Industry Insights

Industry Insights

A Win Win Strategy
By Dr. Gary Eiff

Twenty years of applied research projects and consulting activities with various types of aviation companies has convinced me that aviation organizations are more alike than different when it comes to safety, quality and productivity challenges. Whether it be maintenance, flight, ramp operations, or customer service, the vast majority of safety and productivity problems are rooted in fundamental approaches to work activities. By far, the greatest offender in all of the studied companies was the lack of control of process.

A close examination of safety "events," incidents and accidents reveals that many are caused by human or organizational factors associated with productivity recovery activities, actual or perceived operational pressures, or poorly developed or poorly executed work coordination and process flow. When workers are forced to improvise "work-arounds" or feel the need to "short-cut safety procedures" in order to meet production demands, safety is seriously compromised. When these conditions are chronic within an organization, it is invariably an indication of systemic problems.

First, it should be recognized that it is not enough to simply establish manualized or documented work procedures, which have been designed as "known paths to success," and assume that they will insure safe operations and product quality. Experience has demonstrated that within most companies, technicians and workers do not view policies, procedures, or work instructions as "defenses" against errors. Since most workers view policies and documented procedures as simply instructions on how to do their work, they have little compunction about deviating from those safeguards and devising short-cuts or situational work practices when under production pressures. This fact was demonstrated in the results of a recent study at Purdue University of National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) data on aviation accidents and incidents for a 20-year period. The study data showed that 76% of the maintenance related causes of accidents and incidents was "failure to follow established procedures."

The current state of the industry has exacerbated normal problems associated with pressure-related deviations through "downsized" workforces and increased productivity pressures. It is troubling, therefore, to discover that most aviation organizations have not considered solutions through process assessment and improvement strategies. The industry seems to be paralyzed in a "we've always done it this way" mentality and does not consider the important safety and productivity benefits which can be realized through commonly utilized business improvement strategies.

Selling safety improvement strategies is a difficult task in most aviation companies. Pointing to already outstanding safety records, company leaders will question the business sense of funding new approaches to safety systems and programs. Commonly, leadership will ask for a demonstrated "ROI" (return on investment) for the initiative before considering new approaches or safety program enhancements. This is very often a difficult task since most companies do not effectively or accurately track or trend the "cost of quality" or "cost of safety." Improving process control is an effective way to demonstrate that improvements in both safety and productivity can occur, and can dispel the common myth that safety gains will only come at the expense of productivity and profitability.

There are many tools which can be used for analyzing and improving process control. One of the most effective is the strategy of mapping the process. By defining and ordering the high level steps in the current work process, a visual representation of the dependencies, "hand-offs," and barriers to the efficient flow or work can prove to be quite enlightening. The strategy allows for easy identification of the critical path, critical chain, bottlenecks, barriers, failed defenses, and coordination problems associated with disturbances in the efficient flow of the process.

Using this very simple approach can have a dramatic affect on safety and performance. Some examples from my experience include cutting two days off of heavy maintenance visits at a major airline's overhaul facility while at the same time effectively eliminating rework and dramatically reducing errors. Another example was the improvement of an airline's departure performance from 17% to 74% on time within a two month period while reducing ramp safety infractions by over 80%.

As an industry, we are currently facing many difficult challenges. In order to remain viable, we must become better at what we do. Control of process is a necessary and fundamental first step.

Dr. Eiff is with the aviation department of Purdue University and he has been an active researcher of aviation maintenance for many years.