Improve crew effectiveness

Client Problem (example)

A maintenance manager has just been appointed to lead the maintenance teams at a large chemical refinery.  The refinery operates 24/7 and has 19 maintenance crews.  Over the past two years, safety events have increased, multiple maintenance metrics have not been met, and crew culture results have declined significantly.

The maintenance manager begins attending shift-starts and realizes there are multiple issues, many times specific to individual crews, that need to be addressed to turn culture and performance around. The manager knows an external intervention with consultants will not be welcomed and is seeking a way to engage the crews to rapidly, and collectively, identify and address issues and blockers to performance.

Client Objective

The client seeks to:

1. Align with crews on safety and performance expectations and identify enablers and blockers to meeting those expectations.
2. Rapidly identify the issues and blockers to crew effectiveness and close the gaps– Improving refinery safety and performance.
3. Engage crews openly, and collectively, to solve as a team and create ownership of improvement.
4. Ensure that crew issues or blockers that require leadership attention are identified and actions to address are tracked.
5. Minimize the cost associated with the exercise and avoid using external consultants.

How Method8 is used to meet the client’s objectives

Aspire

1. The maintenance manager assigns a client lead and Method8 assigns a Practitioner to work with them.
2. The client uses Method8’s Crew Effectiveness assessment as a starting point and customizes it to suit the refinery.
3. The client-tailored crew assessment is updated into an engaging, and measurable, Method8 formative assessment.
   • The assessment contains education materials specific to the agreed best practices for crew effectiveness.
   • The assessment is designed to measure both employee understanding of, and effectiveness of, the practices.
   • Multiple Method8 tools / techniques are built into the assessment to improve employee engagement and insight.
4. The assessment is carefully designed to ensure crews can take the assessment—without impacting refinery operations.
5. The maintenance manager assigns each Supervisor to be responsible for leading their crew assessments.
6. The maintenance manager holds a meeting with all Supervisors to ensure context for the assessment and to set expectations.

Assess

1. Each supervisor and crew undertake and complete the assessments over multiple shifts.
2. The assessment is taken as a team—building a deeper understanding of crew effectiveness practices and self-assessing current crew performance.  Significant team discussion and debate unfolds during this self assessment process.
3. Method8 platform functionality is used to escalate questions / blockers that require clarification from the supervisor or broader leadership.
4. Teams identify the actions required to close gaps to the practices and identify blockers that will require internal leadership support.

Act (and AI)

1. Method8’s AI agent is used to review maturity scoring, gaps, actions across crews—providing additional, enterprise-level, insight.
2. The client confirms and initiates gap closure action across crews.
3. The client reviews systemic blockers that require leadership action and initiates action to address the blockers.
4. The client tracks gap closure and determines the next assessment point.
5. The client uses the assessment on-going to ensure crew effectiveness does not degrade with change and turnover.