Service Engineer as a Technician
A service engineer is a technician first and last. Customer relationship is, after all, based on the common interest in the product in question. Service engineer’s encounter with the customer stems either from a product under breakdown or is aimed at maximising product usage. Irrespective of whether the service demand is derived from a faulty product or otherwise, the user looks forward to experiencing superior technical knowledge at display. Service engineer’s skills and technical competence are subjected to severest tests under a crisis situation. And these are the very situations which either show him in bad light or make a little hero of him. Such situations arise out of pressures of sudden breakdowns or of time overrun on tight project schedule. Any delay in diagnosing and rectifying a fault can send the tempers soaring high, blur clear thinking, result in mud-slinging and cause a drift from the real problem at hand. All service engineers go through such experiences with varying degree of intensity. Yet, a mature service engineer knows that—exceptions apart—such a tense situation develops out of genuine interest in restoring normalcy and not particularly to create problems for the service engineer. He knows that once the real technical problem is solved tension would die a sudden death. He, therefore, concentrates on identifying and eliminating the problem. His product knowledge, diagnostic skills, planning and execution of repair alone would come to his rescue. If he comes out of a tense situation successfully he earns a fund of goodwill. If he fails, he comes out with a bruised image.
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Mature Knowledge Creates Positive Experience
Let us get into the shoes of an emotionally engaged and knowledge empowered service engineer, who believed that in a metaphorical sense ‘a customer is always right’ but who also knew that the customer can be often wrong on technical assessment of a high-pressure, crisis laden situation. Here is an example of how a potentially explosive situation was handled with sound application of knowledge and self confidence.
Two emergency calls – one to me (service manager) and the second to our Managing Director – that came in from Bajaj Auto Limited within a span of fifteen minutes were to pose a severe test to a service engineer. It was a test to stand against the overwhelming pressure of a consensus that made no technical sense.
Rejection of a batch of hundred scooter panels in one go, because of paint over-baking, set the alarm bells ringing at Bajaj Auto and hence the SOS calls to Thermax – the manufacturers of the paint baking ovens and the thermic fluid heaters (Thermopacs) forming part of the system.
By the time the service engineer Madan and I (service manager) joined a highly experienced technical team at Bajaj Auto, they had come to a resolute conclusion. “Two-way pneumatically operated flow control valves (forming an integral part of the close-circuit, thermic fluid system) have to be replaced without any loss of time” declared the Plant Manager. Past experience can, quite often, obscure the new reality which may be similar but not necessarily the same. The present conclusion was based on a previous incident of the oven temperature going out of control because of mal-operating valves. The oven temperature can, however, overshoot for other reasons as well. We debated for a while but, the plant manager, weighed down by the production crisis insisted on immediate action. We were not sure whether replacement of valves would solve the ‘problem’ at all—simply because the ‘problem’ was not yet known. Nonetheless, I rang up our office for someone to requisition and get a set of flow control valves ready for despatch.
Search for Missing Logic
In an in-house training programme on problem-solving, Madan had learnt a few weeks back that ‘the cause of a problem is always a “change” that takes place through some distinctive feature, mechanism or condition to produce a new, unwanted effect.’ The maintenance team at Bajaj had categorically confirmed that in the recent past, no ‘change’ whatsoever, had been brought about in the operating practices surrounding the paint baking ovens. Madan’s mind, however, was not at ease and we were desperately looking for some ‘distinctive feature’ in the first place and then for the ‘change’ acting through that feature. We were afraid we would face a highly embarrassing situation if the problem re-occurs after we have ‘solved’ it on the basis of an impulsive consensus that made no technical sense. Madan, therefore, stayed back at the shop floor to watch for himself, what was really happening.
Madan dug into the available data and was able to get hold of the oven thermographs covering a period of one month. He tabulated 30-days data to show fall and/or rise in oven temperature in relation to the clock time of the day. By the end of the day he had come to one meaningful conclusion. The timings of occurrence of failures fell into a definite pattern. The unwanted temperature deviation would occur invariably, if it occurred at all, following an operational time break for the workers—a lunch break, a tea break or a shift change. Having found a ‘distinctive feature’ Madan’s focus shifted to discovering the ‘change’ that would render the temperature control system totally inoperative during this distinctive post-break period.
It was not until the lunch break next day that Madan spotted the ‘change’. As the lunch break signal hooted Madan saw one of the operators switching off the oven blower before heading for the canteen. Madan intercepted him and asked: ‘why did you switch off the blower?’ The operator came up with a surprise. He told Madan that, as part of the company-wide energy saving movement, all the operators had been directed fifteen days back, to switch off the oven blowers during lunch break and during the shift change.
The cause of the problem instantly flashed through Madan’s mind and he wasted no time in inviting the plant manager and others to the paint shop. In their presence, Madan re-constructed the conditions for oven temperature to rise beyond 130 °C and explained why switching off the blowers would result in this phenomenon.
As the ‘changed’ instructions were withdrawn, the problem of accidental temperature shoot up vanished altogether. The maintenance team and the General Works Manager were extremely happy and were overwhelmed by the turn of events. They appreciated the kind of confidence with which Madan had worked, and felt sorry that they had interpreted our resistance to rush into a solution as an attempt to disown responsibility. The episode ended up in further cementing of Bajaj/Thermax relationship.
Note: Should you like to know what is the technical significance of the switching off of an oven fan please click here: Putting Everyone on the same page.
This is one the four blogs in this series apart fro the Preamble. Click on The Teacher; A Fried in Need; A Salesman or Preamble, to reach the relevant blog.
Gopal K Gureja
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*I have used the title ‘service engineer’ in a generic sense for all those who provide on-site technical support irrespective of the official designation they may have.