The LeanWAM Principle

I am often contacted by agencies that are concerned with tool time metrics for their work and asset management software.  They want to know how I handle recording tool time on a work order and are very focussed on the best strategies to employ to capture this data.   Inevitably, I ask them what problem are they trying to solve.  What decisions are they going to make utilizing this data and how are they going to extract the data and apply it to the decisions that need to be made? These questions are typically followed by several moments of dead air.   Once we get to peeling the layers of this onion, the most common reason they are focussed on tool time has very little to do with actual wrench wielding time and more about lining up work geographically and minimizing the time wasted driving from one job to the next by grouping jobs together that are located close to one another.  And that is a problem that doesn't actually require recording tool time vers...

When it comes to asset management, one of the more popular key performance indicators is an asset's Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) which tracks the average amount of operational hours between breakdowns.  This a great metric and one of the building blocks of measuring the efficacy of your preventative maintenance programs.   But before we can ever attain tracking MTBF, there is a more important indicator that you have to overcome.  I am talking about MTBE, the Mean Time Between Excuses.   One of the toughest challenges we face when attempting to implement a work and asset management program is program adoption.  Users are finicky and notoriously hard to please.  We have all heard the quote by poet John Lydgate that was simplified and popularized by President Abraham Lincoln, "You can't please all of the people all of the time."  This is abundantly clear when it comes to any user base for a work and asset management software.  No matter...

In the many years that I’ve been involved in work and asset management, I’ve noticed a recurring pattern of behavior that’s worth examining. Organizations often struggle to realize the full value of their CMMS and grow frustrated. The beast that is work and asset management always seems to have the upper hand, and they decide they need some kind of magical weapon to slay it—something like the Infinity Gauntlet from the Marvel Cinematic Universe or that legendary sword from Excalibur. Whatever metaphor you prefer, they’re looking for a silver bullet to kill the big, scary monster, and they believe that a new software platform will be that silver bullet. It doesn’t seem to matter if their current platform has been an industry leader for decades—they assume that just means they’re stuck in the “old” ways of doing business. And if their current platform is a smaller, more artisanal solution, well, then it’s dismissed as not being sophisticated enough. A quick trip around the internet will ...

Looks like you’ve stumbled across my webpage. I’m not sure what you misspelled in your Google search to get here, but I’m glad you made it. My name is Jason Todd, and I created The LeanWAM Principle — a unique approach to work and asset management for smaller, lean organizations that lack the staffing levels necessary to support traditional work and asset management strategies, but still need to realize value from their CMMS software. I have many years of experience utilizing CMMS software from just about every user role you can imagine in industries such as steel production, power generation, and municipal utilities. I’ve been the journeyman maintenance person receiving preventative and predictive maintenance work orders and writing reactive or repair work orders to document maintenance against assets. I’ve been the user designing new preventative maintenance programs or revising tasks and instructions on existing ones. I’ve also served as a maintenance supervisor using CMMS softwa...