Avionics News February 2012 - 17

One of the major SMS concepts is that you encourage communication with your employees. See something, and say something. And, what are you doing with the information once it is reported?

lar maintenance action, and were they following it? Inevitably, the answer is no, they were not following their “quality control system, which ensures the airworthiness of the products they are maintaining.” Had they been following their standard procedures, they would not have been cited for the FAA finding. One of the major SMS concepts is that you encourage communication with your employees. See something, and say something. And, what are you doing with the information once it is reported? I once was asked by a company’s SMS office, “is this thirdparty audit finding regulatory?” I thought the question was telling, not because it wasn’t a good question (the first question in any audit review in our industry is always, are you violating the rules?). But, once measured against the regulations, this SMS office dismissed the comment. All of the modern “management systems,” including quality, safety, cockpit and maintenance, are based on expanding the company’s communication base to improve the operation. This company’s management was not interested in listening to the tools of quality and SMS to improve their processes; they were simply ticking off a box on someone’s ledger to claim they have an SMS program. An effective “management system” should be a profit center, not a cost center. So, how should the system work? You must actively listen and act on information. Actively listening is defined as “a communication technique that requires the listener to understand, interpret and evaluate what they hear.” It’s the engine mechanic who can hear a fault in an engine by listening to the engine, or feeling the vibrations. In the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the author talks about being one with the motorcycle you’re riding, hearing the engine, feeling the vibrations and knowing when something is wrong before it fails. It’s the difference between driving a motorcycle and riding a motorcycle. It’s fun to be around motorcyclists and listen (oops, there’s that word again) to their experiences at being one with the bikes. Similar to the aircraft mechanic, they can identify a fault, or possible fault,

by listening to and feeling their machine before the fault becomes a catastrophic failure. You can’t troubleshoot your business with occasional listening any more than a technician can troubleshoot through feelings and sound without training and experience. It takes time. It takes a commitment to use noise and vibration as an indicator. It takes trust in your senses to use them as a basis to perform troubleshooting. The direction that all aviation authorities are taking calls for a company’s management to listen to corporate senses, including employees, customers and auditors, and to use these tools to identify faults before they become catastrophic failures. So, once you turn on the hearing tools, what do you do with those senses? Like motorcycle maintenance, you have to know what the vibration is telling you. Is your business process running on five cylinders instead of six? My daughter came home one day complaining her car wasn’t running properly. We started it, listened to the engine, felt the vibration and something wasn’t right. A little troubleshooting and the fault was found, a bad spark plug wire. Years earlier, I borrowed my father’s truck to run some errands. When I returned, I complained that the engine was noisy, vibrating and not accelerating. Again, we troubleshot the engine and found it had blown a hole in a piston. In both cases, noise and vibration were indicators of something wrong, a fault. Proactively addressing the fault allowed us to fix the discrepancies before they became catastrophic failures. If your business is running on a just-enough quality control system, you will take these indicators and simply correct the discrepancy in the product, thereby meeting the minimum regulatory requirements. If you’re a progressive company with a “management system,” you will take the quality control indicator and fix the product. You will listen to the employees, customers and auditors for a pending fault, troubleshoot the system and fix the fault before it becomes a catastrophic failure. Can you hear them now? q
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Avionics News February 2012

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