Effective Change Management to Avoid Pilot Purgatory, Part 1: People

What is pilot purgatory?Pilot purgatory isabout getting stalled in the pilot or testing phase of new technologylike a Mobile EAM solution,and thereforenotable toshowresultsandscalethe deployment.In this 3-part series, we willdiscuss strategiesfor maintenance operations teamsto avoid pilot purgatory based on the PPT framework (People-Process-Technology).This piece will discusseffective change managementby addressingPeople, theirmindsets,andtheirrole in the change.

>Index

Effective Change Management Starts with your People

People Issues that Result in Pilot Purgatory

How Do You Escape Pilot Purgatory?

The Ingredion Story

The Furnas Story

How Sigga Can Help

>Effective Change Management Starts with your People

“About 70% of pilot projects never see the light of day”

Digital transformation is changing how asset-intensive companies do business–and yet “about 70% of pilot projects never see the light of day,” according to research from global management consulting firmMcKinsey. And yet, companies who were able to make the leap have reported an increase in productivity by 10 to 30% percent simply by increasing the reliability and availability of equipment while keeping maintenance costs under control.

But why is it that some maintenance organizations succeed in digital transformation, while others fail? Worse, some maintenance-tech transformations find themselves suspended in a state of pilot purgatory where they simply never get to the stage of a proper rollout.

That’s because whenit comes to digital transformation, it’s not just the technology and the process that matters, but also the people. These people can be your technicians, operationsmanagers,planners,productionmanagers, and more. Without their buy-in, you can find they can block your pilot and render it useless.

People Issues that ResultinPilot Purgatory

If you’re in charge of adigitaltransformation project for your maintenance organization, here are some of the typical “people” issues that you may encounter thatcan result in pilot purgatory:

>Inadequacy ofProjectDefinition and Leadership Buy-in

Management needs to acknowledge the importance of digital transformation of their maintenance organization to make the goals a reality.This alignment is required across the organizationincluding management in production, warehouse, IT, and all the way up to the CEO.

Because adding automation, a mobile solution or other digital technology is not just adding new technology, the technology changes the work processes which in turn changes what people do and the skills they require to be successful in their job. And since the maintenance function is a service organization and is highly integrated to many adjacent functions such as production, the change impacts the processes and people’s roles across the organization.

The leadership team needs to be aligned and prepared to keep the whole organization inspired to the goals of making a change that may appear to be focused on only one function.

>PeopleFeelThatTheirJob isThreatened

You mustconsider that the workforce may not react well to sudden changes in their jobs.For instance, you may be employing a maintenance department administrative employee who is spending long hours printing work orders and collating safety and work instructions for distribution to the technicians every day.

However, with a mobile digital transformation, the app automates the distribution of work orders and instructions electronically. Naturally, this employee may start thinking that they will be out of a job soon with digital transformation.

Leadership must then work to ensure that the maintenance department understands how these changes will help the department grow. If job retention is assuredand employees will be assigned to other tasks,you must communicate this tothe staff, so they welcome this transformation instead of blocking it.In fact, the digital processcan even be amotivational factorto replace boring,repetitive tasks.

>Battle Fatigue

If your maintenance organization has gone through unsuccessful or painful change efforts before, they may be experiencing “battle fatigue,” which makes them cynical about new automation and mobile EAM solutions.

If you are amaintenanceoperations manager, you will need to support your employees through the transformation by dispelling uncertainty and keeping communication lines open. Without a leader, employees may become discouraged, especially if the digital transformation has been tried repeatedly without the best results. The last thing you want to happen is for digital transformation fatigue to set in, and the entire maintenance department canbecomeresistant to the process.

>How Do You Escape Pilot Purgatory?

The key toeffective change managementis to have an inclusive, holistic plan with a clear vision and roadmap. Have the whole organization on board and remember that business transformation is the goal, while digital is the tool. Here are some strategies that you can employ:

>Address Organizational Culture to Embrace Change

Organizational culture is a factor in a successful digital transformation. Failure to build a digital culture can result in a general failure of your company and the individual failure of your maintenance department. The entire company needs to be on board, and the company needs to know how to adapt to this new digital way of working.

The Ingredion Story

For example, the food ingredient company, Ingredion, was battling a very reactive maintenance culture. The breakdowns and urgent requests limited the completion of preventive maintenance activities creating a huge backlog. The production management team were leery of taking
the risk of disrupting their production processes with any change. Their focus was on how fast maintenance can respond to a problem.

To turn things around,Ingredion chose to startthe change management process withautomating theplanning and schedulingprocess recognizing the benefits would be highly visible to the productionmanagers.They would have better visibility to themaintenance activities anddirectly experience theequipmentuptime benefit of accomplishing more planned maintenance.

As a result, the whole organization experienced the benefits and were inspired to support further automation solutions
to accomplish more preventive maintenance and reduce downtime events.


It is harderto change culture than it is to change technologies.People get engrained in the traditional ways of doing things.It can be comfort withflipping throughpaper as opposed to ascrolling on amobile device.Orthe ingrained belief thatthe maintenance department is actually the fix-it-when-it-breaks departmentand beresistant to plan downtime for preventive maintenance.

It is critical to recognizewhere the digital change will disruptpeople’scomfort zonesand tackle thechange intheirmindsetwith the visionof the future state.

