethem information hey, this just
(26:58):
happened last week or hey, thishappened, you know, at some
other time.
And you know, at least havingsomebody there that has the
expertise to really drill downinto that piece of equipment and
have somebody that's there that, as the product owner, you're
also speaking for everyone elsethat uses it.
You're speaking for everyoneelse.
You are the beacon, theconnecting piece between the
(27:21):
service contract owner, you knowvendor and the organization
who's using it.
What's happened?
What have they noticed?
You know.
So it's important to reallyunderstand that, because no one
wants.
Like you said, no one wants togo to work in biotech or science
that has challenges, becausethere's so much we don't
(27:42):
understand.
No one wants to go into thereand spend hours getting
something ready and then using apiece of equipment to find out
that something happened and wecould have that was preventable.
You know, preventablemaintenance.
It's insane how often thosethings, those errors, do occur.
You know I've had many timeswhere I've had.
(28:03):
You know, my protocol is sixhours of preparation and then,
boom, at the very end I find outthat the pieces of equipment
have been down for two days.
No communication, noannouncement, not even a piece
of paper on there.
It's just unplugged.
Why is this unplugged?
Oh, it hasn't been working.
No one thought to say anythingto anybody about this.
(28:24):
You know, we have become such asociety, I think, in the
professional landscape, where wejust wait for people to give us
information.
We don't seek information andwe don't push information.
You know, whether or not it'sin the space of equipment
(28:46):
maintenance or in the space ofrunning projects, you have to
learn to engage in a push-pullrelationship with all of your
stakeholders.
Not any one person is going tobe able to connect to dots from
end to end.
In any process that involvesmultiple stakeholders 1000%
there's always something thatsomebody else is doing into that
(29:09):
workflow that you have no ideaabout.
Lawrence Wong (29:12):
Yeah, and you may know that it exists but you
don't understand the nuances ofit.
Oscar Gonzalez (29:15):
You have to have those relationships.
Lawrence Wong (29:17):
Yeah, and do you?
I mean, you brought up theSpider-Man meme before about,
like the three Spider-Man's likepointing at each other.
Yeah, you don't want that tohappen.
If there's a fire going on andthere's a true emergency, and
you don't want to be pointingfingers at different people, oh,
that's your problem, that's notmine.
And you want to be having threeSpider-Men like saving the city
(29:39):
, right, like all three workingtogether knowing, hey, you take
that portion.
Oscar Gonzalez (29:43):
I'll take care of this.
This one's going to go notifyeverybody, this one's going to
get a report going.
Blah, blah, blah.
I'll stop the bleeding, exactly, figuratively speaking.
Yeah, yeah, and that's critical.
Use your stakeholders, buildthat team.
Build that team and it's noteven necessarily a physical, you
(30:03):
know, I guess you could say aformal team Build those
connections.
Those people are the team thatyou could count on, that you
could talk to.
That will give you thatinformation, will give you new
information.
Lawrence Wong (30:18):
Yeah, and this is a very similar theme to our
previous episode is these, these, I would say, gaps or maybe
bottlenecks that you see in yourscheduling process?
They are opportunities foranyone in those you know within
that team to take ownership ofdriving those changes and to
(30:43):
make it a little easier on thenext job and the job after to be
able to schedule these keyactivities across the board, and
it's not just your system buteverybody else's system and it
it just gives you theopportunity to take
responsibility for other higherlevel planning activities or
maybe projects.
Oscar Gonzalez (31:05):
I agree.
I could not agree more.
It's a lot of opportunity there, a lot of coordination, but all
it takes is to get started.
I think some people are alittle afraid of just like I
don't know where to start, Idon't know who's involved, I
don't want to step on toes, youknow.
And the old added it's not myrole.
(31:28):
I think we need to startgetting out of that mentality
and, you know, not being in arole versus hey, yeah, you know,
let me, let me help you point,let me help point you in the
right direction.
Or let me let's take care ofthis.
I can show you what this lookslike so that next time, if you
run into it, you can solve thatAgain.
(31:50):
Just what we talked about in thelast, in the last podcast
episode educate folks.
Don't just necessarily dothings for them or do things
that you know.
Somebody asks you hey, can youdo this?
They're asking you because theyknow you are capable of doing
it.
They may not know how to do it.
Form that team, form thosestakeholders.
Educate people.
Give information.
(32:11):
Don't just take it.
We love to just takeinformation and we hate to take
the two seconds to give it.
