Reliability Center, Inc.

www.Reliability.com
804-458-0645
info@reliability.com
Behavioral Based Reliability
Mark A. Latino, President, RCI
2000 Machinery Reliability Conference, April 2000

Reliability has become a term in industry that is identified as an effort to move productivity to levels never
before experienced and to maintain those levels for extended periods of time.

The term reliability will have many meanings to many people. I have talked to clients who say we have a
reliability effort in place. After inquiring about the detail of their reliability effort, it usually turns out that the
effort consists of some preventive maintenance items that are rarely kept to schedule and one person taking
vibration readings on some equipment when there is a slow down in reactive work. This is not what reliability is
about.

Reliability is a combination of two trains of thought. The first is what we call the hard side of reliability. The
hard side consists of all the tools that you physically go and measure reliability with. These tools are vibration
analysis, eddy current testing, infrared thermography, quality defect rates, and many others. The other train of
thought is the behavioral side. What causes people to do their jobs in such a way that it causes productivity
setbacks, quality defects, and environmental excursions, etc? Understanding the behavior is the key to changing
the current work habits. Most people work from a set of rules that they have adopted through task training,
buddy training, past personal experience, and company procedures. Finding what rules people work by and
changing them to fit the immediate job will be the glue that makes reliability stick and become a part of the
culture. The hard technology without the behavioral side only provides pockets of excellence in the
organization.

Over the past several years the concept of improving safety and health performance of manufacturing facilities
by focusing on the behavioral aspects has gained wide acceptance. Many facilities have established working
procedures to observe, document, and critique workplace behavior as they relate to on the job safety. These
procedures not only provide feedback to employees on their behavior, but in a non-disciplinary fashion. This
allows for data to be compiled that can determine where significant improvement opportunities exist. Once
identified you analyze and overcome the behavioral barriers to improve safety performance in the area known
typically as unsafe acts. Organizations have reported great success in reducing work place injuries by
focusing on the behavioral aspects in safety. This same behavioral process works in acquiring reliability by
reducing mechanical breakdowns, process upsets, and human errors.

This process works on reliability issues and has been taught to organizations since the seventies and yet there
has been little success reported in reducing unscheduled interruptions in productivity (reactive work.) In many
cases efforts to improve reliability have focused on purchasing new equipment that can give indications of
equipment health, computerized systems that manage information about maintenance activities, and providing
training in predictive technologies. What lessons can be learned from the safety efforts that have been
improving the work place? They have proven greater success in changing the behavior of the human element.

The reason most reliability efforts fall short of producing exponential results is because we are not as fully
focused on the behavior of the employees carrying out the desired mission as we are in our safety efforts. To
focus you must first build the systems that will be needed to support the effort. This involves commitment from
management to go out and seek the information that best supports the effort and meld it into a system that will
endure the test of time. This would include such things as metrics, problem selection criteria, recommendation
acceptance criteria, champion responsibilities, etc.

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In most safety programs, statistics and data are used to define the cause of accidents in both unsafe conditions
and behavior errors. Most quantify the frequency of accidents in given categories. This data becomes the focal
point within the organization for safety categories that need improvement and is used to determine corrective
action steps for both unsafe conditions and behaviors. This is always supported by the highest ranks of
management.

Reliability efforts also use data and statistics to uncover areas of opportunity. The most widely used method of
identification is Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA). The FMEA will provide a clear picture of each
area and within each area the opportunities for improvement. This data will be used to select the most
significant area or systems to do root cause analysis studies. The root cause analysis studies will allow problems
to be addressed at three levels, physical root (the component failure), human root (inappropriate human
intervention), and the latent root (the system root that drives the behavior).

This is the area where the support of the highest-ranking management counts the most, making decisions based
on the root cause analysis findings. This is because funds will be needed to correct the identified root causes. It
is customary and expected to use funds to repair component roots, but when management is asked to fund
training requirements (human roots) and rewriting of procedures (latent roots) there is resistance because the
equipment can now run so the short term is satisfied. The training issues and procedure issues take longer and
require effort to perform. In most cases this is put on the back burner causing the event to occur again some
time in the future.

As in safety, management must be educated in the concepts so that they can give full support. It is no different
in reliability because management must understand the concepts of reliability and know how it promotes the
bottom line. They must be educated in how reliability works in any area of the organization and understand
reliability is a driver to enhance safety, reduce quality defects, increase productivity, reduce the chance of an
environmental excursion, and that reliability moves organizations in the direction of precision.

An example of how reliability affects the bottom line and how the three root levels parallel safety can be seen in
this case history of a lance drop in a steel mill. The lances job is to enhance steel making by adding pure
oxygen to the process. The lance is lowered into the kettle, does its job and then is raised. After each batch, the
lance is returned to the kettle for a slag wash which is to smooth the remaining slag to the kettle wall and
prepare for the next run. The lance failures had occurred nine times in two years at a cost exceeding $2,000,000.
In the past each occurrence was repaired and the process was started up. The results satisfied the short term but
did not stop the failures from happening again. The management was concerned that if this continued,
eventually there would be an injury and the productivity losses were piling up. It was determined that a root
cause analysis should be done so that this problem could be put behind them. The results proved that by using a
structured analysis the true roots of the problem would be discovered. The analysis uncovered many roots.
Some of the problems uncovered were misalignment of the drive system (physical root), inspections were not
completed (human root), no torque procedure existed for coupling bolts (latent root). The recommendation for
each cause was implemented and the lance problem no longer occurs. Since the lance no longer fails, the
likelihood of an injury has diminished significantly by addressing not just the physical roots, but the system
roots that drive the behavior.

Most companies have a safety policy because it is a statement that protects the safety effort against changes in
management that could mitigate the safety program from the intended use. Reliability efforts also should have a
policy for the same reasons. Unfortunately most companies do not have reliability policies and as a result when
the management changes so does the effort. An example is in a paper mill that I have worked with for over five
years. The management has changed several times and with each change so has the focus on reliability. I have
seen the swing in support go from "we are behind you" to "the department is not needed and may be dissolved".
This sends confusing signals to the employees, which affects the behavior. You will not see this with most
safety efforts.

Most companies have defined the safety role of each department. This means that you have been educated in
what to do when certain incidents occur and have been well prepped in safety proaction. Reliability demands
the same structure and role identification. This means that if you are a process engineer and a mechanic asks for
your input on a problem you know exactly how you should help and supply the appropriate information. You
should also be well versed in how to be proactive on the job. This is truly a behavioral change as well as a major
paradigm shift. We are so used to being reactive that it will take time and support to move into the
proactive/improvement arena.

What have we learned from safety efforts that are currently in place and improving every year? I believe that if
we were serious about reliability we would model the safety support effort in our reliability structure. I know
that reliability is a direct link to safety improvement and that if supported like safety, would move corporations
to the next level of continuous improvement precision; getting it right the first time.



Mark Latino is President of Reliability Center, Inc. (RCI). Mr. Latino came to RCI after 19 years in corporate
America. During those years a wealth of reliability, maintenance, and manufacturing experience was acquired.
He worked for Weyerhaeuser Corporation in a production role during the early stages of his career. He was an
active part of Allied Chemical Corporations (now Honeywell) Reliability Strive for Excellence initiative that
was started in the 70s to define, understand, document, and live the reliability culture until he left in 1986. Mr.
Latino spent 10 years with Philip Morris primarily in a production capacity that later ended in a reliability
engineering role. He is a graduate of Old Dominion University and holds a BS Degree in Business
Management that focused on Production & Operations Management. Contact information: 804-458-0645,
mlatino@reliability.com.

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