>Appoint“Digital”Leaders

3.1x moresuccess if the“management team established clear story for transformation.” – >McKinsey

Leadership is key toinspire the organization to embrace the changes.Digital transformation requires change at all levels, especially when it relates to talent and capabilities.Everyone from the boardroom to the maintenance department needs to be on the same page for your company’s success.

The Ingredion Story Continued

Expanding on theIngredionstory,senior management set the tone while a few key managersled by example as they were personally motivated
to solve some of the“madness”of the reactive culture.

These managers were responsible for themaintenanceplanning andscheduling processwhichwas takingthem2 days every week.
The managers needed todownloadthe backlog of work orders tospreadsheets,arrangetheminto maintenance schedules considering
the production schedules, materials and parts availability,technician skills and availability. The resulting schedule was uploaded back into SAP
to be dispatchedto techniciansand then frequently updated to address all the reactive requests and breakdowns.

Deploying an automation solution took the process from 2 days to 1-2 hours to the delight of the managers responsible, but also started a cadence of planning and accomplishing preventive tasks, reducing the backlog, and improving equipment reliability and uptime.

The managers used the time savings to lead further process improvements in maintenance operations.


You may find these people already within your maintenance department. These people bridge the gaps between the conventional and digital parts of the business while having both the experience and skills necessary to leadand inspireinnovation efforts when it comes tonew automation and mobile solutions.

>Empower Employees toDefineNew Ways to Work

Companies that want to empower their maintenance team to embrace change mustnot onlyprovide education for any identifiedskills gaps,but alsoencourage employees toparticipate andtake risks. The more involved your employees are with developing thenew work processes, the more successful the transformation will be.

Behnam Tabrizi, author and teacherofLeading Organizational Transformation at Stanford University,describes thatdigital transformation is not about technology.“He often encounters participants who are skepticalof the entire operation from the get-go. In response, he developed an “inside-out” process. All participants are asked to examine what their unique contributions to the organizations are, and then to connect those strengths to components of the digital transformation process — which they will then take charge of, if at all possible. This gives employees control over how the digital transformation will unfold, and frames new technologies as means for employees to become even better at what they were already great at doing.”

Your digital software provider or consultants may know best practices, but they don’t have intimate knowledge in what works and what doesn’t work in your daily operations. At the same time, you need to consider that processes will need to changeto take advantage ofautomation and newdigital technologies.Keeping operations managers and a few select employees involved in definingor adaptingnew workflowswillmake them feel like they’re part of the process.Identify people who not only know the process butknow deeply why things are done this way, what are the fundamental objectivesand dependencies behind the process.McKinseyfound thatcompanieswere 1.6x more successful if they had“People engaged in key roles were more involved in developing initiatives than during past change efforts.”

>Redefine Roles &amp Responsibilities

Every member of your team needs to understand their role and how they fit into the entire process.If you’ve communicated this correctly, they will feel more engaged and see that they are essential for the project. This simple but crucial step will lead to higher quality work and a happier team.

The Furnas Story

For example, the companyFurnashad a team of administrative assistants whoprintedworkordersandthenentered completedresultsdaily into SAPEAM. This task required the person to have the unique skill of knowing how to get around the platformin order toopen each workorder andupdate the status from the technician’s handwritten notes.

Digital transformation through anew mobile EAM appgot rid of this time-consuming task because it synchronized directly with SAP whenever a technician updated a work order.As a result, they were able to save 7,500 admin hoursper monthof tedious printing and collating
paper-based work orders plus manual data entry tasks.

In the beginning of the project, theystarted the process ofretraining in order toretain and reallocate46administrative employees
to otherneededfunctionsin the organization.Maintenance department savings amountedto $630,000 per year.


Not alldigital transformation projectscompletely replace jobs, but mostimpact the day-to-day work of thepeople in theorganization.The implications at a minimum mean that job roles and employee goalsneed to change.And in many cases, the organizational structure needs to beadjusted as well.

>Select TechnologyThat is User-Friendly

You can make your life easier by making surethat new software is intuitive and easy to use by the people who will be doing the work.Failure to consider user experience can lead to decreased user adoption and low team morale – especially if doing theworkthe old way was faster.

It seems obvious, but the user interface (UI)can be overlookedas an explicitrequirement, especially whenchoosing a mobile application.Not all mobile applications are the same, some are responsive web apps while others arenativelybuilt within the operating system and conventions of the mobile device.Selecting the later technologyresults in an application thatleveragespeople’scommon experiencesfromuse oftheir ownpersonal mobile device. This familiaritycreates aneasier transition to the new way of working.

>GetEffective Change Management Help

Sigga has 20 years of experience in industrial maintenance processes. In fact, we began our company as a professional services firm, helping enterprise clients withSAP EAM. We are adept at working with teams to implement new mobile or digital workflows, and we can helpyou implementproveneffectivechangemanagement processes with your people.

Hearmore aboutthe successatIngredioninour webinar withRafael Padilha, Director for Reliability and Continuous Improvement at Ingredion (NYSE:INGR).Anddownload ourFurnas Success Storyfor more details onhow they avoided pilot purgatoryto achieve quick results and scale.

We have designed ourMobile EAMandWarehousesolutions asnative mobile appsto drive better user adoption of new mobile workflows.Ourplanning and scheduling automation solutionfor SAPsaves hours creatingand maintaining maintenance schedules.

Contact us to learn about how we can help you. Together, we can trail-blaze your waythrougheffective change managementwith your peopletoavoid pilot purgatory.

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