Twilight Zone material

I need to work my way around to the story at hand so you can see the story from my perspective.

I used to work for a large manufacturer of transportation equipment. We used MAXIMO as a planning and scheduling tool for maintenance. One module of MAXIMO had "job-plans" which outlined step-by-step each sub-task required to execute a certain type of maintenance on a tool. Each step had a time assigned to it.

Another module scheduled the execution of those job-plans on every tool in the shop.

Think of it the way you think of changing oil in your vehicles. You can spread it out or you can knock them all out in a day, but you will be changing the oil on each vehicle twice a year.

With me so far?

Iain, a manager with a razor-like intellect and deeply hidden social skills*, was getting tired of the down-time in the shop. On a hunch, he had his MAXIMO wizard sum up the number of manhours that MAXIMO "pulled" in the course of a year. Was it 5% of the Electrician, Millwright, Pipefitter hours available? 10%? 25%?

Point being that the skilled trades were also used for tool installations, emergency break-downs and the like. Further, doing the job-plans during production nearly always required that the tool be taken out of production and running tools pay the bills, not ones sidelined for maintenance.

The MAXIMO wizard reported that if every MAXIMO scheduled was done according to the official job-plan, the time required was well north of 100% of the Electrician/Millwright/Toolmaker/Pipefitter hours available.

Which meant that the vast majority of the job-plan documentation were pencil whipped.

Tell me you are surprised. I dare you.

After ripping his staff new assholes (a necessary event given that they were falsifying documents) Iain told his staff to come back with what REALLY happened.

In fact, most equipment got a Light-Light-Heavy-Light inspection. Most inspections were drive-by or phone-in (via infranet data) inspections. One-in-four were hands-on, MAXIMO compliant job-plans.

Critical equipment got more "Heavy" inspections. Equipment that was fragile got more inspections. Equipment and processes that were bullet-proof got fewer.

AFTER honesty had been driven back into the system, it was possible to make improvements. That was totally impossible when the actual and documented system were only casually acquainted in the most random kind of ways.

Resources that had been dedicated to tools/processes that were materially improved could be throttled back and reallocated to tools that were more fragile.

The Twilight Zone story...

I just got back from a "Patient Care" meeting at the nursing home where my mom is a resident.

I was there. The every-lovely and talented Mrs ERJ was there. My sister (a nurse) was there.

Twenty minutes after the scheduled start of the meeting we had not seen hide-nor-hair of any staff. My sister lassoed a staff member walking down the hall. The staff member investigated and came back with this story...

"They already had your meeting" she said.

!!???!!???!!!!!

"Beg pardon?"

"It was by phone" she said.

Good, Bad, Ugly looks pass between the three of us.

"They called Michelle and cranked through the meeting" the name-not-released-to-protect-the-innocent.

There are no people in my family named "Michelle".

The number the Social Worker called to speak with "Michelle" had been disconnected in early October (verified).

Second Act

When the two most obvious conclusions were presented as a binary decision tree to the Social Worker, she blew a gasket.

For the record, the other branch in the decision tree is that she had failed to verify (via a list) that the person (name) on the other end of the phone was approved to discuss sensitive, medical information regarding my mom. Furthermore, she had proven that she was not competent to dial a phone number...and that was the more savory of the two options.

Things went south from there....

Tin-foil hats

I must admit that when people first started suggesting that our leaders were designing policies designed to make people fail, I thought they were wearing tin-foil hats.

I need to reconsider that position.

The manpower situation in the nursing home is dire. They are GUTTED for people. Toilets are backed up and not being fixed. And this is one of the three most highly rated nursing homes in a metro-area of 400k.

They are likely to lose another 30% of staff over the BS that fully vaccinated will soon mean three shots or four shots.

The Federal agencies are "remedying" the situation by adding levels of documentation and administrative overhead.

They are either engineering systems to implode or are pathologically stupid. Maybe both.

If it were within my power, I would make Iain head of the CDC.

*Full disclosure: I own Iain for a great kindness he once showed me.

I was failing in a job. Not just failing, but failing with a "Monday GIF" flair.

Iain was the first person to see that I was about to belly-smack the water from the high-board and got me transferred to a job where I could be successful.

I doubt that he had my best interests at heart, but sometimes the needs of the Firm align with the needs of the pawn/cog. That was one of those times.

Bonus factoid

My sister-the-nurse shared that her corporation determined that shared fingernail and toenail polish is a potential vector for pathogens like C. diff and Noro.

Fingers go everywhere, especially body-parts that are itchy or tender. The brush can pick up pathogens and then convey them to other patients. They put their fingers into their mouth, perhaps to bite a nail....

Sis said that her corporate master mandates that bottles of nail polish cannot be shared between patients.

So, if you have a loved-one in a facility then buy them their own bottles of polish. And if you can spare a few bucks, buy their roommate bottles of the shades they prefer.

They will think you are a great guy. They don't need to know that sometimes the needs of the NPC align with the needs of the important people in our lives.