Lawrence Wong (32:18):
Right, yeah, absolutely.
Oscar Gonzalez (32:22):
So, lawrence, been a fantastic conversation.
I am.
You know you got my wheelsspinning.
You got my wheels spinning andyou know there's been more than
one occasion and just for me,from the laboratory side, seeing
things that just all of asudden this is down, this is
down.
You know, I've been part oforganizations where their
operations managers do afantastic job of notifying
(32:45):
people when the fix is coming,who's involved, when it's going
to be fixed, and then that ithas been fixed.
And I think it's really thattransparency that we talked
about and really, you know,involving all of the
stakeholders, because you don'tactually know how much that
piece of equipment or machineryetc needs to be used in the next
(33:05):
couple of days.
There may be some bigexperiments that you're not
accounting for.
I need to make sure that you'regiving people the right amount
of time if they need to connectwith another sister organization
or, oh, I know they haveanother one on the sixth floor
I'll see what they're schedulingso I can go upstairs and use
that piece of equipment whilethis one's being fixed.
You know it's all thistransparency, education, you
(33:28):
know that's really key to.
You know, working smarter.
Lawrence Wong (33:32):
Yeah, I think you know you're absolutely right.
And whether you're in a labsetting or a manufacturing
setting, the planner acts as aproject manager, not only for
managing the work that is beingperformed you know, from a
service context but also fromthe point of view of you're
orchestrating the relationshipsbetween these different groups
(33:53):
and having to complete themaintenance on time, you know,
within the specified durationand ensuring the system gets
turned over, you know, back tonormal state.
So a lot of similarities,whether you know you're in
either setting, and it justshares a lot of parallels with
managing projects as well.
Oscar Gonzalez (34:15):
Yeah, and I'm going to keep using that example
of a car no one is more upsetwhen you go in for an oil change
and they tell you that yourtires are flat.
Yeah, I've heard so many timesoh, I go in there for this and
they tell me that how upsetwould you be if you went in for
(34:36):
an oil change and they didn'ttell you any of that?
That's when that's a problem.
Lawrence Wong (34:41):
Yeah, yeah.
Oscar Gonzalez (34:46):
Lawrence, thanks again and to those listening,
we appreciate you following andbe sure to share.
Hit the like button, share thepodcast out there.
We're going to keep coming outwith new episodes, really
bringing you guys a lot ofexperience from Lawrence and for
myself what we're seeing in theindustry and how we can improve
(35:06):
the processes to really makescience and biotech more
efficient and more lean.
Lawrence Wong (35:13):
Yeah, awesome.
And as always, you know, worksmarter before you work harder,
that's right.
Oscar Gonzalez (35:27):
We had some critical learnings in today's
discussions.
Firstly, the importance ofclearly dividing
responsibilities, which cannotbe overstated.
Knowing who is accountable forwhich aspect of equipment
maintenance, whether it's theend users or the servicing teams
truly sets the groundwork foreffective action.
This helps us avoid any overlapor gaps that could lead to
(35:47):
inefficiencies or even failures.
When we discuss proactivemaintenance, the concept here is
simple but powerful.
An ounce of prevention is wortha pound of cure.
Scheduling, regular checkupsand maintenance activities can
save a significant amount oftime, effort and resources
compared to the reactiveapproaches that only deal with
issues as they arise.
(36:08):
Regarding communications, thisinvolves more than just giving
orders or sending emails.
It's about fosteringinterdisciplinary dialogue
between different departments,maintenance teams and vendors.
Without clear communications,even the most well-planned
maintenance activities can cometo a standstill, leading to
avoidable delays and expenses.
(36:29):
You can't forget aboutdocumentation.
It seems tedious, but keepingmeticulous records of equipment
history, repairs and inspectionscreates a valuable repository
of information.
It not only helps duringtroubleshooting, but also makes
it easier for future maintenanceof activities to be carried out
more efficiently.
Lastly but not least, aholistic approach to equipment
(36:52):
care is essential.
We're not just talking aboutnuts and bolts here.
We're discussing theintegration of processes,
peoples and technology.
When these elements workcohesively, it sets the stage
for operational excellence.
It transcends individual tasksor departments.
Thanks for listening.
(37:13):
Don't forget to leave us areview, like and share on
Spotify, apple and GooglePodcasts or wherever you get
your podcasts, and if you'reinterested in being on the show
or becoming a sponsor, send us amessage at Lean by Design, at
SigmaLabConsultingcom.
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